It's just a doll... breathe in, breathe out....it's just a doll

There is such a difficult line to navigate in parenting between gaining your child's trust so that they will share things with you and being their disciplinarian, possibly having to punish for the things. It's especially difficult as a single parent without the good cop/bad cop option.

So today I made major headway when Betsy showed me the very secret thing she wrote in her diary: "Nat, I love you." carefully spelled out in her Hello Kitty notebook. So now I've posted it on a public blog and I'm a very bad mommy whom she should never trust. She doesn't read that well yet. This is Nat. I have very mixed emotions about my 6 year old having crushes on teenage boys. On the one hand alarm bells are going off screaming caution. On the other hand, it's cute, it's normal and I'm so happy that she shared it with me. She was embarrassed and so I told her about my crush on Shawn Cassidy and Ponch from CHiPs at roughly the same age. She laughed, "you mean in the 50s?" I told her that she can have crushes but she can't go out with real boys yet. She said, "I know, but maybe when I'm like 17?" Ummm.... yeah. Maybe. With this one I'll be lucky if we make it to 12. I'm trying my darndest to steer her towards nerdy pursuits and I'm pretty sure she's going to need glasses soon so hopefully that gives us a little cushion. Sigh.

On a slightly related vein, this afternoon she was playing with her barbies. First she filled a plastic tub with water and it was going to be a lake for Barbie to take her kayak. Then I went outside and it was a bathtub. All the Barbies were completely nude laid out on a towel either having just bathed or getting ready to bathe. I kind of freaked when I saw that Ken was naked too. Since I remember the naughty things my Ken and Barbie did (and I know what a naughty adult I've been!) I was kind of concerned.
"Betsy, shouldn't they be wearing bathing suits?"
"They're wet mom and there's not enough"
"But won't they be embarrassed for Ken to see them naked like that"
"He's just a DOLL mom!"
Oh yeah. So true. I don't know how I'm going to get through these next 12 years. Too much to worry about!