The Best Laid Plans

We all have visions of what our children will be like. I've always been a staunch believer in nurture over nature, and I've had visions of weekend soccer games and ponytails, of my sporty, tomboy daughter laughing together with her group of sporty, tomboy friends for . . . well, for as long as I've been envisioning having a daughter. I cringed at the cheerleaders and dance team girls in high school. I felt appalled at the flighty college sorority girls, at girls who couldn't be seen without makeup and hair just so. And I imagined it all came from the moms, from childhood beauty pageants and rooms stuffed with Barbies and princess castles.

No previous relationship in my life taught me any different. You can choose your friends, self-selecting the peer group that has the same values and interests as you. The same goes for your boyfriends and, eventually, your spouse. You can pick the qualities that most appeal to you and steer clear from the ones that don't. Find out the guy you're dating has an obsession with weekend role-playing tournaments? Hey, that's cool for him, but it's not something you want, so you move on.

When you get pregnant, when you find out you are having a daughter, you immediately start planning her environment so as to promote the vision you've held in your head and heart for so long. You shun sparkly pink clothes that say "princess" or "spoiled" on them. You paint her nursery blue, or green, or tan, or any other color than soft, pastel, cotton candy pink. You buy toys that feature brightly colored animals and books that show female characters being firefighters and athletes and doctors. You hang a plastic baseball bat on her wall, next to her stuffed bears and butterflies.

And then she's born. She grows and smiles and starts developing her own little personality. And that's where the disconnect begins. Her own little personality. She swishes around in her dresses. She loves having your glittery scarf wrapped around her neck. She watches you put on your necklace and earrings every day and begs for some of her own. And you are conflicted. You don't want your daughter to be prissy. Or bossy. Or rude. Or spoiled. Or ANY negative adjective, not just the ones that you imagine in your head are somehow tied to an early fascination with glamor. But at the same time, you see her smile when she holds out her delicate little arm with a bracelet dangling from it, and you know how happy she must feel at that moment, how pretty.

And you realize that you don't get to really pick your child's personality. You can't date your kid for a while before deciding it's not really what you were thinking. For the first time, you realize that you have to work with--and love--exactly what you have, even if it's not what you imagined in your head all those years.

There are a lot of things my daughter does that I didn't foresee. She's a consummate daddy's girl. She's a hitter. She has a quick-flash temper that I recognize all too well. And she love love loves to dress up and be girly. None of those are things I would have picked. But there they are, still. Reality. And I could spend my time fighting against these things, constantly trying to steer her in other directions, directions that I pick for her. And for some of them, like the hitting and the temper, we will choose those battles and work work work on helping her change.

But the others? The fact that a lot of the time when she cries, she reaches for her Daddy rather than for me? The fact that she's called the "princess" of her class? The fact that she loves to prance around in my jewelry and accessories, and often asks for shoes when she first wakes up? Well, I just have to love her. Her. The real her. The her who is, not the "her" I thought she might have been. I have to realize that these things aren't bad in any way, shape, or form. They're just different. Different than the way I was. Different than the way I thought she would be. And that's okay. Great even. Because it means that she is her own person. She's not an empty vessel. She has her own personality, her own preferences, her own ideas, and I could wish for nothing more, nothing better, for my daughter, than for her to feel comfortable and confident in her own skin, for her to have her own goals in life, her own identity.

What a realization.

Parenthood is a process of getting over yourself.

And here we thought it would be us teaching our kids all the important lessons.