My daughter has about 10 million dolls. She has plush dolls and plastic dolls, baby dolls and Barbie dolls. She has so many dolls, I don’t think she has formed a close personal relationship with any one.
A couple of weeks ago we caught her cutting the hair off one of her Barbie dolls. After freaking out a bit and thinking we were raising a psychopath, a bad seed, that we had our own little Linda Blair, we asked her why she’d done it.
It turns out she’d been watching the episode of Mr. Bean (like about 40 times in a row. I really should have figured this out) where Mr. Bean goes in to get his hair cut and then while the barber’s out of the room he cuts a couple of customers’ hair and pockets the money, but of course he totally butchers them and then sneaks out, with a poster of Prince Charles covering his face, while the irate customers yell at the actual barber. It was pretty funny, the first 9 or 10 times.
So, dolls can be a useful tool for parents. It lets you know what your child is thinking. Of course, within some limited parameters, she’s pretty good about letting us know what she is thinking anyway. She can scream pretty loud for a 3 year old and, in my experience, most 3 year olds can scream pretty loud. She smiles and laughs a lot, too, but for appreciating the subtle nuances of her mind, dolls do serve a purpose.
I frequently ask her what her doll’s names are. At first, that question drew blank stares. Then, she would just say “Dolly.” One day, she was holding two dolls and I asked her their names and she said one was Dolly and the other was Panenka. (Panenka is Czech for Doll) Lately, they take on the names of babies we know. The next door neighbor or her cousin, for instance. She’s making progress.
I must admit, we’re horribly old-fashioned parents as far as sexual stereotyping of our kids go. We have our son enrolled in both football (or, as you would say in America, soccer) and hockey. I think it’s basically a character building thing, good exercise and he’s making lots of friends, but there’s a worrying aspect to it, too.
He’s actually as interested in watching as in playing, and he’s just as interested in the teams’ logos, the fans’ chants and team songs and stuff like that as he is in the actual game. He was watching a video in support of some Bulgarian team the other day and I saw some White Power symbols.
I tried to talk to him about racism and why it was bad. But he still likes the songs. It’s scary. He’s 7.
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