Five and a half years ago, P and I sat in a room while an ultrasound technician looked at the screen and told us we were having a baby girl.
I had long suspected it was a girl, but actually hearing the words made me start to cry. I was going to have a daughter!
As much as I thought I knew about having a girl, since, you know, I am one, there have been so many things that have surprised me.
Things like how 5 1/2 pounds of baby sweetness wrapped in a fluffy pink blanket caused my life to change forever or how obsessed I’d become with finding hairbows to match every outfit.
But of all the moments that have caught me unaware, the biggest one happened a few months ago.
Late one night, I heard Caroline calling for me from her room. I went in to see what she needed and she started to cry. Not just a little cry for sympathy, but a real heart-wrenching sobbing kind of cry.
She told me she had some “thoughts in her brain” that she couldn’t get out of her head. And as I pressed her to tell me what was going on, she began to tell me about how one of her little girlfriends had been mean to her that day at school.
She’d told Caroline that unless Caroline played the game she wanted to play then she wasn’t going to play with her anymore and would tell the other girls not to play with her either.
Before that time I had never wished harm on a four-year-old child, but I had also never experienced someone being mean to my baby. I had a strong desire to call that other little girl and threaten her Polly Pocket collection.
But, of course, that would have been inappropriate. And also psychotic.
The thing that struck me was the fact that “mean girl” politics had arrived in preschool. I thought it would be sometime around junior high and orthodontia before Caroline came home in tears because of something another girl said or did.
I was shocked we reached that occasion before elementary school.
Vicki Courtney is in the middle of working on a great new Bible study/DVD called “Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter” and she could use your input.
For those of you raising daughters, what have you had to deal with that has caught you completely off-guard?
Also, what are some situations you have encountered where you have not allowed her to participate in/do/own something and then been discouraged when her friends’ parents give in with their own daughters. In other words, fill in the blank: “But Mom, eveeeeeeeryone but me gets to/has a ___________________ !”
And lastly, (oh I am demanding today) how old was your daughter when you experienced these moments?
I’d love to sympathize with those of y’all in the same stage and begin to pray hard as I realize what lies ahead.