I’ve been listening to the KidLitWomen podcast, and it reminded me of this video commercial I had seen. I tend to miss the viral videos, but I am SO grateful to have seen this one. I cry every time. And I LOVE that this notion of “like a girl” is being revisited, rethought, and embraced as something strong and powerful.
(When my friend and I separately asked our daughters to “run like a girl,” they both responded like the young girls in the video. Huzzah!)
Our tooth fairy made her first visit back in January. For years, I had wondered what our family’s tooth fairy would be like and what she would leave in exchange for teeth. I didn’t necessarily like the idea of money, as I’d heard the amounts get out of control and was afraid she might be out of the right amount on the night a tooth fell out. I had heard of some tooth fairies leaving seeds, which I loved in theory, but didn’t see us doing much with at this point. So, finally I realized our tooth fairy would be bringing beads. She collected many fun and decorative beads to have on hand, and she also promised a fairy doll which the beads could be sewn onto. (I’m sure beads could also be made into necklaces or sewn onto small doll pillows as well.) Our fairy, Flora, left a bead and small fairy skirt her first visit. Her next visit brought another bead and a tiny fairy wand. She was going to continue like this, bringing things like wings, tiny slippers, etc, each time, but life became busy for sewing all these, and so she left the doll on her third visit.
Our tooth fairy writes in very tiny writing, and thanks to many questions left in notes by our daughter, she also has a very elaborate backstory. She realizes that teeth like to pop out on trips and such, and so she always plans by writing some notes ahead of time and traveling with beads. But were she to ever miss a tooth, I’m sure she would have a very understandable explanation the next night.
A couple years ago, I started searching the Internet for alternatives to Elf on the Shelf. I liked the fun idea of a visiting elf, but I’ve never been in the mainstream category. And, while I honestly don’t know much about the Shelf Elf or his/her purpose, I was afraid I’d abuse the elf’s powers. I imagined myself making our elf a creepy watcher and a threat, instead of something fun. So, to prevent my misuse of the elf, I found this idea for Kindness Elves. I immediately loved the idea, and I think they are darling! But still, I had to go and make it our own. I found our Christmas Kindness Elf at a local, independently-owned shop. She has blue hair and rosy cheeks and a hat that looks a bit like a Christmas tree, but I don’t think she was necessarily made to be a “Christmas” doll. Our elf is named Winnie and she arrives on St. Nicholas eve (December 5th/6th) when St. Nick visits. She arrives with a welcome letter and her first “kindness card.” Then, as she moves to new spots every night, she has a new card with her each morning. Winnie, the Kindness Elf, leaves on Christmas Eve when she gets a ride back to the North Pole with Santa. She always leaves a farewell letter to thank the kids for all their kindnesses and reminds them to keep up all these kind acts throughout the year.
There are many ideas online for kindness ideas, if you are researching “kindness elves.” Our daughter was 5 the first year our elf visited, and I quickly realized Winnie’s ideas were a bit ambitious for both of us as daily suggestions. So, Winnie has scaled back quite a bit to things like smiling at a stranger or leaving a video message for a relative. I will attach some of the ideas we’ve seen our elf leave. And, if our daughter doesn’t get around to an idea one day, sometimes our elf will tuck yesterday’s card in with the new one, but we don’t make a battle or threat of it if it doesn’t happen.
This year, our elf fell in love with a candle wizard on our shelf. I didn’t know about it at first, but our daughter pointed it out. Soon, they were moving to new locations together each night and finding themselves in front of wedding pictures and so on. So, we had a lovely Christmas eve wedding here for them before Winnie had to make her way back. It was quite romantic, with a circle of nutcrackers as guests.
Just wanted to share about our little kindness elf, in case any other parents are looking for alternative ideas!
St. Nicholas Day, which falls on December 6th (or the eve of the 5th) is a day celebrated in many European countries. Children will leave their shoes out in the evening and receive small gifts in them from St. Nicholas the next morning. Sometimes, a knock will sound at the door on St. Nicholas eve and a gift will be waiting outside. St. Nicholas was a man who is said to have shared his wealth with the poor. In one story, in particular, he helped a family with three daughters by anonymously throwing bags of coins through their window.
Our family, here in the U.S., has celebrated St. Nicholas Day since our daughter was a baby. In this time of over-consumption and entitled greed, it may seem silly that we’ve added another special holiday to December, but we added it for a few reasons. For one thing, I feel that by keeping Christmas small and having other fun celebrations to look forward to, it actually keeps some of the frenzy out of this month. I also love the idea of giving behind this story. It seems that this idea has gotten all twisted and warped in the Santa tradition. Our children leave their shoes out on St. Nicholas eve. Sometimes St. Nicholas brings chocolate coins or a very small and simple toy. He has even brought new pairs of slippers! There is also real money left in each slipper that is to be used for helping others. The kids have used this money to pick out toys or food or clothing to donate to groups collecting for families. Every other year, our St. Nicholas brings a small nutcracker. Sometimes there’s a mysterious knock at the door on St. Nick Eve and the nutcracker is outside, and sometimes the nutcracker shows up the next morning.
