Life with Larkin

When I first learned that we were going to have a daughter, I panicked. I mentally fast-forwarded to a moody teenager yelling at me or worse, completely ignoring me. I worried about passing on my insecurities, about…well, everything! Maybe it’s these initial fears that have led me to very carefully consider my responses to her seemingly harmless questions. She absorbs everything around her and is highly intuitive, so I’ve learned to be very conscious of what my words, actions, and emotions are conveying to her.

Example, “Mama, why do you exercise?” Many a mother has probably said “Because I want to lose weight”, “Because I want to eat chocolate cake”, “Because I want to relieve stress” (and as an aside, all of these answers have been true of me at one time or another…usually all at once).  My answer surprised me, and I’ve been careful to continue to reinforce the thought ever since. I said “Because I want to be healthier, stronger, and faster so that I’m around for a long time for you and your brother.” Still she gets bombarded at school with people talking about “getting fat”, but even when we’re talking about food, I’m careful to correct her that we don’t eat 5 pieces of cake because we don’t want to get fat, we don’t eat it because that wouldn’t be healthy and it wouldn’t be good fuel for your body.

I struggle with trying to undo much of the negativity and superficial focus of the outside world. She certainly can be sheltered at times, but she’s out there every day in public school, and I just have to hope that we’re doing enough. I’ve seen many other moms (who are doing everything right) deal with any number of complicated issues with their daughters of similar age, so I guess I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop constantly…and then she surprises me again and again.

We’ve gotten to the point over the last year where we let her watch “real” movies…you know with people in them instead of animated characters. We were watching Real Steel recently (the robot boxing movie with Hugh Jackman), and we get to a scene where there are tons of scantily clad girls, basically in cutoff shorts and halter/bikini tops. I honestly didn’t notice until Larkin said “Those girls need to put more clothes on!” Completely shocked me, until I was able to say “Yes, they certainly do!” Lord knows my midriff was never covered for a significant period of time in college (what? It was the style!), so I’m not a prude, but I very much appreciate that she already has her own sense of appropriateness.

Similarly, I worry about having a whiny spoiled brat…because I may or may not have fit that description as a young child… So again she surprises me. I was at the gym last month and saw that the Daddy Daughter Ball was that evening, we’d completely missed that it was happening that week. I call Patrick in a hurry, intent on heading straight to the store to find her a dress, shoes, etc., and he pauses for a moment wondering whether it’s worth it since last year’s wasn’t quite as organized as the previous year’s. So we decide to ask her…I stay on the phone while he does.

Patrick: Larkin do you want to go to the Daddy-Daughter ball at the gym or would you rather you and I go do something else instead?

Larkin (after about 2 seconds): Something else, we’ve already been to the ball for two years in a row Daddy so we’ve done that enough. What do you wanna do instead?
Quickly they decide on the Lego Movie that evening. I asked Patrick later if they’d like to go to dinner before the movie, and he said he’d already asked her…and she’d said no, she’d rather just get a hot dog and candy at the movie…

So why is this important? Because 5 year old me would have demanded to go to the ball and absolutely would have wanted dinner. Because 37 year old me sometimes still has days like that. Somewhere along the way, we did something right with her.

Somewhere along the way, we accidentally molded a daughter that reads a Biology textbook for fun. A daughter who well before preschool routinely used words like “actually, possibly, apparently, obviously…” A daughter who loves bugs, books, dirt, tiaras, singing, dinosaurs, dancing, reptiles, and sports.

She has both girl and boy friends (but no boyfriends), and she’d prefer to play Transformers on the playground. She doesn’t see race, just a spectrum of skin color, hair color, and eye color with no discrete categories. She’s not a “mean girl”, sadly you can already see some of them at age 5, and she’s extremely inclusive, generally being the welcoming committee for new kids in a class since she was probably 2 years old. I’d like to be her when I grow up.

But let me leave with one thought about filtering out the negative messages of the world. The new “Ban Bossy” campaign really bugged me. It surfaced again recently when Larkin and I were reading Harry Potter and Ron called Hermione a “bossy know-it-all”. Hermione was in fact a bossy know-it-all…you know who else was at that age? ME! Hell, I’m STILL a bossy know-it-all. So is Larkin. We’ve called her bossy since before she could walk…because she is. That word holds no negativity for me. It’s a personality trait, a positive one in my book. It’s assertiveness, ambition, leadership, and intelligence. I’m still bossy, but over the years, I’ve molded those initial tendencies into what society would call leadership…which in all honesty is just being nice AND bossy at the same time. I’m kidding (kind of), but in the end, the early bossy label is actually a great compass for identifying future career paths. And with that this Mama Bossy Know-It-All is ever so proud of my Baby Bossy Know-It-All. Plus she's got the "nice" part down way better than I ever did.