Walls: A documentary of segregated schools

In 1999 and 2000, I worked with two film students Matthew McLean and Dantia MacDonald to make an independent documentary about the struggle of Romani children for equal education in the Czech Republic. It was one of those hidden stories journalists search for--a significant but largely unknown injustice. At the time, 70 percent of Romani (sometimes called Gypsy) children in the Czech Republic were channeled into special schools for the mentally disabled. Before our documentary only a handful of articles had been written about the problem in the English press. 

I was a young reporter working part time for The Prague Post and I was handed the thick government report on the special schools because no one else wanted to tackle it. But instead of feeling put upon, I saw in it one of the biggest stories of the decade. I spent the next several years writing about the Roma, often about the special schools. And I finished the documentary Walls.

The film was the kind of documentary I'd always dreamed about--raw, a real-life story with "plot" and fiercely rebelious. Public trains provided our film crew transportation and the kitchen floors of ghetto homes gave us our base camps. The result is an incredible story following nine-year-old Karel and fifteen-year-olds Anezka and Pepino as they grapple with the segregated schools and their own growing understanding of their desperate chances in a deeply racist society.

It's been sixteen years now, enough time for another generation to grow up and pass through the schools. Today desegregation is still the hot issue it was then. The names of institutions have been changed to muddy the picture, but much of the problem remains the same as it was then. 

The film remains relevant for all of those reasons, but the way I view it now is quite different. I am no longer a young, idealistic, foreign reporter. I have made this country my home. And I'm a parent of adopted Romani children. I too have been told to put my child in a special school. Now the line between journalist and everyday life has been blurred.

Smrak 3: Gender specific toys and media that promote either ditsy

When my daughter was a baby I thought it would be simple. I would scrimp and save and buy her the best and most beautiful dolls on the market--the big ones with all the accessories, the ones made of good quality materials and none of that cheap plastic that releases toxins. Then she would never want Barbies. End of problem.

Creative Commons image by Thomas Hawk

Right…

Where I live cheap Barbie knock-offs are the most common gift given to children, after candy with artificial coloring. My daughter was given one by the organizers of a nature walk we joined. She has been given these horrid bits of soft, easily breakable, toxic plastic with extreme body-image issues, by relatives and visitors to our home on a regular basis. 

And of course, her friends have real Barbies, which are slightly less likely to fill the house with carcinogenic clutter, but are no better for girls to play with. And that’s usually all they play with. 

Why do I have such an issue with Barbies? You might ask. My daughter is incredibly slim with a perfect figure. She’s not one of the girls in most danger of poor-body-image problems. She’s the type others will envy after all. 

My issue is only partly to do with ridiculously long, skinny legs and waists that look like a pulled taffy. Those are problematic. But the feet permanently bent into the shape of shoes that are harmful to kids’ feet and require women to tiptoe through the world are worse. The focus on clothes, clothes, clothes, shoes, shoes, shoes, makeup, makeup, makeup, hair, hair, hair is simply nauseating. Girls should have other interests as well. 

I know the company has made some Barbie firefighter outfits and other less impractical garb, but these outfits are invariably extra baggy and ridiculous looking. Face it. Anything that actually fits on that doll well wouldn't allow for much freedom of movement in real life. Little girls don’t actually use the firefighter outfits and the focus remains on clothing that obviously allows for no activities beyond primping and attracting sexual interest.

That’s my problem. I have given in to everything being pink. What I can’t abide is the fact that the girl’s section of any toy store is entirely focused on appearance and primping, as if that is the only thing girls can be interested in. Some girls resist it. But my daughter doesn’t. She has a natural knack for these things and I want her to have fun learning to do her hair and dress up. Who doesn’t? It’s fun. 

Creative Commons image by Fortune Cookie of Flickr.com

But I also want her to sometimes do other things. 

On top of toy stores, there are the girl-oriented TV shows. Disney has done a relatively good job with some of their princess movies, despite the close resemblance between Disney princesses and Barbie dolls. At least some of them do things other than primp and they usually use fairly normal voices. 

