I recently had dinner with my boyfriend Joe, and his family and had thoughts of our discussion on girl power and the princess idea. Joe has a sister that is 13 years younger than him and they do not share the same father, she is currently 9 years old. I have been with my boyfriend for almost 5 years, so I have known her since she was 4 years old. I only bring up all of this information about his little sister because of the two focuses, she has been raised more on the princess idea. Now I am definitely a "kid person", I love children and hope to work with them in the future as a nurse and health educator, but this little girl pushes my buttons.
As we're all sitting there, we try to talk to her and ask her questions about school, she just looks at us with a blank stare and never responds.This continued for a few minutes until we all moved on. While I am sitting across the dinner table from her she begins to kick me, which is sadly a common thing she does. I nicely asked her to stop and I'm sure you'll be shocked....she didn't stop. So then I tucked one leg under me and tried to be an adult and ignore her, she then continued to kick my other leg so I asked her why she thought it was necessary and told her to knock it off.
I think this all bothers me so much because this is how she ALWAYS acts and her parents just let it go, rather than addressing it they simply cater to her wants and needs (as you would a princess). They are not in a very good financial standing point and they continue to buy her pretty much anything she wants, without reason. This includes dance classes rather than playing softball.
Now I find this situation a bit iron because I am also a younger sister, my brother is 8 years older than me and we also do not share the same father. Myself and his sister are both our dads only child. I understand that her behavior may be "common" when I give this description that we are both the youngest and our fathers only child, and also being girls.
However, I was raised completely different...more in the "girl power" idea I suppose. I would have NEVER gotten away with any of these things, let alone tried to act that way to begin with. I was given chores around the house and did not receive an allowance and never asked for one. I won't lie, my brother and I had nice things growing up but we were not spoiled by any means. We weren't bribed with money to get good grades, we just worked hard to get them. I did have Barbie's growing up, but I also played peewee and watched Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Pokemon...all "girl power" TV shows. My mom is a very independent woman and has always raised me to be the same.
I know that this is obviously due to our difference of parenting, but I noticed/think that our parents raised us with the two separate ideas that we discussed in class. Obviously, they didn't coherently do this and I may be completely wrong or just looking too deep into this but I certainly am nervous for her to be a teenager.
Also, this was as you can see a bit of a rant. (Apologies).
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