Wake Me When My Daughter is 20

End of the innocence. Mine. Bus pass pictures taken on the first day of school grade 7 to 11 - the high school years in Quebec. 

I came in still a child having been in elementary school just two months before. It appears I didn't change too much too fast that until grade 10 when it looks like I might have had a wee puff before the picture was taken and then who knows what's going on in the last picture ... Cynical? Menstrual? Sad it's my last year on the kiddie ride of life? Thrilled that it is? 

If the change in my signature is any indication I was a different girl every year. But, I didn't give my parents as rough a ride as some who know me may think. Those years were good - for the most part - and I was a still a virgin for another 6 months after that last picture was taken.

I had a few part time jobs, lots of friends, enjoyed my tokes but never bothered with anything harder, and while there was heartache and confusion the only thing that really stands out is the nickname I had to live with almost all the way through: Flatsy Patsy. No boobs, that was my lot. Could have been worse for sure. 

But that was back then. When the phone was attached to the wall, pot grew out of the ground and porn wasn't something we'd see for another decade. Divorce was rare, moms didn't work and no one worried about bad men in panel vans.

We have a daughter and she is changing, she still has another two years of elementary school. But those two years will be gone in a blink of an eye and with it all the stuff of childhood.

She's changing, no doubt about it, but so far so good. She’s not moody or cranky, petulant or obstinate (yet) but she has begun to feel emotions and confusion to new depths.  She's wise and cautious and she’s beginning to do what we have been preparing her for - stepping away, just a little. 

But at the same time she is every bit a kid and she still believes, wholeheartedly, in fairies. I am loathe to have these remaining innocent years sullied with discussions about the less magical side of life. We make her aware without giving her details, frankly and I am in no mood to have to venture forth. I want to go back. I want to go back far enough to stuff her back into my womb. Forever.

Can't. So instead we discuss danger in tender terms and endeavour to help her - and her younger brother - develop the skills they need to ease into the world that awaits. Try to take it one step at time while their environment relentlessly pulls them in at a rate that we can barely clock. 

I am not looking forward to this next decade of parenting. 

I pretty much sailed through my teens and I am ill prepared to help navigate the seas ahead for my daughter - assuming she even lets me aboard. We are headed for uncharted waters rife with sharks and stingers and undertow. 

These first ten years? Loved all of ‘em. I remember sleepless nights and puke fests thinking; “One day I will long for this kind of soothable, washable problem.” And here we are getting close to them.

Heart break, hormones, cyber safety, text anxiety, smelly pits and acne angst is The Dark Woods around the corner and my daughter, though still frolicking in the Enchanted Forest, has one toe out on the troll bridge. Once she crosses over she’ll never get back to fairyland. 

And all the Good Queen power I have had at my fingertips to repair and calm, will be gone, as will my council when I unwittingly morph into her pathetic court jester, my very existence enough to embarrass and shame her into silence and my fix-it-with-a-kiss spells will only make things worse where once they had the magic of Merlin.

Someone pass the sleeping potion and wake me when she's 20.

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