But these are never the videos my daughter and her friends want to watch most. I made the terrible mistake of buying a Lego Friends DVD to take overseas with us because it claimed to support “diversity” and “friendship.”  The videos make me nauseous. The “friendship” promoted is only that within one’s own little clique and is not open to others. The girls in the video are constantly focused on primping and will often dash back home in the middle of an “adventure” to change clothes or make sure they look dazzling. This is all spelled out in detail and presents such an unhealthy message that as far from English-language videos as we are, I’ve had to disappear it.

The worst part of the video and many others I’ve seen are the little vocalizations that the girl characters emit. There are constant “Ooo!” and “Eeeeh!” noises as if someone is making fun of the women of the 1950s. Except that this is done in all seriousness and presented as girls being pretty and attractive. My daughter now imitates these noises for hours on end.  

When you were refugees

Where I grew up in northeastern Oregon, you sometimes hear a lonely soul remember that our families were once refugees--long ago. There's a fugitive whisper of remembrance when the topic of conversation turns to immigration.

Creative Commons image by Bengin Ahmad

The images and stories of early American immigration are usually fairly heroic. There are the Pilgrims and then the Pioneers. They are portrayed as intrepid explorers facing terrible danger in order to ensure our future.  We read Little House on the Prairie with childlike delight, never noticing that the little girl Laura was an illegal alien because her family was squatting on land that had been guaranteed to Native Americans by law and treaty. We rarely acknowledge the twin forces of hope and need that drove her family to become migrants. 

Today, I live in Central Europe, a land so settled and stolid that you would think it quite understandable that people here have even less empathy for immigrants.

But wait... 

Have you forgotten so quickly? It may sound like ancient history, but it is only a single generation since the land where I stand sent refugees fleeing, risking their lives and the lives of their children--desperate escape.

Creative Commons image by André Hofmeister 

My husband is fifty and he grew up in a village just four miles from the Czech-Austrian border. He remembers well the soldiers who came into the border villages to train children, including him and his younger brother, to watch for possible defecters fleeing their totalitarian homeland. The children were issued binoculars and notebooks by the army and taught to record the license numbers of all strangers. 

Today the Czech Republic is among the most anti-refugee countries in Europe. From newspaper accounts, we have yet to accept one single refugee from Syria. And yet we've had demonstrations condemning the refugees... preventatively. "They are different," the Czechs say. "They are not like us and they will change our culture."

And I fly back in memory.

I was a sixteen-year-old girl, barely old enough to understand and I was an exchange student in Germany just a few miles from the old Fulda Gap. The border was open then but it had only been that way for just three short years. And my best friend was an illegal migrant from Czechoslovakia. He played the guitar and spoke in a beautiful language I couldn't understand. He told stories of a hidden country the world knew little about. The German family where we lived kept him hidden in the basement--a debt paid to a family member left behind on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and still something to be ashamed of.

Uprchlíci

Stillking Films a režisér Martin Krejčí natočili pro UNHCR a agenturu Y&R spot Uprchlíci. Sami jsme byli uprchlíci.

Posted by BIO | OKO on Tuesday, February 23, 2016

(This is a powerful, short clip from a documentary about Czechoslovak refugees risking being shot to flee across the border into Austria in the 1980s. The quote in Czech in the video translates as, "It would be life or death, both or neither of us. That was all I could think of at the time.")

At my German school, I quickly learned not to speak about my friendship with the Czech. It was considered very odd that I would want to befriend such backward people. At home, the host family forbid the Czech man to speak his language to a Czech maid we knew. Everything from the east was considered less-than and possibly dangerous.

Today that man is a father of three with his own house and a teaching job. And he is afraid of refugees.

A cousin of my host family also came around sometimes, a guy from East Germany with intense fierce eyes. It was the family secret that his mother had been accidentally left behind, when the family fled from the east twenty-five years earlier. I thought he hated me because I was an American--the way is eyes would bore into me. 