St. Nicholas also brings us Winnie, our Christmas Kindness Elf, who visits with us until Santa picks her up on Christmas eve. Her kindness ideas seem to fit quite nicely with the spirit of St. Nick. And, lastly, St. Nicholas picks up our fabric gift bags. We’ve made the transition to only fabric gift bags, so it’s very nice of St. Nick to take some of these to Santa to use.
The Swedish Way to Parent and Play
By Henkel and Tomicic
I somehow found out about this book and got it on my library list, without realizing it is hot off the press for Americans. Although Henkel and Tomicic released this book 10 years ago in Sweden, it is just making its debut where I am. The subtitle for the book is “Advice for Raising Gender-Equal Kids,” and it is just that. This small, square book covers tons of thoughts and ideas for raising our kids in an equal-gender atmosphere.
I have to be honest, that although I think this book is a must-read for parents and anyone working with kids, I found myself struggling with some of the approach. I have a daughter and a son, and despite doing everything possible to remain “gender-neutral” with them, from dressing them in gender-neutral clothing as babies and young kids, keeping them away from TV and media and magazines, presenting books and songs that were very carefully selected, adapting songs and stories to be fair to both genders, discussing every job and situation with a “she or he” role, etc., our daughter has always been drawn to the traditional “girl” stuff and our son has been drawn to the traditional “boy” stuff. This book sometimes made it sound as if kids who do fall into these “traditional” roles were somehow forced or subconsciously led into these roles. I also struggled with going to the extremes to approach boys and girls exactly the same. I think kids need to be approached on an individual basis. It reminded me a bit of the “melting pot” philosophy our country once held, trying to be fair, but denying people for who they were vs. the “salad bowl” idea where people exist together, but we see and appreciate their differences. There was also a lot of talk about letting girls be loud and letting boys hug and cuddle, when I find my own daughter to have defined her strong voice early on and my son to be extremely affectionate. Sometimes it seemed as if the authors were implying I should allow rude behavior from a girl, just so she can learn to express herself and I should feel encouraged by ongoing crying tantrums from a boy so he can express himself. And there was some implication that if I went in expecting my boy to be on the move and not fully engaging and listening and making eye contact, then that is what I would get. Well, we have done everything in our power, but our son just naturally moves more and uses his physical energy more than our girl ever did. I would never imply or expect that all boys are that way, but this is the case here, and I honestly don’t think this has anything to do with our treatment of him.
But I’m really getting ahead of myself, because I truly found this book to be valuable and worth reading. And I promised I’d only write about books on here that I’d recommend. I do truly recommend this book, but I just had to mention that it was a bit of a back and forth for me as I made my way through it. As “aware” as I believe myself to be on a lot of the topics covered, I definitely found a lot of new ideas to take from it. Some that stuck out in my recollection right now are:
–Not teasing or expecting romance when a boy and girl are friends. Do we ever do that when two boys or two girls are spending time together? –
–Not making the excuse that boys hurt or chase girls just because they like them. If we teach that to girls early on, what are they to supposed to be ok with later in life? There’s a frighteningly accurate cartoon in this section showing a grown man with a woman in a headlock, and another woman in the back musing, “It’s probably just his way of showing that he cares.”
–Not consistently commenting how “cute” or “pretty” girls look all the time. It seems like the go-to comment to say something about a little girl’s dress or hair and so on, but I see how this can become a bit addictive to some and attach worth to looks. Instead, they suggest asking how a girl is doing or how nice it is to see her or how comfortable the clothes look, and so on. (Although, as another aside, I will say that I have a friend who never heard nice comments about her looks from her parents while growing up and became super attached to seeking out these compliments from others because of this…)
–I also appreciated suggestions to mix up the toys. I think schools and homes have a way of separating trucks and cars from dolls and kitchens. Which is not to say the kids might not play with all of it, but it might be worth a try to see how a truck is integrated into doll play or a baby in with the Transformers.
The other main thought I came away with, and I don’t recall if this was exactly said, but it feels like boys are kind of getting the short end of the stick when I thought about it. We’ve worked hard for it to be ok for girls to wear pants or Ninja Turtle shirts, to play with tools and cars, to read about boy wizards, to play any sport, to get messy outside. But, I think there are still a lot of things that just aren’t socially acceptable for boys–sparkly shirts, dresses, playing with baby dolls past a certain age, dance classes instead of sports, books or shows with female leads, especially princesses. And, this just doesn’t seem fair.
A lot of good things to think about from this book, and a book that I think should be required for anyone working with kids.