When she was a tiny baby, friends and family always used to comment on her appearance, as people always do with babies. Even when she was just a few weeks old this used to make me feel uneasy, but she was usually asleep and so the comments wouldn't have had any impact on her developing personality. But she's one now, and I worry that she will now be affected by the things people say about her.
The comments strangers make now will shape her future perception of herself. She will be aware that she's big, and small (why can't strangers ever seem to agree on whether my child is a record breaking giant or a malnourished wisp of a girl?), and has eyes. The way people interact with her now will shape how she interacts in the future. Strangers always comment on her appearance and ask whether she is a good baby. From this, I worry that she is learning that looks are first and foremost, followed by blind obedience (which is usually what people mean when they ask if a child is good).
Obviously I think she is beautiful, I really do. She is the picture of perfection, but I don’t want her to grow up thinking that this is the be all and end all of life. In truth, I hope she overtakes her Father and I. I hope she brushes her hair every day and doesn’t look close to retirement at the tender age of twenty seven (it’s ok for me to say that, I’m married to him). But I don’t want her to base her self-worth on her looks. I want her confidence to come from a much deeper place. I want her to be confident about who she is, not what she looks like.
It’s not just the obsession with her big eyes that concerns me. It’s the cries of, “Oh, she’s so clever. You can just tell she’s going to be an absolute genius!” that I find disturbing, too. I don’t want Ebony to feel under any pressure to be clever, or be pretty or be into girly things. I want her to have the freedom to choose her own path in life. I worry about people placing expectations of intelligence on her for two reasons.
Firstly I worry that being told she’s clever will mean she believes she is clever and is then less likely to work hard at academia in the future because she believes it to be a natural skill. Secondly I worry that if she ever struggles with academia, she won’t want to admit it for fear of letting us down because she has grown up believing we expect her to be the child prodigy of her generation.
She turned one a couple of weeks ago, and I can honestly say I am ridiculously proud of everything she has ever done. Just the other day she made a tower of four wooden blocks, yes, four, and I almost exploded with pride. We spend a lot of time with babies her age, and they are all developing the same skills at around the same speed. Some may have walked first, and others may know more words, but essentially they are all able to do the same things. So, when I have spent the morning surrounded by babies who are all able to put the square shape through the square hole, I don’t really want Ebony to be over enthusiastically praised for doing this at home. She is exploring and playing, she doesn’t need to be praised for this. Just because she gets the shape through the hole doesn’t mean her actions are any more valid than they were ten minutes ago when she was trying to play the xylophone with a book; it’s all learning.
I realise people don’t mean any harm when they say these things. They are just commenting on her eyes, or trying to interact with her by showing how impressed they are at how she plays, and so I don’t tell people not to say certain things, but I do try to counter what they say when I speak to Ebony.
It’s hard to not say good girl and well done, and sometimes I do find those words tumbling out of my mouth, but, on the most part, I think I am doing ok at retraining myself to think before I speak (a skill, you may know, I have not always had).