Creative Commons image by Freedom House of Flickr.com

He wouldn't talk about it, but the others said he had fled over the Czechoslovak-Austrian border before it was open. He had escaped through that net of children with binoculars and soldiers with automatic weapons to join his aunt's family in the west. He had risked his life when he was little older than me--still a kid--because it was the only hope he could see in the world.

I will never forget the look in his eyes. I have seen it now many times over and I know now that he did not hate me. It was just fear, desperation, confusion and the expectation that I would hate him. You see the same look in the eyes of refugees today, people who have been forced to run from their homes by war, starvation, imprisonment or oppression. They are not entirely without understanding. They know that many people where they are going will fear and despise them. And yet they have to go, and so their eyes come to have that look of intensity. 

Junk food and people who feed it to my kids: Smrak 2

One day in Oregon, my kindergartner got off the school bus all hyped up with excitement. Her teacher was sweet and my little girl rode the bus with her best friend. It was lovely to see her doing so well.

She told me they had eaten green Jello at the end of the day and she loved it. Then I was worried. She often has adverse reactions to food coloring. 

A half an hour later she was shaking all over and screaming desperately, “I can’t stop! I can’t stop!” I held her on my lap, cursing inside. It took three hours before she could stop shaking and sobbing.

"Candy!" - Creative Commons image by Jeff of Flickr.com

When I say my child has allergies to food coloring and preservatives, most other parents sniff and change the subject. It’s like ADHD. Parents supposedly make up food-coloring problems to cover for bad parenting… or so they say. If I protest, they demand a doctor’s note, knowing full well that the medical establishment doesn’t look into this type of issue. 

One parent I know does understand though. He has a child with even worse reactions to food additives. His daughter had debilitating eczema as an toddler and they had her tested for allergies but the tests came back negative. Doctors told them it wasn’t allergies and they wanted to proscribe a pharmacy full of random drugs that “might help.” But the parents started to notice a correlation between the child’s problems and packaged food. 

After a consultation with a naturopath, they cut out all processed food and all non-organic food from their family diet. They went extreme. They make their own cheese, bread, crackers, cereal, sweets… everything. They buy only organic raw materials. It’s a huge amount of work. 
And their daughter is free of eczema. 

Scientists know that pesticides, chemicals released from packaging, preservatives, additives and food dyes are not good for us, but they are only a “little bit” not good for us. We can supposedly handle a certain level of toxicity. But some children are like canaries in a coal mine. They fall first, showing us that the concentration of harmful substances is accumulating. Every chemical has it’s maximum safe limit of parts per million, but no one has studied the effect of the maximum “safe” level of a hundred different somewhat toxic chemicals at once. 

Add to that the fact that our bodies evolved over millennia in which simple carbohydrates were hard to come by and most people today naturally crave sweets and other simple carbohydrates. Sugar acts on the body much the same way as an addictive drug. 

Then we are asked by the modern parenting movement to engage in “child-led feeding” because that is supposedly the “humane” way to parent--leaving children on their own to deal with dozens of unseen toxic chemicals and carbohydrate cravings programmed into their DNA during the Stone Age.

I keep a pretty good kitchen, not spectacular but decent—tortillas, chili, enchiladas, soups galore, spaghetti, curry, lasagna, stir fry, pizza, stew, salads of every description, dumplings, gravy, potatoes, baked fish… And sweets? Famous chocolate cake, pies beyond count, cookies, muffins and even homemade ice cream. 

My kids complain of course. They don’t like food that isn’t beige or sweets that don’t come in a shiny package. Like every other kid. But they are used to the fact that I win in the end, so mostly they eat it—while putting their approved least-favorite foods (mushrooms, olives, eggplant) on the edge of their plates.

That is most of the time, when they haven’t recently been at a friend’s house or had a discussion with other kids at school about food. At those times they refuse to eat and then engage in screaming fits when they aren’t allowed desert after not eating dinner. 
The situation isn’t any better on the other side of the world where we now live in the Czech Republic than it is in Oregon. I put a lot of effort into obtaining and growing food that isn’t saturated in chemicals. Then my kids go to friends’ houses and return full of chips and candy. 

