Reply #9: Don't be so hard on yourself [View All]

[OldLeftieLawyer]

I'd have probably driven the car right into a wall if that were my girl. Or turned the car around and gone looking for that fundie mother - only to run her over. With my daughter in the car. Just to make my point.

Yeah, we all scare our kids with our intensity, and then we apologize and explain and it works. Believe me, whatever you'll tell your little girl tonight will expand her world and her heart (with you right in the middle of it) and she'll be just a bit more sophisticated about bullshit tomorrow.

You'll tell her how she should never believe what anyone tells her and that she should always check stuff with you if it sounds bad to her, because she knows best. (That's how she'll learn to trust her instincts - which, I suspect, are already pretty good, with you as her mother.)

You'll tell her that people make things up to tell little girls just so that they can scare them, and that those are unhappy, confused people with bad thoughts in their heads. You'll tell her to go around those people.

You'll tell her that you get upset when people lie to your daughter and that's why you got so upset.

It'll be fine.

But, take this from a mother who routinely went insane in front of her two daughters when bullshit like this popped up. Now that those daughters have kids of their own, and I was told by both those marvelous women who are my girls that even though my eruptions sometimes startled them and scared them when they were little, they learned about something that has defined their lives ever since then, and they thanked me for teaching them about it.

It was passion.

My daughters learned about having a passion for something from watching me, and it was one of my most gratifying moments in my life when they told me that and thanked me for it.

Your little girl is learning about passion, from the best teacher she could have.

Way to go, Mom.