Recently
on two seperate occasions at the park I was reminded that there are
going to be some serious challenges to raising this amazing person.
The first experience involved a group of "older" girls- in the context of this blog "older" will generally mean over 5 and under 10. These girl were probably 7 or 8 and wanted absolutely nothing to do with maia. They began playing a game of chase and then proceded to weave a storyline around it. "The witch is coming!! RUN!!! Hurry, there's the witch!!" To their credit the "witch" was a boy about 9 or 10. They continued this witch chase game for a while integrating fear of evil spells and boats to help them sail away... it occured to me at that moment that raising maia as a wiccan was going to be hard. Not hard because I have any doubt about the good kind heartedness of the practice or because I have discomfort about it or even the term "witch" but because she would eventually be forced to confront a situation like this and have to make the choice to correct and call out girls like this or not. Ugh. Ignorance is a huge part of childhood so I can't completely blame these girls for their ingestion of stigma around witchcraft and probably some crappy julia roberts movie, but I realized at that moment that at some point maia would have to make that choice and in turn run the risk of getting her feelings hurt or her family talked about.
The second experience involved two of the same girls from only days before. This time they were playing patient and doctor, one of them pretended to be pregnant and the other the doctor and over and over again one girl would lie down and the other would pretend to open her stomach and give her a tiny doll saying "here's your baby". FUCK! Already?!? I realized that by the age of 7 or 8 girls have already internalized that birth of a child occurs by a doctor cutting you open and handing you a baby. Something is seriously wrong with that. No wonder so many womyn are afraid to even think about natural child birth, birth centers or even gasp home birth. Ugh.
Finally the Easter coming made me think of another dilemma- are we going to lie to maia and tell her about a fictional rabbit that bring candy and hides eggs? And a big fat guy in a red suit bringing toys? Or is she going to be the weird kid who tells every other kid those characters don't exist? Hmmm....
On to the next adventure.
The first experience involved a group of "older" girls- in the context of this blog "older" will generally mean over 5 and under 10. These girl were probably 7 or 8 and wanted absolutely nothing to do with maia. They began playing a game of chase and then proceded to weave a storyline around it. "The witch is coming!! RUN!!! Hurry, there's the witch!!" To their credit the "witch" was a boy about 9 or 10. They continued this witch chase game for a while integrating fear of evil spells and boats to help them sail away... it occured to me at that moment that raising maia as a wiccan was going to be hard. Not hard because I have any doubt about the good kind heartedness of the practice or because I have discomfort about it or even the term "witch" but because she would eventually be forced to confront a situation like this and have to make the choice to correct and call out girls like this or not. Ugh. Ignorance is a huge part of childhood so I can't completely blame these girls for their ingestion of stigma around witchcraft and probably some crappy julia roberts movie, but I realized at that moment that at some point maia would have to make that choice and in turn run the risk of getting her feelings hurt or her family talked about.
The second experience involved two of the same girls from only days before. This time they were playing patient and doctor, one of them pretended to be pregnant and the other the doctor and over and over again one girl would lie down and the other would pretend to open her stomach and give her a tiny doll saying "here's your baby". FUCK! Already?!? I realized that by the age of 7 or 8 girls have already internalized that birth of a child occurs by a doctor cutting you open and handing you a baby. Something is seriously wrong with that. No wonder so many womyn are afraid to even think about natural child birth, birth centers or even gasp home birth. Ugh.
Finally the Easter coming made me think of another dilemma- are we going to lie to maia and tell her about a fictional rabbit that bring candy and hides eggs? And a big fat guy in a red suit bringing toys? Or is she going to be the weird kid who tells every other kid those characters don't exist? Hmmm....
On to the next adventure.
This post in relationship to the parenting blog post you linked gives me the idea that Maia is going to be more than able to deal with situations like these with confidence and grace. She has 2 wonderful Pairents how could she not? :)
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