How to handle family's attempts to turn my dd into a pink princess

[ErnesttheBavarian]

I have 3 ds, then dc 4 is a girl. I'm not a very 'girly' type, hate pink, hate the whole feeble girly thing or gender stereotyping in toys.

Dd play with lots of her brothers' toys, i'm not refusing to get her 'girls' stuff, but I'm certainly not pushing her to glittery things. She loves getting mucky in mud and sand and jumping around.

She's just had a birthday. A couple of family members think I'm somehow being mean by not going full out girly with her. So they deliberatley get full on girls stuff for her, partly so she doesn't somehow miss out, and partly ans a jibe at me. So for her 4 th birthday off us she got a sandpit with sand toys, play dough, paints and a ball.

From these faily members she got a cinderella barbie, a cinderella barbie dress up outfit and a pink sparkle princess jigsaw puzzle and another (scary loooking) doll.

Now she wants to dress up as a princess and sings about how she is a princess etc.

Do i just ignore, try to distract dd from this stuff. I don't want to upset, as they are kind and well meaning, but truly believe I am being mean for not pinking her up. ( one of these is my similar aged sil btw, with 2 dc, boy and girl, and it' blue for boys pink for girls all the way)

Just marking my place really. I never understand these threads. What is wrong with your dd wanting to dress as a princess and sing?

Just ignore, carrying on with your own strategy of avoiding it will balance things out. My DD is 6, I felt a bit the same way as you, she has always been given lots of pink sparkly stuff at birthdays, I don't think it hurts in moderation, also she might want it more if she realises that's what lots of other girls have and she doesn't. Very annoying if your family know how you feel and go against it though.

I've just had a bit of this for the Jubilee. I've never bought Princess stuff for DD, but for the local carnival all the youngest girls were asked to dress as Princesses. They all had vast wardrobes of Princess outfits to choose from apart from poor DD, who had to go on the scrounge for one and has just realised that her mum has been depriving her all these years. They largely grow out of the pink sparkly thing by about 6 or 7 though it seems.

Just carry on as you are and accept gracefully. As long as you keep showing her other options, she'll find her own way.

I love this cartoon:
somafree.tumblr.com/post/17232903194/weeellll-girls-liking-pink-isnt-the-problem

Hi Ernest, I am in a similar situation to you, only dd is at nursery too , so now she hates boys AND thinks she is a blooming princess. mil And dd were playing a princess/rapunzel game and mil told dd to wait on the tower and let down her hair and the prince would rescue her. I pointed out to DD that she had a pretend rope she could slide down and get out herself, and to MIL that the original rapunzel story had her head cut off, not her hair. I am also reading The Paperbag Primcess and Princess Smartypamts.

Could you do something similar, play princess but in a more useful way?

"What is wrong with your dd wanting to dress as a princess and sing?"

nothing really, if the same family members would be happy to encourage a 4yo boy to dress up in pink, sparkly clothing and sing about being a princess.

I always think that one of the coolest things about being a little girl is you can do both - you can be a pink sparkly singing princess one minute, and climb trees and make mud pies and kicking a football about the next - childhood play is one of the areas girls actually have more freedom from being judged than boys, as a 4 year old girl can do either and both and nobody says a single negative thing about it in my experience, but people already comment and sneer at a 4 year old boy doing the stereotypically "girly" stuff! My 6 year old girl is far more unbothered by gender roles and will do exactly this - climb a tree, go to football training, come home and put a princess dress on and play with Barbies... but my 4 year old boy no longer plays Barbies with her as he used to and as he sometimes seems to rather want to, because he says "that's for girls"...

Can't see a problem here other than one you're making for yourself. You know you're doing the right thing by letting her play with the whole spectrum of toys, and deliberately not stereotyping, bu unfortunately you can't make others do the same. By giving your dd the choice you're letting her make her own mind up. As soon as you try to stop her playing with a particular thing she will want to play with it all the more.

Angel, I guess one thing is its just not on her radar. At kindergarten she Plays mostly with boys on the sandpit. She has a couple of little girl friends, but here in Germany there really isn't the pink thing like in UK. Here it's much more normal for gender neutral good old fashioned messy play.

Ishe has a cousin who is 1 year older who she looks up to, and who is def a sparky princess, and I don't want her at age 4 to see pink barbies and want this just cos her aunty is buying them for her. It's the fact sip is doing is to wind me up and cos she thinks I am wrong for not pinking her up, rather than actually getting her something she likes. Am I making sense?

