The other day - in the middle of something else we were doing, something completely unrelated to what she ended up saying - my little girl looked up at me and said, quite cheerily too, 'One boy in school today said that my dress was ugly.' That was it. And she carried on playing.
As you can imagine, I stopped. And took a deep breath too. It's what growing up does to you. You see a clear plastic bag and you don't think space helmet, you think suffocation. You see the railings of a staircase and you don't think – Oh, shiny new slide – you think broken bones and hideous head wounds. You see an empty parking lot and (Heaven help us all) you think muggings, rape and child abductions, not make-shift football field or new kingdom to explore.
So, I thought to myself, what was so ugly about a dress everyone else was wearing; or didn't she wear her uniform to school that day? This is how it starts, isn't it? (Paranoid thoughts refusing to be calmed down.) Soon, it would be – your teeth are crooked, you have pimples, your breasts are too small, your legs are too hairy, where were you when God was sharing hips? In fact, I think you're too fat.
And, before you know it, she's skipping breakfast, throwing up lunch, stuffing gelatinous bags through surgical incisions on the underside of her perfect breasts, dating the ones 'they' say are 'cool', having the eighth child in a desperate search for her husband's heir. Is this how it starts?
I took another deep breath. Don't be silly, Dike. You KNOW how it is. Sometimes, when a small boy likes a small girl he says to her – I think you're very ugly. (Because, sometimes, when a father is proud of his son, he hisses and says – Coconut head!) But, to be totally honest with you, I've become a lot less rational since she was born.
So, the other day, someone said to me, 'Dike, abeg, can you teach my daughter a few moves? I think she's being bullied in school'. My brother, paranoia or not, here is a fact - you cannot legislate away playground oppression. And there are many people - on both sides of the bully/bullied divide - who will not out-grow this thing as a matter-of-course.
So, I stood her in front of me, barely eleven years old, and said – 'Listen, if someone rushes at you in school to push you like this…' And I shoved her gently, so she understood EXACTLY what I meant. 'I want you to move your hands like this…' She giggled. Like this? Asked it shyly. 'Yes.' I nodded 'Just like that.' And we kept at it, till she was laughing out loud, parrying my hands, and throwing me to the floor.
Because, even though they both provoke similar behavioural patterns, there is a world of difference between Fear and Love. And it's one thing to do something because you care how someone feels, and quite another to do it because you care what they think. So, I stopped (it is the Divine right of parents, after all, to over-react) and told my little girl what to say.
But you can never really tell with children. That's why you make them repeat sentences. It annoyed her a little, seeing as she was in the middle of something she ACTUALLY cared about - combing out the tangled hair of her doll. But I threatened a smack, so she giggled and said, 'I like my dress.' Looked me straight in the eye, 'And what is your own business sef?' That was it. And we carried on playing.
Image taken from:
http://www.medepage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/selfconfidence.png
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