How much cotton wool is too much cotton wool when it comes to raising children? Amaya has a star chart for doing three year old chores around the house. Each star equals $1. Once she has obtained a certain amount of stars she can purchase herself a little gift. For example, recently she earned herself 10 stars and chose to purchase the face paint as per the photograph above.
The real contention with this gift occurred when some family members were over and didn't allow their children to have their faces painted. As kids do, they harped and harped until their parents gave in and allowed them to have their faces painted, but were only to keep it on for five minutes. Until which time they had to have it cleaned off with a wet-warm face washer. They were not allowed to wash their face with any of the 'Johnson and Johnson' wipes that I had in the house for such occasions.
These same parents do not allow their children to eat any food with certain preservatives or numbers, nor anything that has been burnt in the cooking process. Don't get me wrong ... I'm not judging these parents for what they do - it is their choice and they have all brought up lively, involved children. They are great parents. In fact, one set of parents is Amaya's godparents. It just got me to wondering how much we should protect our children?
How much should we just let a kid be a kid? Or should we be educating them of hazards from a young age? For how long can we keep them in our care? Every time I hop into my car with Amaya I'm fully aware that that is the place most likely to cause the harm. I live under several flight paths - pollution is the norm. I operate the microwave on a daily basis. How much can I really protect her? Am I the erring parent? Should I be allowing face paint?
4 comments:
Hey Shan,
My advice regarding the face painting blog....
On a warm day when you have these same parents and children over,get Amaya to strip off and give her big buckets full of paint. Invite her to get creative with some Body Art, making sure she encourages the other little people to join in the fun. Maybe play some of that disco music she loves, really loud, and have a dancing naked, covered in paint groove going on. Finish it of with a good hosing down with the hose pipe in the garden.....oh, what blissful fun!!! So, to answer your question, 'are you an erring parent?'.....no, you're just a parent who remembers what it's like to have fun!!! Keep going girl,you're doing a great job!
Hey Shan,
not familiar with blogger.. accidently deleted the comments i left earlier:(
no you are not erring parent.
i do have the same query that you raised in this entry.
I am not a parent myself yet and don't know what kind of parent i would be in the future.
However, i do believe that i wish my kids would have have fun and enjoy every minute of their childhood...that's something money can't buy....
xo
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