Sunday, June 12, 2011

Parents can learn from children


Ren wrote:

As a child I was taught that fashion and all it entails was "wordly" and that Barbie stuff promoted low self esteem. Baloney! What promoted low self esteem was being told my interests weren't worthy.
—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/renallen
photo by Jayn Coburn

5 comments:

  1. What a wonderful post! And a point I have not heard of, until I came to the Always Learning List, when talking about low self esteem. I'll be passing this gem on. Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aww, I remember that Barbie/photo project that Jayn did. Romeo and Juliet. Thanks for using her photo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have been trying to find this quote for a while. Thanks. It was very powerful to me when my 4 yr old son went through a time of buying many many comics just for the toys on them which usually fell apart and were worth about 10% of the money we paid for the comic. Yet the value to him was huge.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I used to play with Barbie dolls. My daughter loved them. I actually thought the Barbie lifestyle was quite inspirational. She did have a Ken doll so I could play from a male perspective usually but sometimes I was Barbie's female friend (she had about six or seven Barbies) and that was indeed a learning experience. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. That kind of quotes is really important because everywhere it is said, written and repeated the opposite. Parents are induced in error, they are encouraged to never rely on their children for their needs.

    My mother has never said that kind of things, she never said that our toys and our games were bad for us. However, after being schooled and socialized, I came to be a mother who refuses certain toys and games to my eldest son because I put his anger or bad temper or low self esteem, on a certain "power" of games and toys. I thought, as it is repeated everywhere, that toys and games should be educational and chosen by parents to prevent children from becoming "bad. " How terrible I made their lives for years ... until I realized this big mistake and I repaired it, leaving them alone and free to choose what they like. They know very well what they like to play (and learn by playing), not me.

    I was very far from my children as I was away from my own childhood, away from their needs ... and mines.

    ReplyDelete

Please comment!