Another reason their friends don’t come to our house: cookies, hot chocolate, homemade ice cream and popcorn are “stupid” and “boring.” Oh, and they “don’t drink water or juice.” Ever. According to the neighborhood kids, the only liquid they consume is pop. 

Creative Commons image by Felix M of Flickr.com

I tried volunteering with the school to put together a play day for the kids. They wanted me to run the refreshment stand, which consisted of handing out the Czech equivalent of Twinkies to the kids. I suggested I could bake some brownies, but the others all frowned at me and shook their heads. One of the mothers lectured me, “The whole point is to have snacks that the kids will actually eat. We know they’ll eat these.” 

Despite this, many parents do actually talk about healthy food but their most common phrase about food is “just this once” and every day is an exception. Some parents strain the vegetables out of soup before even giving it to their kids. They have given up on any semblance of healthful meals, because that is the only way to avoid conflict.

I’m less judgmental about what others do than you might think, given that I really do care about the health and my daughter has sensitivities to some additives. The thing is that I know how much conflict it causes. Who wants all that conflict in their dinner table? 

But here’s my question. Why is there conflict? 

Kids will eat vegetables—and quite readily—if they are fresh and appetizing and the child hasn’t been surrounded by unhealthy peer pressure or addictive sugars. I had absolutely no problem with my kids eating until they started attending preschool and seeing more of other kids. Adults were usually astonished at how well they ate even as stubborn toddlers and the fact that they would ask for salad when they had the nibbles.

If kids are told that “vegetables” are overcooked lumps of broccoli and brussles sprouts, of course they won’t want to eat them no matter what their environment. But neither will anyone else. 

Even this past week my kids were sure they wouldn’t like beet salad with nuts, kale, tomatoes and feta cheese in it and there were plenty of other good things for them to eat, so we didn’t waste it on them. But after a weekend without anyone pushing junk food, they asked for the beet salad and ate it eagerly. (It really is a treat. Bake the beets in thin strips and add lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil. Yum.)

But when addictive foods and junk are too prevalent they will refuse even their favorite meals, like spaghetti. They are still children and it is hard enough for adults to stop and realize what your body really needs. Children are not magically “more in touch.” In fact, amid the frenzy of play and the confusion of learning the social world, the opposite is often true.

My son now likes to say that at least he can have food coloring, because he doesn’t have the same sensitivities as my daughter. I attempt to explain to them both that it isn’t a question of one kid who can have them and another who can’t. It’s harmful to both of them, but one has more immediate reactions. 

It’s more difficult when my kids ask why their friends can eat chips and candy for lunch and then have white noodles with ketchup washed down with pop for dinner and they can’t. I don’t like to be negative in front of my kids and I don’t think their friends' parents are “bad” which is how my kids would interpret the full explanation with their childish ideas of absolutes. But in the end I have to tell them that part of the job of being a mother is making sure they are protected from harmful things, even if others don’t do the same.

Smrak: the techno-social malaise that makes rational living next to impossible

We know what is healthy and responsible. Why then is everything in our society engineered to undermine our attempts to live a healthy life?

I’m fed up with conflicting messages. 

“Everyone should exercise at least one hour every day; get eight hours of sleep; spend at least four hours with their children doing homework, having family meals and authentically connecting; you have to work and commute at least ten hours to have any chance at a successful career; and cook homemade food, for heaven’s sake, unless you want to doom your children to early death by cancer.” Sociologists and scientists give dire warnings of the consequences of a slip in any of those departments. 

Creative Commons image by Riley of Flickr.com

Then they add, “And it is essential that you make time to take care of yourself because otherwise you will be ineffective at all other tasks.”

Now wait just a blessed minute! 

You already used up every single hour in every single day with the first sentence. There are no more hours left for taking care of yourself--let alone taking care of an older relative, cleaning, keeping up social relationships, paying taxes or bills or even shopping for food (unless you count that as “time with the kids,” which we all know is hypocrisy.)

