Beauty and the Boys: the challenge of raising a "nice guy"

One of my favorite snapshots, taken last spring.  

As I straightened my hair in front of the bathroom mirror, my three-year-old son walked through the door and asked what I was doing. 

"Straightening my hair."  

"Why?"

"To make it look pretty."

The moment the words came out of my mouth, I wished I could have taken them back.  What I really meant is that I like the way I look with my hair straightened, just like I like the way I look with makeup on, or when I wear my favorite clothes.  But it wasn’t what I said.  What my son heard was that my hair would be pretty after I had finished straightening it.

There are days when my hair isn't done, when my makeup isn't on, and days when I’m wearing yoga pants and a worn t-shirt leftover from high school.  Most of the time, I am less than pulled-together.  I only occasionally wear makeup, my hair is almost always thrown into some form of haphazard bun/ponytail thing.  When it’s time to head out the door, my hurried attempts to spruce up my own appearance are often accompanied by negative self-criticism. We parents, and especially mothers, are the lens our children see the world through.  If I am constantly criticizing my own appearance, it doesn't matter how many times I tell them that "everyone is beautiful," or "you’re perfect just the way you are" if I stand in front of the mirror audibly complaining about my hair/love handles/bags under my eyes.  Children are not stupid. They see the hypocrisy (probably better than I can). 

     

I have read a ton of articles on raising strong, confident daughters.  I worry about the social pressures that my daughter will face; I worry that she won't feel pretty enough or smart enough or just plain enough.  But until recently, I hadn't really thought about how all of this affects my son.  The truth of the matter is that he is exposed to cultural ideas of beauty and womanhood and "pretty" just as much as my daughter is.  He's sitting next to her on the couch when they watch Disney princess movies and beside her in the shopping cart when we walk down the girly aisles at Target.  He sees the perfume ads on the backs of my Martha Stewart magazine just like she does.

What makes me even more nervous for my son is that if I don't model and teach what I believe true beauty to be—intelligence, compassion, verve, perseverance, integrity—he has the potential to become part of the same sort of patriarchy that I want so badly for my daughter to discount.  Additionally, it would be naïve to assume boys are never self-conscious of their own appearance.  Too short/tall/fat/ whatever is an issue both boys and girls face.  

  

My question today is not how to raise a strong daughter.  There are scores of articles and essays and lists on this topic already. What I’m after is how to raise a son who respects women and who recognizes the true beauty in others and in himself.  A quick internet search produced some very general lists of answers: teach him that it’s okay to have feelings, positive father involvement, etc.  Some good thoughts, but like I said, very general.  After giving this topic a lot of consideration, I've decided to share some of my own ideas.       

Here's my list for me and The Buster:   

   

1. Sometimes dress up to do ordinary things.  I’m not talking every day, and I’m not talking evening-wear dress-up.  Wear a skirt on a Tuesday to go grocery shopping.  Put on makeup for my turn to host playgroup.  Be comfortable and confident in being feminine. 

2. Sometimes don’t dress up at all.  Wear yoga pants and clean the house together.  Get sweaty and go on a bike ride together.  Let him wear my apron to help make dinner.  Make certain he knows how much I value spending time with him. 

3. In reference to other people’s appearances (and my own), use kind words.  Think before I speak.

        

4. Tell him he’s smart.  Thank him for being kind.  Admire his bravery.  But also tell him the things I love about the way he looks: his red curls, that one-in-a-million freckle that sits dead center on the tip of his nose, how he can make great monster faces, and how much I love his smile.

5. Tell him his sister is smart.  That she is just as smart as he is.   That she can be as brave as he is.   That she is beautiful.  But also tell him that he is lucky to have a sister, and even luckier that she can be his friend.  Encourage him to use kind words.  Agree with him when he says she has “Rapunzel hair” or exclaims “she looks like a princess!” when she wears a hair bow.  Tell him all girls are princesses.  Tell him princesses are smart. 

6. Tell him I am smart.  Help him find answers to his questions when I don’t know instead of telling him to wait and “ask Dad when he gets home from work.”

7. Read together, fiction and non-fiction.  Read some books off of those “raising strong girls” book lists.  Introduce him to female characters that are smart, compassionate, funny, and engaging.  Let him see me reading.     

8. Explain that sometimes people—girls and boys—have a hard time remembering that they are beautiful.  Remind him that we are all the same, all children of God.  Remind him to be kind.

9. Give him lots of hugs and kisses.

10. Tell him every single day that I love him.   

       

What about you?  What would you add to this list?  

         

Bedtime Story Essentials

A couple of months ago, I wrote about going to the public library and was struck by a friend’s comment that “it’s so good to hear you talk about books again.”  While I haven’t ever stopped thinking about books, I definitely don’t share what we’re reading here at Family O often enough.  Since we read so much (too much?), and because I really do love to talk about books and reading, you can expect a lot more posts in this vein.   

