Our Daughters

Originally Posted April 3, 2012

A friend’s 12 year daughter couldn’t make a recent party with peers as she had other plans. What did she miss? Pizza and cake and a few laughs right? 
Sadly ... no. One of the more precocious girls at the party decided to hold an impromptu fellatio workshop for the other gals. She had the boys stand up for a demonstration while her female students watched. One of the boys reportedly felt a bit embarrassed so all he got was manual manipulation. The other boys were willing participants in the oral version.


There is a rumour going around that junior and high school girls are soaking tampons in vodka and inserting them up inside themselves to get an undetectable buzz on. No boozy breath and a grand old time as the liquor is supposedly absorbed directly into the bloodstream. This rumour was accompanied by the notion boys are doing the same but inserting it in their arse.
So many things make this suspect not the least of which is the impossibility that a soaked, flaccid tampon could be inserted into anything ... but nonetheless the rumour is out there so the kids know about it and some will give it a go.


There was a story in the paper yesterday about the growing number of teen girls committing suicide and that on closer inspection some of these horrible deaths can be attributed to the "choking game", in which children strangle themselves to cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain and induce a euphoric high. Some accidentally die while playing this "game" alone in search of something made to sound fantastic on an internet post.


Bullied on Facebook, Twitter Teased, sexualized, ostracized ....What do we tell our daughters? 
“It” all seems to start so much earlier now. 


Children are exposed to so much so early and it's all without context. Their vocabulary includes words at 6 I didn’t hear until I was in my teens. And by that I don’t just mean the euphemisms and epithets I mean words like “stress” and “anxiety” and “fat”. Their experiential repertoire already includes incidents steeped in disappointment, betrayal and meanness ... it’s all too soon, too early. It’s a byproduct of so many things and the genie ain’t going back in the bottle so it is up to us to find the tools - and most importantly, the language - to help our daughters navigate these murky and turbulent waters that are lapping up at childhood’s magical shores earlier and earlier all the time. 

Much as the net can be a feeding ground for misinformation it is of course a great place to find the antidote. Here are two great sites to visit and below that a story from a mom about her daughter's journey from being bullied to finding self-confidence.

Site: Miss Representation

Site: Girl Power