Tuesday

Well, that little girl's dad died recently (see last post). I saw her a couple hours after it happened, and got another big hug, a guess what, and then she told me that her dad went to heaven. She laid on his empty hospital bed and told me she missed him. Then she looked at the nightstand and gasped. "His glasses! He forgot his glasses!" She looked pensive, then asked me if he could see in heaven. It's so interesting to see children's reactions to death... a friend of hers (five or six years old) came skipping in the room and said "Hey, where's your dad?".... "Oh, he's at heaven today"... "Yeah, I knew that already, my mom told me...let's play Dora".

Speaking of Dora, I visit a lot of little girls and am a bit alarmed at their toys. I don't have kids *disclaimer* so this is philosophy and not practice. I'm guessing I won't be so uptight when the time comes. But I have spent a good amount of time on the Barbie website (holy crap - when did kindegarteners master the Internet??) and it's full of fashion and shopping and sleepovers and everything is pink and popular. In general girlie games are mindless, the dolls wear nearly nothing and everything seems so superficial. Roughly 80% of everything is princesses - and don't even get me started on that. I am sure there are plenty of things that encourage deeper thinking and social skills and emotional intelligence, but why do people have to sort through piles of crap to find it? It's just disturbing to me. (I am hereby doomed to have a daughter that wants to dress like a princess everyday and make fashion runways in the house.)