It is much more prevalent in England than here so I notice it more.

I'm sure I'm not explaining well. I don't have a pathological hatred of pink (well a bit) but its the family's deliberate attempt to create a desire for this in my dd where it jut doesn't exist.

My DD loves dolls and pink sparkly stuff still but will play football and in the sand pit and whatever. I don't think she has bought into the whole Princess as passive and waiting to be whisked away by handsome Prince thing though, because we don't watch Princess films or read too many of the stories, other than a few of the traditional versions of fairy tales. So, pink and sparkly is just her favourite colour, in the same way that DS likes blue and green. Everything in moderation.

No one can create a desire in someone else. Your DD exists in a society and as she gets older she'll be influenced more by society than by you, which is a hard to thing to accept as a parent. She will have a natural, normal desire to fit in with her peers and to do the things they're doing. Unfortunately a lot of that involves gender stereotyping and it's infuriating. But hiding things from her is pointless because she will be exposed to it, and you'll fall into the role of the mother who "doesn't understand." Let her be who she is, let her explore all the different aspects of her society while at the same time bolstering her confidence and helping her to stand up to any attempts to force her into a role as she gets older. For the time being the princess thing is part of imaginative play, thought I do understand the misogynistic undertones. She is just too young to really understand that and all she will see if you try to steer her away from these things is a mum who holds her back from playing and fitting in, which is all a child wants really.

It's a minefield, but IMO you can only tackle these things as a child gets older and can see for herself that she doesn't have to accept the things expected of her by society. Some people don't reach that stage of self awareness until they're well into middle age though.

I think that is really well putcailinDana , those ideas will really help me parent.

"no one can create a desire in someone else", is this a quote? I would bbe interested in knowing more as I work in a fashion related field where advertising and creating desire are important.

It's a quote from me .

IMO people have a desire to be admired and accepted by others and have a fear of not fitting in and not being acknowledged. Advertising draws on those internal fears and desires by suggesting that their products will allow you to gain an advantage over others or be admired by others.

ahh, so advertising isn't creating desire, but enhancing desire? Interesting.

I am not sure I see the problem. Despite getting girlie presents from others, your DD is still happy to play in the mud or in the sandpit no? So she seems to have a balanced attitude (my DD is the same: happy to run around with the boys, but also loves princess stickers and princess fiona).

Your relatives may be pushing pink stuff, but one could argue that you are pushing for her to be more like you (in the sense of not being into girlie things, at least). What if in a few years she wants to become a princess and have lip gloss and do ballet? Would that be wrong?

People's actual desires are very basic IMO. The job of advertising is to convince people that certain products will fulfil those desires.

Ernest, it's the only time in her life (probably!) when your dd will get to be a pink princess. And there's nothing wrong with it. She'll have fun with it and like most girls move away from it.

Why not let her enjoy it for a little while?

I wonder if responses would be the same if you'd said 'my relatives insist I'm being mean by not putting a green stripy carpet in DD's room ... they love green stripes but I don't like them at all, what do you think?' Or if you'd said 'my relatives know I find Thomas the Tank Engine really irritating and DD has never shown any desire to listen to the stories, but now my in-laws bought all the books and all the tie-in mugs and plates, and now DD is crazy about them?'

I'm sure you'd still get some replies telling you that you should put up with something you hate for the sake of your DD loving it. But I'd also be a bit surprised if people didn't focus on your in-laws deliberately trying to piss you off by buying specific toys you don't care for. That seems really childish of them, honestly, doesn't it? Whether or not your DD is charmed, it's surely always going to be a bit annoying when someone decides to overrule you and lumber you with something you don't like ... and I assume it isn't possible to do the old 'oh, how lovely, but this is a toy for granny's house' trick with stuff as small as this.

I would be fed up about the implication you were being a bad parent not to get her the stuff, and that it was ok for them to get stuff that would annoy you knowing it would, as much as anything else. The fact this discussion has mostly skipped over that issue to concentrate on the merits of pink in itself, does suggest what an odd attittude we have to the pink princess stuff.

I disagree LRD. IMO it doesn't matter to me whether I like a toy or not, as long as DS likes it. Of course I would draw the line at something dangerous or seriously noisy but other than that I don't think it's my place to dictate what my child does or doesn't like. Trying to dictate what your child should want to play with is bizarre IMO - they're their own person and should be allowed to have their own opinions on things.

I'm clearly crap at explaining myself. I mean it's not a huge problem, just mulling it over.