And those are just the bare basics. What about sending holiday cards? Are you nuts?
It isn’t just about time. But that’s often the crux when the issue is the adult lifestyle. You should exercise. REALLY! It’s essential. And if you want any chance at success in that competitive career, you had better devote more time to it. 

Got kids? Tough. If you can’t keep up a high-powered career because you insist on a bit of time for exercise or family, you’re making minimum wage. Your kids are eligible for the free lunch program! 

And it’s full of carcinogens. 

"Shame on you for being a leach on society!"

It’s hard enough to live a healthy and responsible lifestyle in this day and age. Exercise, healthy eating, meaningful work, being kind to others, pitching in for your community, doing your duty in recycling and responsible shopping, taking care of yourself… These things are often contradictory. 

Creative Commons image by Abigail G of Flickr.com

Add being a parent to that and the struggle becomes a war. It’s like Mama against the world—TV, video games, preservative-infused packaged food, the latest fashions, advertising… You name it, it’s lined up to produce parent-child battles and undermine your efforts for basic health and sanity. 

I’m going to coin a term here—smrak.

It’s like smog, except of the techno-social variety. The word “smrak” comes from two Czech words—”smrad” meaning stench and “mrak” meaning cloud. That’s how the technological and social environment feels to a parent trying to bring up kids with health and conscience. It's all the contradictory messages about what you must do and it's the plethora of obstacles put in your path--largely by other humans or by machines made by humans.

I’m going to devote a couple of posts to the different aspects of smrak--not to depress you, but rather to acknowledge what we’re all dealing with. 

The basic elements of srmak for parents are:

Smrak 1: Screen addiction and its pushers
Smrak 2: Junk food and people who give it to my kids
Smrak 3: Gender specific toys and media that promote either ditsy or violent
Smrak 4: The disconnect from nature
Smrak 5: A generation living in bubbles of bland sameness

(I’ll add links as the posts are done, so you click on them once they’re highlighted. You can also give suggestions for other aspects of smrak in the comments.)

When fellow parents are struggling to live in a healthy and responsible way, let’s support one another without so much judgment. None of us is perfect and we can do much better if we know we’re all battling smrak of one kind or another.

Smrak 1: Screen addiction and its pushers

I joke about being a Luddite but in reality I love technology. I’m legally blind and computers really do make the difference between freedom and imprisonment for many of us with disabilities. Many technologies are also essential for increasing the ecological sustainability of our lifestyles. 

Creative Commons image by  Lars Plougmann 

I even love the internet and social media. Social media is reason we have a serious presidential candidate in the United States who discusses issues of interest to people with regular incomes for the first time in my lifetime. The prevalence of social media has opened up opportunities for small businesses, homeschoolers, social justice activists and even organic farmers like never before. If we do ever find a large-scale solution to climate change, I believe it will be spread and activated through social media.

I’m not against technology. 

I’m just against kids being connected to some sort of electronic media more than SEVEN hours each day on average. That’s a staggering statistic. It’s often half of all awake time for kids. 
Yes, media is immediate, colorful, eye-catching, flexible and dynamic. It gives you the feeling of instant control. Change the channel, skip, scroll down, click a link, friend and unfriend. It’s all right there in a split second. No self-regulation necessary, no self-control required, no need to be flexible yourself and no time to notice slower things.

A terrifying phenomenon is building in this generation--people who don’t know how to deal with non-virtual reality. It isn't just the obvious stuff, like not knowing how to grow food or cook or get around without a map navigation system (although those are significant issues). It’s also the essential ability to observe the world in real time, to connect with one’s self and with the natural environment. It’s the ability to just be without the jitters reminiscent of an addict in need of a fix. 

Creative Commons image by  Devon Christopher Adams

You might say I should just manage my kids’ screen time and rest secure in the knowledge that at least my kids will gain technology skills without becoming addicted. But any of you who have actually tried this will be chuckling.

Easier said than done.

