Girly Girl?
On June 21st Flea will be 16 months old, which is just about the age at which toddlers develop strong attachments to teddy bears and blankets and other "loveys." Flea's favorite lovey is a stuffed rendition of the blue-striped bunny from the classic children's book Goodnight Moon. She knows how to make a "buh" sound (as in "baby") but for some reason chooses to call the rabbit "Money" instead of "Bunny." I hope we're not getting a glimpse of her future values. Her other lovey is Elmer, the patchwork elephant. She's learning her colors and likes to practice on Elmer. Yesterday I was reading her the Elmer book and asked which color was her favorite. Without hesitation she pointed to pink and said, "ping." I thought it might be a fluke, but today I showed her the stuffed elephant and asked again. She pointed to a pink square and said, "ping." I guess it's official, then: her favorite color is pink. I swear I didn't teach her that. She doesn't have Barbies or lots of pink clothes, and I rarely wear pink. So where does she get it? Is it somehow programmed into the second X chromosome? And--horrors--does it condemn me to 5 years of princess mania?(And, while I'm throwing out questions, why am I so embarrassed to admit that pink is my favorite color too?)
posted by WinterWheat | 7:07 PM
8 Comments:
My favourite colours are red and purple, but on the photo of Elmer I'm more drawn to the blue. It may just be that Flea is responding to pink in the patchwork of colour.
But then again, "money" bunny and "ping" are emerging as a correlation towards princesshood. Yikes! ;-)
Well, at least you can take comfort in knowing that correlation does not equal causation.
i'm beginning to think it's evolutionarily hard-wired
i feel i have done *nothing* to promote pink for chicklet #1 and yet she is forever telling her brother that 'pink is for gals! boys can't wear pink!'
(i also fear the possibility of a barbie/disney princess deluge in the near future - ugh!)
Here's one for ya.
Consider a child's (potential) view of morphology. The sound/meaning elements that make up words. She has to be learning them, whether she's doing it by some kind of statistical process or by activating (or shutting off) pre-programed constraints (yay chomsky). But in either general process, she will make errors. One such error could be that the phoneme /m/ or even /mU/ (an approximation, sorry, no IPA on this keyboard) serves as a meaningful element. As in "mommy" or "mama", which is hardly ever pronounced with full on ae vowels.
So bunny--> munny is a bunny who is much loved. Like mommy.
And ping? Why of course it's a great color. It's the color of faces charged with happy, strong emotions (also bad, but that would mean a dislike of "ping"). That nice association is just mushed out of boys through subtle reinforcement (and punishment, and negative reinforcement) cues, if not from parents then certainly from some of the people your child will invariably interact with even by the age of 6 months. Consider your mother, mother in law, or that sweet but old fashioned uncle.
There. That's what you can do with a master's in Linguistics, most of a PhD in psych, some creativity, and little regard for science (although as a hypothesis, the general premise(s) should be testable). Weeee! I love folk psychology!
PFG - so you're saying my kid loves me and she's smart. Yeah, okay, I guess I can go with that.
Oh yeah, your kid is definitely smart, babe. I mean, look at her parents. The apple does not fall far from the tree. :):)
I think it's great that she is definitively expressing her likes, whether or not you are comfortable with them at this point. And hey: She's still a baby, girlfriend. No doubt her favorite color, favorite toy, favorite friend even will change many times over throughout the years. (Although I must confess that purple has been my favorite color since I was two or three, so watch out!)
I predict great things for Flea!
Hugs and love!
P.S.--And, by the way...I do not smell like vomit! LOL! I smell goo-oo-oo-d!
Aw, my son's usual favorite color to wear was pink, too, and he loved to wear pink polos (because apparently that is the only boys clothing item one can buy in that color)... up until last year. It's a softly soothing but entirely pleasant color, and well, a rather flattering one to wear. Nowadays however, he's into red, like tomato red (he likes the orangey reds), and I have to say I am grateful, not because there's anything wrong with pink for kids, but it does make him easier to find when he wanders off because he's head to foot in eye-catching red.
Oh! Forgot about ELMER! My kids loved Elmer when they were little... oh heck, *I* loved Elmer when they were little ;)
Not a bit surprised that your daughter is smart.
As far as admiting that pink is the favorite color for you too, could it be that you do not want to be stero-typed a 'girly-girl?' That being said, I do not think that colors, and what we think might be associated with personality traits are mutually exclusive.
By the way, I cannot stand the color blue!
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