I wouldnt say I was trying to get her to be like me. I am trying to respo d to her likes and wishes. I would happily enrol her for ballet lessons if she wants, would be happy for her to do that. I am not trying to deny her stuff on some principle. I am trying to respond to her needs and wishes as best I can. I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. If she wanted something princessey I suppose I would have got it for her. Same as when ds wanted an iPod I got it for him. But ds1 wants a laptop and I think he's too young so won't get it for him. It's about responding g appropriately to wants needs and desires. (as it is, she wanted 4 stones. On further quizzing she stretched it to 4 stones, an apple, a carrot and an onion. ?wtf?)

So anyway, sip calls and says that she's deliberately gone for full out girly schmaltz because she thinks I'm denying her. I do t thInk I am. It's just she's never expressed any interest I. This stuff apart from the brief periods spent with cousin.

So it feels like sil is getting stuff for de she doesn't actually want just to make a point with me. So that's the problem I suppose.

But you've helped me think through it. I suppose it gives her the opportunity to experience different things and she can take it or leave it. I just think its a shame to not actually get her something she actively wants - I usually ask sil what her dd wants, and if it's a Barbie or a Disney cd I'll get it be ausethat's what she would like. I don't get her a space ship or train set cos I think she shouldn't be playing with so much pink tat.

Does that make sense?

Btw I'm not sure I agree that other people can'tt create desires. That is exactly what advertising does. People who hang out with drug takers are more likely to experiment than people who don't. We are all influenced by external forces.

cailin - yes, I said some people would probably still reply the same way. What I'm getting at is, it's surprising that other things that pink princess gear would probably have promted a rather different debate, not focussed on the merits of pink itself but on the way different people choose their childrens' toys and the way different people interact with their inlaws.

I think the fact it's gone straight into 'do all little girls love pink and is it good if they do' is quite revealing. Just my impression.

Ernest - if you looked only at what is bought for my DD, you would say "pink princess" (well, maybe not pink, but definitely girly). However, she has a big brother, and therefore has more construction toys, Playmobil, jeans, dressing up stuff, etc, etc than she knows what to do with. Left to her own devices, it is about 50/50 whether she will come down dressed 100% in clothes inherited from DS, or in "a pretty dress", and no matter what she is wearing she will be climbing trees and playing dragons with DS most of the time.

My point is that what she asks for is (largely) "girly" stuff, because that is what she doesn't have already. Maybe that is the same factor at work with your DD? Anyway, I think there is no harm in an element of pink princess, especially as with 3 big brothers she presumably gets plenty of non-girly play, toys, books, etc, etc to counteract it?

I don't think there's anything wrong with pink and sparkles - I'm very much a feminist myself and I like pink.

What I hate about the princess thing though is when being a princess, being pretty and sparkly and gorgeous is what girls end up aspiring to. It bugs me that clothes and toys aimed at boys encourage things like being an explorer, getting dirty, being active, discovering things etc. while so much of the pink princess stuff comes with a message that you just have to be twirly and beautiful and basically passive.

So I think you are doing fine if you encourage her to take an interest in everything out there, do whatever activities she likes etc. and not feel limited by being a girl. If that's in place, I don't mind the odd princess dress but I would try to keep it balanced eg if there is an emphasis on prettiness I might subtly mention princesses exploring space or something. I do think that message of "just stand there and look nice, well done" to girls is damaging. Also of course I call my D gorgeous but I also tell her when she's done something clever, is good at climbing or whatever - and I call DS gorgeous too.

oops DD

Yes, we have a houseful of 'boy toys'. She has plenty of exposure to 'girly stuff' at kindergarten - she is there 5 days a week, so it's not like she's never been allowed to play with that stuff. On the contrary. But despite the opportunity and availability, she does not ask for or desire it. Her brothers painted her 4 stones which was her no. 1 request and she was chugged to bits with them.

Family see me as denying her something. I see it that she doesn't WANT it, although the possibility is ther (kindergarten) buy age never asks for this stuff. But they insist on trying to make her into a 'typical girl' .

So long as she's not being indoctrinated in one way I wouldn't worry. DS gets bought all kinds of things I would rather he didn't have and have said I don't want him to have for various reasons - space being quite a significant one in this house - but it's all in moderation and balanced by the attitudes and education he gets from his parents.

The stupid gender comments from my DM who appears to have lost her mind since she became a grandparent I could do without but I just ignore. Pink Peppa Pig wellies will not DS a homosexual make... and even if they did it would not matter so long as he's happy.