My kids are still in preschool and I am already under fierce pressure to allow them at least several hours of screen time every day. I attended a seminar on bullying prevention because my kids are in a high-risk category for being bullied, and the only concrete bit of advice the anti-bullying “expert” speaking had was: “Be sure to allow your kids to watch the fashionable TV shows and play enough video games, so they'll be up-to-date on what will be discussed at recess.” 

My kids report that some of their classmates already have smart phones. In preschool! For my second-grade ESL students, a smart phone is a basic school supply, like they used to have personal pencil sharpeners. 

Creative Commons image by  Yan Chi Vinci Chow

When my kids were toddlers, I eagerly awaited the day when their friends would visit us and they could visit their friends. But now their friends don’t want to visit us because, “the TV isn’t on.” And when I check or even just ask what they are doing at a friend’s house, there is no other activity other than TV, video games or Barbie dolls in front of the TV, in the case of girls. Their reading abilities are scanty for Facebook yet, but that won’t last long.

I’m going to catch some flak for mentioning that some other parents are becoming part of the problem on this one. But the thing is that most of these parents who put the kids in front of the TV or video games will tell you they don’t like to do it. They feel pressured to do it and they are exhausted. They usually insist to themselves that they are doing it "just this once" to save their sanity. Like me, they want their kids to have friends and be happy and this seems to be the price you have to pay. 

It’s a spiral of smrak, the term I am coining for the techno-social malaise of today's world, leading to kids spending most of their time in front of screens and having few real-world interests or skills. 

I’m not judgmental so much as tearing my own hair out. We need to stand together and stand up for a healthy amount of technology and other diversified activities for kids. We can’t use electronics as a way to avoid discussing life and health with our kids “just this once”--every single day. We must band together as humans of all ages to take back our lives and our minds. 

Technology is a wonderful gift. Let’s use it wisely.

Raising international boys: Peace soldiers not afraid to cry or care

He loves toy soldiers. He likes the swift, bracing feeling of their uniforms. He respects the steadfast pace of their tank tracks. He enjoys the tantalizing idea of their weapons.

He stands in bittersweet sorrow at the side of the road where a shrine marks the remembrance of a family for a soldier dead these seventy years--fled from an occupied homeland and lost on the eastern front. He vows that he will smite all those who harm children and invade small countries. 

Five years old and he asks me to remember to bring rubber gloves, so we can pick up litter on the way home from school. 

On the weekend we go to the grandparents and sit around the table in the kitchen where Nazi soldiers once stole the milk and left our grandfather hungry as a little boy. 

"Don't push me!" my little son sobs when his sister jabs an elbow into his middle while they wait for Grandma's soup. He clobbers her on the head with his spoon.

"Boys don't cry!" Grandpa bellows. 

The little boy stares at him with wide shocked eyes. It is possible--though unlikely--that this is actually the first time he has heard that old adage.

At our house, boys do cry and jabbing and hitting are the more serious offenses. Gritting my teeth, I handle the situation diplomatically. 

After dinner Grandma hands out gifts to the children, since we weren't here during the holidays--earrings for the girl, a nerf pistol for the boy. They are both very happy. Who am I to complain?

And yet I know that in this adopted country where we live (the Czech Republic) the chance that one's son will become a soldier and go off into a terrible war--where he may be killed or lose his sense of humanity--is minuscule. They don't understand that for American boys in families without wealth the stats are far different. He will not always be a boy here. He is a US citizen because of me and someday he will be a young man and a target for recruiters. 

I have two new teenage ESL students. More boys. They bring in an article from their English study magazine. It's about world peace. I ask open ended questions to get them using English grammar. Do you want peace? Yes. Do you think we should have a military? Well, only a very small one. If we have a small military, who will tackle an evil force such as Hitler when it comes again? The UN.

I do understand their perspective, but one of them is headed to the US as an exchange student in a few months. I have a talk with him about it, explaining about how Americans who study only American history see these things differently, how such well-reasoned statements can be considered highly controversial. 

Later my five-year-old is still playing with his tank and toy soldiers. He loves the sound effects of war. But when we write down wishes for the next year to put into our special wish jar, he says, "I wish all soldiers would be careful not to hurt anyone." 

