"My Baby is Eight!" Reflections on the Quick Passing of the Early Childhood Years

"My Baby is Eight!" Reflections on the Quick Passing of the Early Childhood Years
By Jennifer McManus

Up until this summer in our household, American Girl has meant dolls, doll clothes, doll furniture, doll books, girls “look-alike” clothes, and girl hair care products. It has meant lots of trips to our—and I say this with mixed feelings—“conveniently located” Chicago outpost of American Girl Place.

It has meant that Bea and Grace take surprisingly patient turns with the latest catalog when it comes in the mail until it is a tattered rag of shiny paper pulp. It has provided an endless list of gift possibilities for Grandma, Great-Grandma, uncles, aunts, babysitters and friends. It has kept X-box, Nintendo, Game Boy, PSP2 and the like outside of our door. It has provided a beautiful, peaceful world of tremendous imaginative play for both my girls—hours and hours spent playing the roles of girls from another time and place. This makes the high price of the dolls and their world a worthy investment in my mind.

In addition, I have always admired the spin the company puts on what it can mean to be a girl in America today: positive self image, family, friends, sports, the value of using your brain, and the like. I even approve of their politics—they stood up to the conservative activists that tried to derail their “I Can” campaign. Instead of buckling under the pressure, they raised over $200,000 to go towards worthy programs that build girls skills in math, science and technology, develop girls’ leadership potential and encourage their athletic skills. What’s not to like?

Well, now American Girl has thrown me a curve ball. It has to do with the best-selling, very well-written and informative book, The Care and Keeping of You, aimed for girls eight and over. As of this summer, Bea is eight. Is Bea ready to read the “‘head to toe’ guide that answers all your questions, from hair care to healthy eating, bad breath to bras, periods to pimples, and everything in between?”

The real question is, AM I READY FOR THIS BOOK?!? My baby! I’m not ready to tell her that she is going to get a period. I’m not ready to tell her at least a third of what’s in this book.

Of course, this fact is the very point of the book. It tells our girls what they need to know in a way that allows for them to go to mom to fill in the blanks (not that there are many blanks to get filled in). It provides an upbeat, positive spin on what makes girls girls and then, eventually, women. It is much less scary than Our Bodies, Our Selves, which my mom not so casually left on my bed one day in 1980 (two years after I’d gotten my period).

I just wish that the time wasn’t here so soon for me to even be considering giving this book to Bea. I wish that, in the chaos of early childhood care-giving, I would have really appreciated that parenthood is a never-ending roller coaster of new twists and turns, thrown at you without warning and it goes by way, way too fast. I would have tried to apply the brakes a little bit. Before you know it your little four-year-old is twice that age. Just as you’re getting through with potty training, you have to go onto feminine hygiene, or so it seems to me, during this season of my little girl turning the glorious, adventuresome age of eight.

Jennifer McManus is the mother of two daughters. She is a preschool teacher at All Things Bright and Beautiful Preschool. This article was published first in the Fall 2006 issue of Early Childhood.