‘It could be as simple as a sarong over their clothes’. The notice about the book week parade (suggested focus: our Asian neighbours) is probably intended to reassure. And if ‘Asian dress-ups’ stretch you too far, then any fairy tale or book character will be welcome.
So, you could take this opportunity to help your child think of something interesting and imaginative to wear. Perhaps you could use some of the many hundreds of bits of paper now strewn across the floor of the car. They had lots of things about our Asian neighbours written and drawn on them.
Or, when you are in the market buying the ingredients for your father’s Birthday Feast, you could just pop into Chinatown and spend five bucks on a stereotype.
Then, the next morning, when your little boy decides he doesn’t want to go as Chinese, but would prefer to go as the long-time favourite super-rabbit
you cajole him into wearing the stereotype hat you spent five bucks on (there’s no rabbits in Asia you lie), because while you trust that you have raised a resilient, independent-thinking child who won’t be crushed by big boys dressed as Jack Sparrow chanting some rhyming equivalent of ‘you’re wearing pink, fluffy bunny ears there’s nothing super about that’, you aren’t ready to have that trust tested in the battleground that is the school yard. And there’s nothing wrong with that really, is there, because it is a mother’s job to protect her child. You can use that mother-love idea to justify just about anything.
So, in the great race to raise children free of stereotyped and laden thought patterns – thus taking advantage of her real chance to make a true and a great contribution to lasting change, because let’s face it sitting on stalls and stuffing envelopes hasn’t been especially effective, has it – she has stumbled at the first, second and third hurdles. And fallen flat on her arse at the fourth.
She closes her eyes for a moment, wallowing in the liberation that failure brings. Then she picks herself up, dusts herself off, sighs and stuffs another 500 envelopes.
Joey’s book week dress up theme was “your favourite character from a book” which in his case was “Darth Vader” since he had the costume.
But what about the failure that liberation brings? What about that, hmm?
I see that the new alliance between Google and Blogger, or, as I like to think of it, Bloogle, has resulted in a change in my sign-in name. Hmm, better do this manually.
So once when my son was two he wanted to go to childcare in a dress. Childcare at this point was with my cousin who had a nanny and three kids – two boys and a girl – all older.
So I say – being a liberal – hey there’s not stereotypes happening around my boy – say okay and off he goes for the day in a dress.
I thought – he’ll get it out of his system and maybe his cousins will point out that it’s not so cool to wear dresses and that will be that.
Well they did but did that deter my little one… no. So the dress was put in the wash – and stayed there. Probably is still there.
This week he went to school dressed as a tsunami.
eli didnt have to dress up, he just had to bring a chair, so that they could play musical chairs and read annies chair for the 50th bazillion time.
im glad im here for it though. sounds like your kid and mine, (and the dress wearing one) would all get along famously. he loves makeup, jewelry and said to me once ‘it doesnt matter that the shoes have a heart on them and are from the girls part, i like them and they are cool’.
p.s. does anyone else find this amusing from ‘whats not hot’ in rip it up magazine?
“hearing that 3 brazillian people have been killed- and then wondering just how many a brazillion is”
oh how i laughed
I think I’ve got a darth vader costume in a suitcase somewhere, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never been a tsunami. Although I was a beach scene once. Taking a chair would not be as easy as it sounds.
Bloogle – yes. I am increasingly grumpy about it. Especially when it gives me grief about logging in to my own comments. I think you are probably right re failure and liberation, but I only have room to consider one failure per week. Otherwise I would never be able to recover my natural optimism and sunny disposition.
My 12 year old went as Frodo this year, in an army blanket cut into a cloak shape fastened with a kilt pin (a Scottish hobbit).
The 7 year old refused to dress up but they still made him go in the parade in his school uniform so ohmigod was he embarrassed.
The 10 year old who wants to become a vet and has just discovered the James Herriot books went as TRISTAN from ‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet’. Yes, the younger brother of the vet who employs James Herriot.
He spent the entire day explaining.