And when scolded, even gently he cries. And that is okay because boys will be boys. A hug will fix it.

How do I explain the world of violence to small children? Or do they know already? Sometimes they ask the most discerning questions. I could swear they know the score all too well.

"Mama, why do presidents get to make wars?"

Of Barbies and Guns: A mom in the crossfire of gender stereotypes

When my daughter was a baby, I swore we would have no pink. I never liked pink in the first place. It reminds me of overly sweet synthetic medicine and being sick as a child. 
And it promotes gender stereotypes. 

But then I was given baby clothes. My family lives on modest means and it’s against my religion to be wasteful. When you’re a new mother in a circle of friends at the lower end of the middle class, you're in the baby-clothes rotation system whether you like it or not. It’s silly to buy new when your friends are desperate to reclaim their closet space. 

The problem was that mostly I was given pink. Some boy clothes turned up but mostly I had garbage sacks full of tiny pink dresses.

When I—on rare occasions—actually bought baby clothes, they were never pink. And my daughter wore the non-pink clothes we acquired to rags. Every day I told her she was strong and smart. (And she was.) She was also very pretty and I tried not to tell her that too often. 

I had the dream that my children would grow up without the limitations of sexism and gender stereotypes. When I was a child my parents were firmly anti-establishment and I never had pink dresses. I owned only one doll before the age of seven and I played swords with my brothers. I am convinced that this played a positive role in my development. 
But my daughter had other ideas. 

My daughter adored pink from the beginning. Before she could talk, she would watch me pick out her clothes and she would reach down under the pretty blue and green dresses to the pink ones hidden at the bottom of the drawer. She’d howl any day that I insisted she where something not pink. Pink was the first color she learned to name. 

Let’s be clear. I was a “good” mother. I listened to the American Pediatric Association. My child never saw a lighted screen before the age of two, except in passing at someone else’s house. We don’t own a TV. Our storybooks were about nature, boys and very non-princess-like girls.  She didn’t get this infatuation with pink from the media. 

When I was growing up, “feminists” were people (like my parents) who insisted that men and women are exactly the same on the inside. I simply couldn’t believe that a little girl could be inherently drawn to the color pink by something encoded in her DNA. 

But as much as I am a feminist, I’m not a controlling parent with an ideology to force down my child’s throat. So, I relented and let her wear pink. I even started buying pink clothes. I even allowed a few princess books to sneak into the house, even though I still buy the anti-princess books too. 

You see. I have these troubling memories from my own childhood. Yes, I grew up out in the sticks with two wild brothers and no TV. Yes, I enjoyed playing swords and army and building forts and Legos and sled racing. 

But deep down inside, I longed for dolls and dresses. I loved my first doll and still own her, ragged and bleached by time as she is. And I notice that when we drew pictures as children, my brothers drew pictures of complex military battles and underground hide-outs. I drew ladies with amazing princess dresses and little high heels. 

Where in the world had I even SEEN high heels at that point? (Seriously. I not only didn't have a TV,  was also legally blind.)

I remember the day my daughter saw high heels for the first time. My adult niece was living with us then and she was dressing up to go to a traditional European winter ball. So, she pulled out a pair of bright red heels from a deep closet and put them on under her dress. 

My two-year-old’s mouth dropped open and her eyes literally went as round as quarters. She reached out her little hands and nearly fell over in a swoon of ecstasy. And that was the beginning of a true obsession.

It only took seeing them once and my little girl was hopelessly enthralled. For the past five years, not a day has gone by without my hearing about high heeled shoes, who has them, what color they are, what they sound like, "when when when when" she will be allowed to destroy her feet with them. 

I may have drawn pictures of high heeled shoes as a toddler, but I grew out of the interest long before I was a teenager. I have never even been tempted to wear them. As a young adult I simply thought they were ugly, stupid and a plot by patriarchal men to slow women down. Now I really and truly hate them, but I have to admit that I haven’t been able to find a man who likes them either.

