RAISING A QUEEN – Not A Potty Mouth, Entitlement Princess

Last night, October 31, 2014, was a special night for me and my kids. For that matter, Halloween is always a special time for us. Now, we aren’t a family who actually celebrates Halloween other than to pass out candy to the dozens (140 last night) of trick-o-treaters that show up at our door each year. This year my daughter was old enough to stay up and participate. She had a ball. I noticed that every time a young girl in any kind of princess costume (you know, the kind where everyone gets what they want and lives happily ever after.) showed up her eyes would light up; and she’d tell them, “I love your costume!” It was fun to watch these girls’ respond to my three year old. They weren’t exactly sure what to say. These young girls were sweet, absolutely adorable; and most were well mannered and polite.

On the other hand, I saw a video over the internet a few days ago where young girls were dressed up in princess costumes spewing profanities in the name of empowering woman concerning issues pertaining to the feminist agenda. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHYzYn3WZw) These young girls, their moms, rather, given that they were working off a memorized script that clearly no child could have written or understood, were trying to convince me that their profanities were not as offensive as words like “pay-inequality”, “Rape/Violence”, and “Be Pretty”.

So which princess do I hope my daughter will grow up to be? The edgy princess who isn’t articulate enough to speak in any convincing manner? The princess who gets what she wants, when she wants? Weeeelllllllll????

Let me think. That might be a tough one.

The answer would be NEITHER. I don’t want my daughter to grow up to be a princess at all. I want her to grow up to be a queen. I want her to be a well-spoken, intelligent, hard-working, innovative, leader who honors and respects all. I want her to be a woman who has the freedom and confidence in who she is to choose what she will do with her life. I want her to be a woman who is better educated than to need profanity to try to influence others with skewed statistics. I want her work ethic and understanding of responsibility to override her desire for an easy life. And, I want her to think of the needs of others above herself rather than buying into the entitlement mentality that feminism stands on.

Don’t get me wrong, my daughter has her princess costumes that she loves to play with, and recently my husband took her out on a date. The two of them got all dressed up, and he took her out to eat. She was truly our little princess. Her daddy doted over her and treated her like the little princess she is. She knows that she is our princess, and she is treated as such.

At the same time, we are teaching her about being a leader, taking responsibility, and working hard. Her duties in our home are ever increasing. We will impart to her a passion to lead a nation rather than clamoring to get everything she wants when she wants it. We will instill within her a desire to climb to the top without crawling and clawing anyone and everyone who gets in her way. We will train her to be her best at whatever she chooses to do with her life whether that is to be a stay-at-home mom or the CEO of a company she creates. And, she will not grow up believing that she has to be a man hater in order to lift herself up. In order for her to attain the status of queen, she must be a woman of influence and integrity.

If we hope that the young women we are caring for will have it better than we do, then my exhortation to parents is this: Don’t let your little girls be the princesses that you see on TV, the internet, or movies. Train them to be queens, true dignitaries who command respect because of the respect they give and the servants they are. Teach them to be leaders who walk in compassion and work hard to better the lives of others. Equip them with an education that will enable them to articulate their passions in a way that will transform the culture. Those are the kinds of women I’d like to see influencing our nation.

Image: http://turtzonthego.blogspot.com/2011/08/miss-world-philippines-2011-candidates.html