Reading together is important.  When we read to young children, they cuddle close to see the pictures, snuggling into our arms and into the magic of a well-told story.  The words and pictures become an integral part of our relationships; my childhood memories of my favorite picture books are recorded in the voices of my parents.   Even now as I read some of these familiar stories aloud, I find myself reading them the same way my mom does…the same inflections, pauses, the same rhythm of the page turns.  Stories connect us.

While I share many stories with my kids throughout the day, bedtime is one of my favorite times for reading together. The following are the five bedtime stories that I consider essential for babies and young toddlers; these are books that both The Buster and Miss Meatball have consistently adored.   An added bonus, they are good enough to engage older children (think 3-6) as well.   

Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

I know everyone always touts Brown’s Goodnight Moon as the quintessential bedtime story, but  I’m going to go ahead and risk heresy here and say that I like her Big Red Barn waaaaaay better.  The story is simple; we meet a variety of farm animals that, at the story’s end, go to sleep in the big red barn.  The Buster and Miss Meatball love pointing to the illustrations of familiar animals and making animal sounds as we read.  Like Goodnight Moon, the text has a soothing, easy rhythm and simple rhyme.  Unlike Goodnight Moon, it does not have any confusing pages that say “Goodnight nobody.”    

   

Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney

If you haven’t read this book, go out and get it right now.  With its all-too familiar situation (baby llama wants mama to come back upstairs after being tucked in) and catchy rhymes, you will likely find yourself quoting the text.  In fact, you may find yourself quoting the text when you wish you didn’t need to quote the text.  Example:  “Please stop all this llama drama and be patient for your mama!”

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. & John Archambault

While not strictly a bedtime story, this is the perfect book for the evenings we need to get extra wiggles out before saying goodnight.  My kids love the drum-like rhythm of the text and the bold illustrations of alphabet letters.  A good first introduction to the alphabet, the illustrations show both lower and uppercase letters.      

Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann

This may just be the perfect bedtime story.  The premise is simple: a group of zoo animals, aided by a key-stealing gorilla, follow the zookeeper home at bedtime.  The simple text and bright, engaging pictures make for a wonderful read-aloud, allowing room for the reader to add their own dialogue and descriptions.  This is Miss Meatball’s current favorite, which means we read it at least half a dozen times a day.  I’m not sick of it yet.  No, really, I’m not. It’s that good. 

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight by Jane Yolen  

I like all of the “How do Dinosaurs” series, but How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight is my favorite.  With its illustrations of misbehaving dinosaurs and rhyming text, this book is a big hit with The Buster and Miss Meatball.  What’s not to love about a T-rex puckering up his lips for a goodnight kiss?  Because the dinosaurs do the same things that children do at bedtime, the pictures are full of familiar actions and objects.

How about you?  What bedtime books do you find your family grabbing night after night?         

In Memoriam

My grandmother passed away early last Monday morning.  She was 90 years old.

My grandmother, called Gram, and I were never very close.  Part of this definitely had to do with distance—my family lived in Texas, then Alaska, then Washington.  Meanwhile, Gram lived mostly in Montana, with some lengthy stints abroad; she accompanied my granddad to Yemen where he did some sort of agricultural work.   Later the two of them traveled as missionaries to Europe.   After Grandad’s death, she spent some more time as a missionary in the southern United States.  In my pre-internet, pre-cellphone childhood, letters came infrequently and phone calls were expensive.  There were visits, but they were always short.  Too short.

I do remember her coming to stay with us when my mother had surgery.  It was right after my eighth birthday, and she took me to Fred Meyers to spend the birthday money she had given me—a dollar for each year.  I bought a package of Lip Smackers chap sticks. 

On another visit, she went on a walk with my dad and me.  We passed a section of sidewalk that had a footprint of a dog in the cement, and she made up a story about the people chasing after the naughty puppy that had gotten away.  I still think about that story every time I walk or drive past that spot. 

It isn’t that there weren’t other visits, there were.  She came along on a family vacation to the seashore once, and we visited her a handful of times in Montana.  Eventually, she moved to Utah while I was there attending BYU, and we saw each other more frequently.  It’s just that we didn’t know each other.  We spent the past four years trying to build the relationship that should have already been there.

I often wished she had been a greater presence in my life—that she had been there to applaud at my school plays, to bake cookies, to have sleepovers.  I realize now that the problem with that wish is that I wanted her to be my idea of what a grandma should be, rather than understanding who she actually was.  I didn’t understand the years of hard work, of poverty, of generous service to others.  I didn’t understand the loneliness of her motherless childhood, the loneliness of being widowed, the loneliness of growing old.  I didn’t often think about what I could do for her, but instead about what she hadn’t done for me.

But you know what?  She loved me anyway. 

I think she knew I loved her anyway, too.  

my last visit with Gram, late June of this year