The Ruminator

Some really complicated situations we've been internalising in our heads

The Power of Parenting

Chelsea Hughes
1
Posted on December 16, 2013December 16, 2013

I’m the mother of a three year-old child. As each day passes, she grows more and more independent. She insists on putting her own shoes on (the wrong feet). She insists on microwaving her own hot chocolate (for 30 minutes). She insists on dressing herself (in no shirt, a tiara and three pairs of pants).

Of course I know it’s important for children to grow up and develop their own sense of self whateverblahblahblah, but I’m absolutely terrified. Terrified that this new independence will also breed independent thought and opinion on one issue of great importance to me: silly costumes.

As the parents of young children will testify, dressing children in ridiculous costumes is our only way to experience complete and total control/exhilaration at the expense of our beautiful offspring. Some people say it’s humiliating. I think it’s therapeutic. Dressing them like a tiny lobster makes us forget they smeared their own feces all over the bathroom floor.

The window of time that I can get away with this is very small. Sooner or later my child’s tiny human brain will create the neuro-pathways required to fully understand how insane I am. One day she’ll simply refuse to play along and say something far too mature for her age about how I’m exploiting her for my own personal amusement. I expect this will happen by the time she turns four.

I’ll then have to decide whether to give in to my child’s silly demands for humane treatment. If the answer is no, then I have two options:

1. Transform myself into a fully-fledged psychotic pageant mother and force her to dress like a sexy Elvis for money and giant tiaras. (I was born and raised in Texas, so I am genetically predisposed to this option)

2. Find a cunning way to trick her into thinking it’s her idea.

For now, I’ve chosen option 2. I will instill in her a love and respect of history and culture. I will show her that the past is full of people who took risks, forged difficult lives in new worlds, and became the strong, resilient, admired people they were by wearing ridiculous costumes. My daughter will be so intensely appreciative of those people that she’ll insist on paying homage to them by emulating them. She’ll refuse to spend Halloween celebrating dead people from Mexico dressed as Minnie Mouse. Instead she’ll do historical re-enactments of the brave people who walked this earth before her, dressed as tubes of toothpaste.

May the following costumes inspire her.