Gender, overthinking parenting, and Queen Mab

Between two buildings of Queen Mab’s school is the memorial Zen garden—a brick courtyard surrounded by kindergartener-high black-eyed Susans, with a long L-shaped sand table and an even-longer water feature made of massive rock slabs that looks like it was lifted straight out of Turkey Run State Park, populated by a few stray goldfish. During recess on hot days, the kids take off their shoes and socks and wade in the water, or scoop mountains and rivers into the sand table, which they flood with water carried from the little waterfall in a cracked green watering can.

One particularly blistering week near the beginning of the school year, Mab came home almost every day wearing the extra outfit from her cubby, with the clothes she had worn to school folded damp in a plastic bag. So every day I had to send her to school with new extra clothes.

Friday morning, though, we forgot the bag of clean clothes on the desk in the entryway, and didn’t realize it until I unbuckled her from her car seat at drop off. Mrs. R eyed Mab’s pink shorts and thought they were short enough that she’d probably be fine, if she was careful.

So I kissed her and told her to keep her pants dry, then drove home.

On the way, though, I started to worry that she would fall in the waterfall and get really soaked and then have nothing to change into. I imagined how she would have to play to avoid that. Carefully. Not with the wild freedom that she always moves with, as she absorbs herself into whatever world she’s currently created for herself. In short, she wouldn’t have nearly as much fun at recess if she had to be self-conscious about keeping her clothes dry, and I didn’t know how many waterfall-hot days they had left.

I supposed I could let her deal with it as the consequences for forgetting her stuff, but to be honest I had forgotten it too, and I’m an adult and been forgetting stuff my whole life and I still haven’t learned my lesson (for example, I forgot to bring the printout of her kindergarten dental form to the dentist only a few weeks before. The receptionist graciously didn’t make me suffer the consequences of my mistake and force me to home for it—she printed off a new copy herself).

Mab’s only five—she has her whole life to learn about forgetting stuff, but only a few weeks out of these few years to go outside with her friends and splash in the waterfall during recess. I was just reading yet another online article about kids’ development suffering from not playing outside—climbing on the rocks and sliding into the water would probably do her more long-term good than suffering the consequences of forgetting her stuff, anyway.

It’s only an eight minute drive. So a less-than-20 minute round trip to take her stuff to her. What did I have to do that morning? Not much. Just sit outside with my iced coffee while B eats sidewalk chalk.

I could give up 20 minutes of that for her.

So I did.  

What sorts of lessons did I teach her, by saving her from the consequence of forgetting?

I taught her that I’m here for her as much as I can, as much as is appropriate for her at this age, to help make up for what she lacks. I taught her that her time is valuable to me, too. I taught her that it’s important to me that she have the freedom to get messy, because as Apple Jack said, “Gettin’ messy is often a side effect of hard work,” and fear of getting dirty will paralyze her.

Someday (probably sooner than later) she’ll notice the approving tone when people see her all dolled up in her favorite froufrou outfits and her stealthily-applied eye shadow originally purchased for a dance recital and say she’s “all girl.” And she’ll want more of that approval. I don’t blame her—I like approval, too. And she’ll start to figure out what being “all girl” means.

I hope she knows that I don’t care if she’s “All-girl” or only 73% girl or just 18% girl (that 18% is made almost entirely of tulle, by the way) or always neat and clean and careful about her appearance—that I will go out of my way to make sure she doesn’t have to. If she gets mud on her tights and tutu because she’s chasing bugs or doing somersaults down the front yard, that’s fine with me. In fact, I hope she does.

When I picked her up from school that afternoon, of course, I discovered that the dash for extra clothes had been unnecessary—Mrs. R was right, and her shorts were short enough that she hadn’t gotten her clothes wet playing.

But as she climbed into the car, she gleefully announced, “Mommy! Mommy! Guess what?! I touched a fishy!”

“Ooh! What did it feel like?”

“Cool! It was so soft and smooth!”

Ten years from now when she forgets something my response may be different, but right now this is what I want her to learn. That exploration and adventure are worth the risk, and that fish are soft, not gross. And it only took me 20 minutes to do (and a lot of overthinking)