Retro Post: Sleeping Beauty's Puppy

I originally wrote this on May 12, 2010, shortly after we returned from a trip to Walt Disney World. Elizabeth was almost four years old.
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The morning we left, Elizabeth was upset. She didn't want to go to Disney World, she wanted to go to school and see her friends. Since I'd left plenty of time in our schedule, I took her to school so she could say goodbye and tell everyone where she was going. That helped a lot. While we were there, we talked to her friend L, who was just at Disney World a week or two ago.

S: L, what was your favorite part of Disney World?
L: Meeting the princesses! And I got to be a princess! Lizzie and I play princesses. I'm Sleeping Beauty and Lizzie is Sleeping Beauty's puppy!
Lizzie: Arf! *grin*

Can I tell you with some shame that my heart stopped during that conversation? And not for any reason you might suspect. I think a lot of moms - more moms than would admit it, I think - spend a lot of time encouraging their daughters to be like them, to do things they liked or wanted to do and couldn't. I'm certainly occasionally guilty of this.

You see, I was that kid who was Sleeping Beauty's puppy. I didn't want to be a princess. I didn't even want to be human most of the time. I don't know why I didn't realize it before now, but Lizzie is exactly like that, like how I was. Her pretend play is NOT centered on anything particularly girly. She prefers stuffed animals to dolls. When playing with friends, I usually had to find some way to work my preferences into games of Barbie or princess or other girly pretend stuff - it usually involved being the pet.

I think most women would be happy to see their daughter acting exactly the way they did as children. But for whatever reason, it breaks my heart a little for Lizzie. It was HARD to be that kid. It was hard to not care about Barbie, or She-Ra, or baby dolls. It made me different, right away. It made me weird, and made it so that a lot of other little girls did not want to play with me because I didn't fit their mold.

She didn't get why so many little girls were dressed as princesses at Disney World. She didn't want that, she had no interest. That's totally fine, although it pissed me off that I couldn't find a Lion King or Aladdin shirt for her.

I'm so proud of her I could burst. But I wanted things to be easier for her than they were for me. It's so much easier to be the princess than the dragon.

Elizabeth, totally unimpressed with Ariel

 Elizabeth, totally stoked to meet Eeyore