Andrea Phillips’ recent post “Girls and Robots” made me so very mad and sad for both Andrea’s daughter and my own. 1  Right now my daughter and I play with trains, work on robots, talk about science and try to invent and discover things together.  It almost goes without saying, but she also loves fairies, princesses, pink, purple, and anything fancy or frilly.

I know she’s going to face the same pressures as Maya and I try so hard to inoculate her from them.  I tell my daughter she can do anything, because she really can.  I tell her to persevere and not listen to other people when they say you can’t do something.  And I try to set a good example for her.

A few weeks ago we took my daughter to the Western Train Museum in Solano.  After a fun little train ride we took a tour of some of their trains, walked around a few others, and visited their small gift shop.  Inside there were two Thomas the Tank Engine tables – with a little boy, perhaps 3 years old, who was hogging one of the tables.  When my daughter approached the one side he shambled over and tried to shoulder her out of the way.  I looked over at the child’s mother who wasn’t watching her son at all.  So I told my daughter there was a whole other table she could play with by herself – and she went over to play with it quietly.  In a minute or two the little boy walked over to grab a train from her table and the boy’s mother said, “That’s a girl train, this <indicating another> is a boy train, she can play with the girl train, you play with this one.”

I was so furious.  Who is this ignorant woman who can’t control her own toddler to tell my daughter what she should play with?  If she wants to teach her grabby child to be a pig, so be it – but keep away from my kid.

I stomped over and told my daughter, louder than was strictly necessary, “Honey, you can play with any train you want to.  You don’t have to listen to anyone.”  The woman said nothing and was soon gone.2

I can only hope the incident won’t leave any impression on my daughter – but I’m not optimistic. 3  What really scares me is that a multitude of ignorant people will all make innumerable ignorant remarks and one day, my daughter will tell me that she doesn’t like trains and robots because she wants people to like her.

1. Photo Credit: Don via Compfight [↩]
2. Only as an adult to I realize the terrible price a parent must pay for teaching their child to be independent.  Doing so successfully means your child won’t be subservient to anyone.  It also means you’ve sown the seeds of insubordination.  I suppose if that it is the cost of a free-thinker, I am happy to pay it. [↩]
3. Yesterday, out of the blue, she started humming Darth Vader’s Imperial March.  Then she mentioned something about Darth Vader inspecting a spaceship.  Shocked, I asked her how she knew about that since she’s never seen the movies.  She said I once told her about the beginning of Star Wars.  If I did, and I must have, I would literally have to have been at least 6 months prior. [↩]