Girls Can Be Really, REALLY Naughty, Too
One of the funniest things that happened during my son's moving up day earlier this year was the so-called "awards ceremony" the school's staff held, in which every...single...child...recieved one sort of "award" or another.
It wasn't that all of the students were awarded that I found funny; it was the names of some of the awards given. Apel got a "Little Dash Award," in reference to the child-speedster of Pixar's The Incredibles.
But the "award" that sticks to my memory like a burr is the "Little Miss Diva Award," given to something like two or three of the school's pupils. The description of the award was that the child "constantly demanded attention." Clearly a (very) thinly veiled statement to the parents on exactly what they thought of their parenting technique.
My parents and I, who attended, found this absolutely hilarious.
Looking back, I find it particularly comical that I used to labor under the misapprehension that girls were inherently better behaved than boys. It was one of the reasons why I was delighted to find out that Theia was pregnant with a girl over three years ago.
It's not like my daughter Tala has horns on her head and a tail trailing behind her, but it seems that she is every bit the handful her brother was at her age. Maybe the fact that her brother is the only kid around for her to mold her behavior has something to do with it, but none of those "Little Miss Divas" grew up with Apel and look how they turned out.
We had always seen girls better-behaved than Apel and in other public places. Not the most scientific way to study and assess children's behavior, I know, but hey, I never claimed to be a child psychologist. Any parent with a daughter could have told me otherwise (well, maybe not any parent), but it's just comical how I honestly...we honestly...thought that a child would, by virtue of having an x as opposed to a y chromosome, be ipso facto better behaved.
Tala is still an incredibly sweet girl, but like her brother she's chock-full of little idiosyncracies, even at two-and-a-half years of age. She's capable of pouring out all the shampoo into the toilet, or ripping up magazines, or chucking her brother's case full of Hot Wheels off the bed.
Wait, did I say she didn't have horns and a tail? I'll have to go and check...
...no, no horns or tail there...
It wasn't that all of the students were awarded that I found funny; it was the names of some of the awards given. Apel got a "Little Dash Award," in reference to the child-speedster of Pixar's The Incredibles.
But the "award" that sticks to my memory like a burr is the "Little Miss Diva Award," given to something like two or three of the school's pupils. The description of the award was that the child "constantly demanded attention." Clearly a (very) thinly veiled statement to the parents on exactly what they thought of their parenting technique.
My parents and I, who attended, found this absolutely hilarious.
Looking back, I find it particularly comical that I used to labor under the misapprehension that girls were inherently better behaved than boys. It was one of the reasons why I was delighted to find out that Theia was pregnant with a girl over three years ago.
It's not like my daughter Tala has horns on her head and a tail trailing behind her, but it seems that she is every bit the handful her brother was at her age. Maybe the fact that her brother is the only kid around for her to mold her behavior has something to do with it, but none of those "Little Miss Divas" grew up with Apel and look how they turned out.
We had always seen girls better-behaved than Apel and in other public places. Not the most scientific way to study and assess children's behavior, I know, but hey, I never claimed to be a child psychologist. Any parent with a daughter could have told me otherwise (well, maybe not any parent), but it's just comical how I honestly...we honestly...thought that a child would, by virtue of having an x as opposed to a y chromosome, be ipso facto better behaved.
Tala is still an incredibly sweet girl, but like her brother she's chock-full of little idiosyncracies, even at two-and-a-half years of age. She's capable of pouring out all the shampoo into the toilet, or ripping up magazines, or chucking her brother's case full of Hot Wheels off the bed.
Wait, did I say she didn't have horns and a tail? I'll have to go and check...
...no, no horns or tail there...
posted by Jim Arroyo | 4:40 PM
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