Over the years, I have given in inch by inch, because I AM NOT one of those controlling parents who doesn’t accept their child for who he or she really is, now am I? (Written with gritted teeth.) 

My daughter now owns more princess dresses than will fit in the jumbo dress-up box. We’ve spent a small fortune trying to lure her away from high heels with sparkly pink, shiny black, frilly white, red-hot and every other imaginable type of princess slipper. She owns a dozen very pretty dolls (very multicultural, mind you), a play kitchen and boxes upon boxes of ignored puzzles, legos, blocks, train sets and books. She even owns pretend make-up, real nail polish and many tubes of organic lip balm (organic because she likes to eat it rather than just wear it).

I eventually simply gave up on trying to raise a non-stereotypical girl. My hope lay in my son. 
I couldn’t very well dress him in dresses in the conservative Eastern European country where we live. But I did everything short of that. He had dolls before he could crawl. He wore diverse colors, including pink. He got stories about strong women and kind men (along with all the stories read to my daughter). And the first time he saw fictional violence on TV during a visit to someone else’s house, he ran to me crying that someone was hurt. 

The truth is that my son is very kind and sensitive. At age five, he is still confused about why some kids at preschool insist that boys can’t wear pink when he and his best friend really like pink along with lots of other colors. But he likes camouflage more. A lot more. Sigh.

And his initial reaction to toy cars was very similar to my daughter’s reaction to high heels. His first word was not “Mama” or even “Papa,” but “backhoe.”

Having kids will always make you rethink your beliefs one way or another. And for me, it has meant the grudging conclusion that at least some boys and some girls do have hardwired stereotypical tendencies. 

If there was ever an environment that would have promoted a more balanced division of clothing and toys between children it was ours. Being an immigrant and unable to drive, I spent most of my children’s toddlerhood isolated from society as well as TV media. I was very careful in my approach to the issue, neither pressing one way or the other, providing many different toys and books.

But the preferences of my children were clear from an early age and stated in no uncertain terms. 

Today, my son is a camo-crazed truck and soldier enthusiast with a heart of gold, who wants to rescue the vulnerable and chase away bad guys without actually hurting them. He’s a quick reader and loves to draw things with wheels. He hordes dolls and stuffed animals but doesn’t actually play with them. My daughter is Elsa-obsessed and yearns to watch make-up videos on YouTube. She’s also reasonably good with numbers and puzzles, extraordinarily strong-willed and the more violent of the two. 

Parents, you can’t win.

There are things I draw the line at--primarily toy guns and Barbies. Sometimes unwise friends or relatives gift the children such objects. I quietly discourage the adult offenders and grit my teeth through a few days of domestic disgust until these objects are carelessly left lying around and then they are disappeared. I have talked to my kids about both issues, quite openly. I don’t like toy guns that don’t shoot projectiles because they promote unrealistic ideas about firearms and play into a violence obsession in our society that I find extremely harmful. Barbies are ugly, difficult to dress and promote ideals of women being anorexic, clumsy, appearance-focused and brainless. 

My son gets to have bows and arrows and swords because these are not quite as poorly used by the entertainment media, but it’s a fine line. He also gets to have toy soldiers and tanks because they can be used to talk about history and real warfare. Hiding from the hard things in life will do us no good. But Mama has to draw the line somewhere.

As for my daughter, beyond clothes, shoes and make-up, she is sometimes interested in drawing and music. I promote these interests with great gusto, as somewhat more wholesome gender stereotypes. She does get lots of pretty stuff and lots of dolls. Just not Barbies. She gets to watch Disney princess movies but not Barbie or Lego Friends and other things that portray girls as cliquish and ditsy. She’ll get to wear high heels when she’s reached her full height. 

These are my lines and my husband’s lines, where we have been able to draw them. Every situation is different. Would I outlaw all military toys and pretend make-up until age twelve if I could? Probably. I’m not judgmental of other parents who are trying to find balance in other ways.

It isn’t easy trying to bring up well-balanced children in a media-saturated, fashion-aware world. If you come up with any nifty secret strategies, please let me know.