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Having kids has, without doubt, given me the greatest joy of my life.
It has also often left me tired, angry, snappy and annoyed. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation or the endless rounds of The Why-ing Game, but I find that little things that I might otherwise let roll off my back really get to me these days. A couple of examples…
1. Calling Toddlers Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Okay, I can see that on some level, at some time, this might have been considered cute and/or clever, but in my experience, it has long since passed over into gross and wildly inappropriate. It is also fairly endemic. At my boys’ pre-school, teachers often say to boy students “Are you my boyfriend?” or “How’s my boyfriend?” Worse, they often feign being hurt/dumped when the toddlers say “No.” Worse still, some say crap like “Are you flirting with me? Ooh boy, you really like to flirt!” And inevitably, if a kid smiles at them, they’ll say something like, “Oh, he’s going to break girls hearts some day.” Or, if it’s a girl, “You better lock her up from the boys.” What the hell is that? They’re three years old! They’re not flirting, they’re stacking blocks and frequently stopping to pick their noses! For all you know, they’ll be gay! They might be breaking little boys hearts some day. Point being, we won’t know for at least 10 years or so, so quit it!
And God help the confused children if they figure out the meaning or implication of words like boyfriend or flirt. I’ve never been anything like a prude, but connoting grown-up relationships or anything remotely sexualized to toddlers is pretty messed up. To get a sense of how wrong this is, imagine if a male pre-school teacher constantly called a little girl in his class his girlfriend and talked about how she was always flirting with him. He’d probably be locked up. In my mind, there is a direct link between this kind of thinking/behavior and six-year-old girls wearing sweatpants that say “JUICY” across the butt. It’s just wrong.
2. “Eating” Children. Okay, this one is pretty endemic too and I’m afraid I have some close friends and family who are guilty. The phrase “I could just eat you up” always sounded to me like a reasonable expression of cute-ness, far enough removed from any notion of actually eating children to raise an eyebrow. But somehow, for some reason, some well-meaning well-wishers having taken the concept into more literal territory. They say things like, “I could just take a bite out of those thighs,” or “I just want to sprinkle some salt all over her and gobble her up for dinner with a nice salad.” It’s almost like there’s a contest to be more literally disgusting in an effort to be the most metaphorically cute. But you know what? It’s just gross.
I anticipate that this could be a running series, so please let me know what kid-related stuff drives you crazy…
