Ours is a Sleeping Beauty household. Sometimes multiple times a day. During one recent viewing I began to ponder the approach the king and queen took to parenting with Aurora- isolating their daughter from potential danger by banishing all spinning wheels, with their perilous spindles, from the kingdom. At first glance, not a bad strategy, akin to following your child around with a bottle of antibacterial hand wash for the first five years of life. Upon further reflection, it became apparent to me that the royal parents were actually doing their child a disservice in insulating her from the spinning wheels of life rather than equipping her to deal with the challenges she will inevitably have to confront.
Every little girl is enthralled by the scene of the handsome prince rescuing his damsel in distress with a kiss. Such is the stuff of which dreams are made. As a mother, I cringe at the thought of Ella waiting around for someone to rescue her, romantic as it may seem. I want her to right her own wrongs, to wield her own sword against the injustices of her world.
To do this, I must do what is perhaps the hardest thing for a mother: allow her to know, in incremental ways, that the world is not the happy place scored by the song of woodland creatures that we would all like to pretend it is, if only until our girls finish first grade. I must take her hand and stand abreast with her, pointing out danger and explaining the best way to deal with it, rather than tuck her away behind my skirts as my heart longs to do.
