When should your parental philosophy/ideals/hang-ups determine what your child is allowed to do? When safety, ethics, or morality are involved, the answer is very simple. But so often it’s just not so obvious.
One mom’s decision about allowing her three-year-old to attend a Princess party illustrates the difficulties in even such a seemingly unimportant decision. I highly recommend you read the article “Princess: Valid lifestyle choice for 3-year-old?” This mom has issues with the role models presented to young girls and the diminished expectations inherent therein. Without quibbling about the validity of this concern, the issue in question is whether that concern is rightly or wrongly a part of the decision to permit her daughter to attend the princess party.
I think the first take away from this article, at least with respect to birthday parties, is to realize that our guests’ parents do indeed evaluate the suitability of our party themes. Not much you can do about it, except perhaps to be aware that there may well be invitees who are not permitted to attend for reasons of this type. If a princess party can be ‘questionable’, what about pirates, space aliens, cowboys. Just be prepared…
The bigger issue here is as a parent rather than as a host. Just sticking with the princess party as an example, how do you weigh the value of imaginative play (a well documented factor in child development) against that very real concern of stereotypical role models and diminished expectations? I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I will suggest that it’s important for all of us parents to ask ourselves this question.
I particularly like one of the responses in the article referenced above- there ARE consequences when we parents draw these lines in the sand:
“My daughter became enamored early on with an activity that not only bored me, but that I actively dislike. My wife backed me off of discouraging this activity, and I’m so glad she did. Years later, I still don’t like the activity. But that, I realize, is MY problem. My daughter absolutely blooms when she partakes, and her happiness is MY happy.”
You’ll find more kids tips and parenting ramblings on our website – the only thing we do that’s not strictly birthday.
