Lily-Beth-Lulu-Lilo-Leyla-Lilypad Floppy Pants

Welcome back!  This week I promised a look at the thorny issue of Daughter Protection.  Why is this thorny?  Because due to those silly fairy tales about thorns, long hair, poison and frogs, we are much more precious with our daughters than our sons, who are doing well if they get an uh what huh? Yeah see yourself out love in the morning.  But I generalise.  There are millions of Pushy Parents who can molly coddle a son as well as a daughter any day.  I have a friend who dresses her son only in mohair.  Poor kid.  Every time he sits near a radiator, he frizzes.

Saturday mornings at the park are fun.  Everywhere there are dads stood, legs astride, guarding their princess who is tottering about head to toe in pink fluff.  As she climbs the frame, so the dad twitches, ready to swoop should she falter.  The tension mounts when my two lads come along, attacking the apparatus with their hearty limbs.  The dad is quivering now.  Should those bloody yobs so much as touch his little Leyloo-Lilo (there are a lot of strange names out there beginning with L these days - don't dare get it wrong.  The parents get cross).  I feel like telling him his pink fluff is more likely to harm my boys when she topples from a height above them.  Has he ever tried to scale a climbing frame in Barbie heels, wearing a tiara?

My friend told me recently that her 5-year-old daughter sits at gym class in her shorts with her legs flopped open in front of the other parents.  So my friend always slaps her daughter's legs and tells her to 'pop her legs together'.  Jeez.  She is only 5.  Give the kid a break.  Or just get on with it and have her incarcerated in a tower.  Ever heard anyone tell their son to slap his legs together?  Nope.  Thought not.

Walk fast Lily-Beth-Lulu-Lilo-Leyla-Lilypad Floppy Pants,
there's a boy over there and he's not wearing mohair.

Daughter Protection is pointless.  Unless you are going to treat boys the same way.  Otherwise there are all these horrid boys running wild out there with their legs open and their limbs sprawled everywhere, and the daughters, as pink fluff, will become quickly damaged.  So either we just let our daughters get on with it and risk their lives with these awful boys, or we just dress them all in mohair and leave them to wilt in the sun together.

Hmmm.  Maybe there's a middle ground somewhere.  I'll have to have a think on it some more.

Next week, I'll be looking at: saving up for a pair of Converse trainers and then spotted a brand new pair on a 18 month-old git?  Annoying, eh?

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