Should Be Free
With girls of age three or four, the goal and need of her brain is to play, to not be pressured and to be able to be creative and free. These qualities will one day make her a great scientist, boss, artist, problem-solver or friend. She will always want to and be able to ‘do her own thing’. But if she is made to perform – by a pre-school with ‘early learning goals’, or a parent who wants her to play violin, or some activity that grooms and preens her for adult consumption (participating in child beauty contests is a stunningly awful example), then she will not develop properly, will be cramped and tense and lack creativity. Whole nations have experienced this through over-demanding schooling for the under-sixes. The result is a total lack of creativity, a population that is cowed, conformist and compliant. By six or seven, a girl is ready for some (not too much) serious learning imposed from the outside. Her brain has moved on to a whole different stage. If it comes too soon, though, it actually harms her intellect, and her eventual ability to be talented and bright.
So think twice about structured or organised activities that involve any kind of performance or competition. These just take the joy out of something she would otherwise have loved. Activities where all the kids simply get into it together and learn happily at their own pace are much preferred.
A final note – the two to five years are exhausting, and you can be a bit isolated. Don’t think you have to be an education ringmaster for your kids all day. They need to occupy themselves, dream and dawdle as their imagination grows. It’s in the gaps and quiet times that children do their growing. Turn off TVs and radios so they can think and talk internally, which they love and need to do as they play.
Don’t let yourself get lonely, either. Join a playgroup, where the kids start to have fun with others, and YOU get to be with other mums or dads (there are dads’ playgroups too now). Also learn to be boring sometimes and encourage your kids to just play around and without you while you merge into the furniture. You need your rest.
Choosing Toys
If you have heard ANYTHING about getting girls off to a good start, it’s probably been about ‘gender-stereotyped toys’. The role of toys in widening, or limiting, your little girl’s play choices is a huge thing, and you’d think by now companies would have really got past this. But here’s the bad news: it’s getting worse. Companies never give up on trying to hook kids and parents with heavy marketing – especially on TV, where toys can be made to look so much better than they really are.
This article is by Paula Joye, a journalist and fashion columnist, website publisher and a very sensible mum. I couldn’t put it better …
Role Model or Pole Model?, by Paula Joye
My youngest daughter is five and spent the weekend penning a Christmas Wish List to Santa. Nestled between a backpack shaped like a koala and a detective magnifying glass is a request for a Bratz Masquerade toy. She saw it advertised while watching Finding Nemo on television. The doll is dressed in an outfit that would look great wrapped around a pole. She has swishy, knee-length hair with pastel streaks, hoop earrings and more black kohl eyeliner than a Kardashian.
I’m a little stuck because we don’t have any Bratz in our house. I’m not sure exactly what I don’t like about them. I loathe the lollipop heads and cushion pouts. Hate the heavy make-up. But I think what upsets me the most is their wardrobes. Seriously, these dolls wrote the rules on Red Light. A toy designed for five- to 10-year-old girls shouldn’t be so overtly sexy. Pretty, geeky, smart, ugly are all fine but scantily clad dolls should be reserved for lonely grown men who can’t get real girlfriends.
For me the message is just too narrow. The Bratz brand is 13 years old, which means the original crash-test consumers are just starting to flex their fashion chops. On the weekend, I watched some of these girls heading into the Eminem concert in Sydney. They were wearing clothes that defy description. Mainly because there was so little fabric covering their bodies that I’m struggling to come up with words other than naked and nude to describe how they looked. This is the first batch of young women to have been influenced by a society hell bent on fast-tracking them into womanhood and the first place we’re going to see the results is in the fashion choices they make. What struck me more than the bare skin was how homogenised their look was. Everyone was dressed identically. It was a sea of tiny, cut-off denim shorts and fluro crop tops. Teenagers have always copied one another – it’s normal to dress the same way as your friends – but there used to be so much more diversity and self-expression. I remember copying the wardrobes of Madonna, Wendy James and Diane Keaton at the same age. I experimented all the time. But there was none of that in this crowd. It was Same. Same. Sexy. Same.
We can’t blame this on Bratz or Barbie alone – there are so many influences that play on young girls – but it does make you despondent about the serious lack of role models both on the toy shelf and in the mainstream. Once they wave bye-bye to Dora and Angelina the choices are whittled down to Bindi Irwin, Harry Potter’s Hermione and a couple of exceptions on Nickelodeon. Otherwise it’s Miley, Taylor, Selena and The Biebs. Where are Pippi Longstocking and Nancy Drew? Why isn’t there a Kate Winslet for Tweens?
It would be so easy for me to capitulate on the Bratz present. Seeing her little face light up when she opens it on Christmas morning is a tempting trade. But every time I teeter, I close my eyes and visualise her dressing the doll up in its miniature thigh-high boots, a micro-mini skirt and green boob tube and … well, I want more.
More imagination from the toy manufacturer, more depth from the doll and frankly a little bit more fabric for my money.
Paula Joye is editor of www.lifestyled.com.au.
There is something really important to say here about dolls. In Steiner Education, where kids are rarely rushed and a lot of thought goes into stages and ages, they have dolls with no faces. These toys are just blank and plain, with perhaps some simple clothes. The amazing thing is – kids love them. What happens is that the child at play puts all her own imagination into the feelings the doll might have, what it might look like, and what it does.
The doll doesn’t programme the child. These dolls are the ones taken to bed at night with them, tucked in, and used to play out all their dreams, imaginings and fears. It’s the very opposite of a Bratz doll. For little children, boys and girls, the less corporate their toys, and the more natural and brand-less, the better.
Finally, no toy advice would be complete without a word about Lego. There is no doubt about it, Mr Lego, if there was one, was a genius. He deserves a Nobel Prize. There is no construction toy that comes close in its almost planetary popularity, usefulness and general magic. It can stimulate minds in different versions from babies to tech-headed teens – and it benefits and is loved by girls just as much as boys, given the chance.
But recently Lego got kidnapped by the marketers, who decided a girls’ version was needed. Listen to what they came up with: five curvy little friends who bake, home-make, decorate, hairstyle and shop! Anything gender limiting in that little selection?
Boys’ Lego, on the other hand, is about firefighting, space exploration, knights in armour, buildings, cars, houses and furniture and ANYTHING YOU WANT TO MAKE IT. Boys play in Lego World, whereas girls play in their own little ghetto called Heartlake City! (No firefighters or policemen there, they have to get the boys over if the beauty salon catches fire!) Naturally when this new product line came out, women rose up in outrage. One angry writer summed up this in one neat sentence. There IS a girls’ version – it’s called … Lego.
There’s no doubt Lego did their research,
