Beautiful & Ugly

How do children pick up these values, huh??? I wonder…translated…

My daughter’s been going to the first year of preschool for a little over a year now, the reason why I’d selected this school was because it was only, a five-minute walk from our home; before I quit my job, it was her maternal grandfather who’d, taken her to school daily, and now, I’d retired from my teaching post, and I’d gotten the opportunity, to enjoy these mini-ten-minutes journey with her.

That day, as I took my daughter’s hand, to get her to school, she’d asked me, “Mommy, yesterday XX said that the pants I am wearing is ugly, is that really true?”, I’d turned to her, looked at her seriously, said, “Not at all, the point is you look clean and neat every single day. You can tell your classmates, ‘I wear what I like to wear, and your words upset me.’”

This kindergarten is considered more expensive, locally speaking, and every time I’d picked up my daughter, I’d gotten the opportunity, to look at the name-brand cars, and, it’s not hard for me to imagine, what sort of expectations the parents would have on their young. But maybe, it’s because when I was younger, my mother always dressed me up as a “little princess”, and that’s, caused me to HATE skirts for a very long time, and, as I’d had my daughter, I’d not bought her skirts to wear, the important thing about clothes is comfort and how easily can she move in them.

It’s just, this was NOT the first time I’d received this sort of messages, my daughter once told me that her classmates told her, “You’re ugly when you don’t wear skirt”, and even started criticizing her appearances. And perhaps, I’m a woman too, I’d known, that this is a problem she couldn’t dodge on the way to growing up, that it’s important for her, to build up her own self-confidences, but it shouldn’t be related to the appearances, more importantly, we need to, like ourselves better.

I hope that my child can be healthy and show courteous, and expected that she’d learned, to see other people’s good qualities, and not be stingy in giving out compliments.

This morning, she’d still worn her favorite, pants to school, with a pair of yellow stocking with ponies on them, and greeted the teacher outside her school with full energy.

And so, you can see, how the classmates’ comments can bother this young child, right, because as they’d started in school, they would, start caring a lot about if I fit in to the rest of the kids’ groups, or if I’m like by them, it’s all, a part, of the normal socialization process, and, this mom soothed her daughter’s worries about how the other girls in her class had, perceived her, and encouraged her to dress as she pleased, fitting, for comfort!