I recently attended a lunch for a friend. During the lunch, one of the women there started talking about having her daughters ears pierced. The daughter is 5, and has decided the time is ripe, and has been nagging her Mum to let her have it done. Her Mum is reluctant, but is slowing caving in under the constant barrage of "Pleeeease Mummy".
As I have a daughter the same age, she asked me what I thought, and I told her about how I want to save such things and use them as Rites of Passage for my daughters. I bemoaned how our culture has no such Rites, how our children drift from age to age, from puberty to adulthood, with no recognition or celebration of those special moments in theirs lives, apart from the massive piss-up when they turn 21. (Who can drink the most before they either throw up or pass out?)
I said I wanted to keep things like ear piercing for when my daughters start menstruating, to use it as a celebration of their passage from childhood into womanhood.
Well, you could have dropped a pin and heard it in the restaurant. I was met with appalled silence, soon followed by scoffing and looks of derision and I know, I just know that my 'strange ideas' will be discussed and discarded as worthless with no real thought of depth of consideration.
It annoys me. It not only annoys me that we allow our kids to drift, but also that, because my ideas and beliefs aren't mainstream, they are considered worthless or strange. At best weird.
Yes, Carol is weird because she co-slept with her children, because she advocates home birth, extended breastfeeding (not breastfeeding, surely not?), carried her kids in a sling until her back couldn't cope anymore. That I don't sweat the small stuff. That I don't force feed my kids their 5-a-day. That I like to walk barefoot in the grass.
Why don't we have Rites of Passage for our children? Why do we have to celebrate their events and milestones with piss-ups instead of something wholesome? The Amerindians celebrated their sons with vision quests and sweat lodges. Character builidng stuff.
Humpf.
