
I was standing in the playground the other day, pushing my sun-blasted daughter on the big-kid swing, when I couldn’t help but overhear a group of parents talking about how much they loved having a home phone when they were kids. That mix of excitement and nerves when the big phone rang and you had no idea if it was your parents’ friends, your bestie, a relative (god forbid), or a spam caller.
Normally, I’m not one to intrude on another parent group at the playground — to each their own in this plastic jungle — but I’d been having this exact conversation with my own friends all week because I’d also read the same article in The Atlantic about the positive effects of having a “dumb” phone for kids. Before I could stop myself, I told them that my husband and I were planning to get one. We spent the next little while chatting about how fun it would be to get everyone in the neighborhood to join in and maybe even get a phone tree going. I left them to go back to my family and felt energized and excited after talking to other like-minded parents.
The conversation in the playground reminded me how much these interludes we have with other parents mean to our own experiences as moms and dads. I gain so much through the lived wisdom of my friends and neighbors and am grateful every time one of us shares how they got their kid through a death in the family, or negotiated a leave at work to take care of their baby, managed all the emotions involved when their child is bullied, or even began the weaning process with their toddler. All of it, big and small, is so much easier to handle when we’re figuring it out together.
In that spirit, this month I asked readers on Twitter/X and Instagram to send in some questions they’ve been wrestling with at home. (If you have your own questions, send me a DM.)
My kid doesn’t want to participate in a certain activity at school. I don’t care, but the school really does. What’s the right thing to do?
I grew up in a fairly rural place that was extremely country — which means I did square and line dancing all through middle and high school. It is not something that I wanted to do; in fact, I dreaded and feared it with my entire soul. I begged my immigrant parents to take me out of it, to say that it was haram or something to square-dance with a boy. They refused, making me take it with the rest of the class, telling me it was important to at least try it before refusing. They also strongly encouraged all of my sisters and I to try out music and drama, stressing that school wasn’t just about studying and homework. Now, loathe as I am to admit they were right, I look back on that period with a lot of fondness. Even today, when certain songs come on the radio or at the bar, it takes everything I have not to boot-scoot boogie.
As a parent, though, I do still struggle with finding the sweet spot between when to push them to keep at something they don’t like or when to call it quits. I’ve definitely leaned toward letting them opt out of most things they don’t want to do because who cares, right? When it was clear my eldest son was more focused on following the clouds than following the ball at soccer, we let him drop lessons. Same with karate, where he showed an aptitude but said he wasn’t having fun.
But the older they get, the more I’m inclined to push them a little more out of their comfort zone. Last year my same son, then in first grade, complained he didn’t want to do drama at school because of how shy he felt when it was his turn to perform; I could’ve let him opt out, but I talked to him about how I had also been cripplingly shy at that age and that it was activities like theater and speech club — both things I feared that my parents encouraged me to do — that helped me slowly overcome it. We had a great conversation about how discomfort is a natural part of growth, even a powerful one. I also made sure he knew that it wasn’t something he had to take on by himself, that I’d talk to his teacher about how he was feeling to help give him some grace in the beginning, and I offered to revisit the idea of sitting it out if he promised to try his best at it for the next month.
Like my own parents had done for me, I wanted him to know that there was value in sticking it out for him and that our initial distaste or aversion to something doesn’t have to define our entire relationship to it. A year later, he is having so much fun in drama and even hamming it up at our family charades nights like a born actor. So unless there is a serious underlying reason they won’t do it, I’d ask your kid to keep giving it a try.
I was a young girl during peak girl power and slut shaming. Now in my late 30s, I look at how that shaped me for better or worse. I know we’re in a different moment culturally but it’s not necessarily better, and I want to be a solid guide to my young girl. It’s a lot of pressure and I wonder what you think about it, raising a daughter too?
When I first got pregnant in 2017, I was so sure I was having a girl that I bought a bunch of beautiful vintage baby dresses at a church sale when I was just three months along. When I finally had my 20-week scan, I was flummoxed when the tech said it was a boy. “Are you sure?” I asked. She turned to me and said, “See that thing dangling? I’m sure.” For some reason I felt like it would just be easier for me to relate to a little girl.
Once I got over the surprise, I had a feeling of apprehension but determination to push against some of the more toxic stereotypes that seem designed to limit how boys are allowed to act and the way they’re supposed to see themselves. I’ve always told him there are no such things as “girl toys” and “boy toys”, or clothes, or roles. I’ve always encouraged him to feel all of his feelings big and small and never to feel shame in his tears. On a superficial level, I got him Elsa dresses to wear with his Spider-Man masks, all in an effort to make sure he never saw his sex as a predetermination of his personhood. It was not always easy, especially when extended family members would balk at the dresses or tell him to “toughen up” in tearful situations.
When I found out a couple of years later that I was pregnant with a girl, a different feeling took over: fear. I questioned if I would know what to do. Would I regress into old patterns, repeating some of the more volatile dynamics that existed between my own mom and me? Would I reinforce negative aspects of body image like the ones that dominated pop culture when I was coming of age? How would I ensure that our own household didn’t fall into antiquated gender roles, even between her and her brother? I thought about all the fears I have as a woman in the world, all the anxieties and self-recriminations I have about my physical appearance, aging, and sex and I worried if I was really equipped to help this little person navigate all that.
I’m comforted by the fact that my daughter is such a force, such a completely self-assured, confident, brave person, but there are a lot of moments — like when she talks about how a character on a TV show is beautiful because of their hair and then compares herself to this fictional being and feels like she comes up short — when I feel like a knife is being twisted into my gut. I want so deeply, like on a deep, spiritual level, to make it so she never feels less than, especially because of how she looks. I do everything in my power to remind all my kids that beauty is about how you treat people, that kindness is the most beautiful thing in the world, but I also know that since they started school, everything I say is competing with a cavalcade of peer pressure and social hierarchy.
I asked Michelle Maurer, a clinical therapist at Boys Town Pediatrics, about navigating body image and she emphasized limiting social media, which makes sense given how destructive it is on my own self-image even as a grown woman. She also mentioned how important it is not to end up acting as an echo to the self-critical thoughts your child is having. “It can be damaging for a child to think their parents are reinforcing their own negative thoughts,” she said. I still remember being 12 and starting to compare myself to the blonde, blue-eyed girls in my class, the ones most of the boys crushed on, and felt unattractive in comparison. Instead of affirmation that I was also beautiful, I recall my mom offering up some makeup and exercise tips.
Truthfully, I don’t have a real answer for you yet because I’m still figuring it out. My main focus for all of my kids is to keep them from ever feeling shame about their bodies, or about who they are and who they want to be. I felt so much shame as a girl growing up, made to feel like my changing body was something to be hidden away and apologetic of. In changing that one aspect of growing up as a girl today, I hope my daughter is emboldened by her womanhood and not fearful or embarrassed by it.
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