I am beginning to suspect that I will soon need to embrace the idea of the princess. Recently, my daughter went to a princess birthday party and returned with a lot of princess-related material. She’s showing definite signs of princess-interest. Symptoms include twirling around in pretty dresses and loudly proclaiming, “Look at me! I am a princess!”
Now, at the moment I don’t think that my preschooler has any clue what a princess is. The idea of royalty is completely foreign to her. I haven’t explained royal succession or government structures, nor have we even read books or movies that have a princess as the main character, aside from those with strong, powerful young women who are related to heads of state. No, to her a princess is someone who twirls around in pretty dresses and likes to wear pink and purple.
As a girl, I loved to play with the boys. I appreciated their desire to whack each other up the side of the head, play with sticks, and get muddy. We chased the girls through the playground and found them rather vile. I was a reactionary of sorts: until I was eight, my mother had me wear frilly pink dresses, and so I rebelled by getting them dirty and running around in the woods a lot.
I’m sure that the princess interest will pass, but if it doesn’t, what is a mother to do? I have pink nail polish (non toxic, of course) and we just finished adding food coloring to parts of my daughter’s hair this weekend to turn a few strands pink. I have the pink down, and we have a supply of frilly dresses ready to go. There are plenty of purses in the dress up box. Apparently princesses need purses too. And shoes, although the ones in the dress ups are not exactly practical for everyday wear.
Anyone have advice on the care and maintenance of four-year-old princesses?