I received a bizarre email from a MOB member who is also a MOG (mother of girl) but definitely not a SMG (smug mother of girl). SMG's usually only have one child. A girl.
She sent the email to a group of MOBs asking how to respond to the following situation. A SMG had rung her up to organize a playdate between her daughter and SMG's daughter. So fine, so dandy. After all, in HK one can't take playdates for granted what with the 96.7% of the population that is a) chinese and b) firmly in the tiger mum camp and 3% of the rest that are too darn busy with extra this and extra that so times never coincide and the 0.3% of the rest of us who haven't discovered each other who are able, willing and dying to have our kids play with others, playdates are just not so thickly strewn. So when your children take a shining to each other, manage to organize their little selves to the point that the mutual parents are aware of the other child's existence AND are armed with the other's phone number and your phone rings - well whoopee you've struck jackpot.
And then the SMG lays down the terms and conditions. Was she a corporate lawyer in a previous incarnation (yes we all did have previous incarnations, how otherwise would we have found our husbands ... ha ha ha, sick laugh), perhaps in mergers and acquisitions? A social worker who only saw the worst of the worst in societies. Perhaps a probation officer married to an ex white-collar felon who's reinvented himself ala FILTH. My imagination runs away with me. Perhaps she's just someone who took a heck of a long time to conceive and now she's erring on the cautious side. Perhaps she's volunteered once to often in the classroom or on field trips and SHE'S SEEN THE OTHER SIDE (the second sex that is, nope that's us, females the second sex, only now anno 2011 little boys are the second sex).
Ok, Ok, I'm taking huge liberties with possibilities. The bottom line was, the playdate could only take place either at her home, or if said little girl's brother was not present at the time of the playdate. I know said little girl, and I know her brother. I know my little girl and I know her brother. For heavens sake, I had TWO brothers growing up. Brothers are pains. They get in the way, they interrupt, they tease. They have different body parts and feel terribly sorry for little girls who are missing out. But they're mh. Yup, in the famous words of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, they're mostly harmless. Particularly at this age when they find girls generally boring and prissy and not really worth the time of day.
The general consensus of those receiving the mail was that said mother was weird. The more benevolent amongst us allowed for the fact that either she or her daughter had had a traumatic incident (hopefully nothing more than her pigtails being pulled) which had led to this rather strange request. We all had to think back to the days that the whole neighborhood of kids under the age of whatever age kids started pairing off just all hung out and played and there was no need for any "dates" to be made. There was a period in our lives I remember when we didn't even have a phone at home, and we just climbed over the back fence to play with the neighbors as and when we wanted. Everyone was always at home anyway, unless they were out playing with you.
There was one less savory incident when the boy living behind us decided to play "doctor" with my sister, who was considerably younger than the rest of us, I guess she must have been about 2-3 and the boys about 6 years older. The boy was a bit weird. Maybe we just found him weird as he was a limey (from the UK) and spindly and pale, with braces on his teeth, not like the strong tanned african boys we were used to. I can't remember how it ended, but I think it was along the lines that my sister wasn't allowed in their house anymore, or the facts of life got explained to all and sundry or something. Playing doctor really wasn't more than a little bit of exploration as to how girls differed to boys (he didn't have a sister) and was reasonably innocent. Does my sister have a trauma about this - I doubt it, if I remember I'll ask her if she even remembers it happening, my recollections of it are pretty vague.
Thing is, neighborhood kids were neighborhood kids and you all played with each other. My husband can tell similar tales of the great melting pot of socio-economic backgrounds and emotional stability and cleanliness norms in households in his "hood". No-one had to point it out to you, censor it for you, you worked it out yourself. Did kids make wrong choices? Of course, that's part of being a kid. There was a pretty awesome article in this weekend's NY Times, along the lines that the secret of success could be failure. I like this bit: "the students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP; they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism and persistence and social intelligence. " Yup, social intelligence. You don't get that from your mum smoothing the way to a flawless playdate. Heaven knows, I try. When one of mine has a playdate I try to even out the numbers so that there isn't a 3rd spoke. But if there is - well, move on and get over it. Who told you that every moment of your existence was going to be exquisite, memorable and kodakable or is that facebookable? Do you learn more from sitting prissy making lovely cupcakes - no make that - icing cupcakes that the helper has already made for you, or from out foiling younger brother, or even better still, finding a role for brother in the play that keeps him both amused and fits in with your ideas of a good time. (Nope, put away that scalpel and doctor's mask).
My friend is a better person, more tactful and considerate than I. She didn't blurt out like I would have "are you nuts", or "what's wrong with my son" or "shove your playdate where it hurts", nope, she took her hurt and shared it with us and asked us where did the norm lie. Was it a cultural thing? Was at a MOG / SMG vs MOB thing? How should she handle this without ruining her daughters chance for a rare playdate? Has the world out there gotten so bad that we don't trust little boys anymore?
In a follow up email to the saga, she penned some lovely words, which, if you're a SMG and reading this, I'd like you to take to heart:
My thoughts on this episode also ran directly into the path of Dr. Michael Thompson's work. Particularly our culture's current fear of boys, their energy, their interests (violence), etc. and its dislike of boy culture (dirt/destruction, physicality, video games, noise...). He says this is expressed in all sorts of ways, some subtle and some not. I recall overhearing teachers at my kids' school talk about how difficult they find managing the boys and cringed when I realized how "unwelcome" they must be in these teachers' classrooms. I also recoil occasionally in the company of SPGs (smug parents of girls), who assume that something is wrong with boys who don't perform and behave like their daughters at school - particularly in the early years. What kind of unspoken messages do this boys receive and internalize? I suppose what's the worst for me is that someone who doesn't really even know my son has assumed that he's trouble for her daughter, someone to be avoided. Just because he's a boy. |
