I was picking up, Mitchell, our second grader from school and was getting his homework folder out of his desk when a pink piece of paper caught my attention. I opened it and realized that it was Mitchell’s first “love note”. On a torn off piece of construction paper, in childlike print it said, “Will you be my boyfriend?”
I tried hard not to join my great grandmother in heaven in that moment but I felt like my heart might stop beating and a heavenly reunion was on its way. But I survived. And miraculously the Lord put a muzzle on my mouth until later that night. As I was putting Mitch to bed I casually asked him who wrote the note. He told me who the girl was and he said, “But I think it had to be a joke because she growls at me and never plays with me on the playground.” I laughed inside and told him girls can just be that way sometimes. I asked Mitchell what his response to her was. And in typical Mitchell fashion he said, “I told her thanks for asking but I’ll have to think about it.” While I thought his response was a great one, I felt like this was a good opportunity to discuss how a girl can be “ladylike” and how he can respond when a girl is not being ladylike……like this forward chick who just asked him to be her stinkin’ BOYFRIEND!!!!!
Thankfully Mitchell is being trained well by his Daddy to be a gentleman and what that means. So it was easy to springboard from what he knows of being a gentleman to what it means for a girl to be “ladylike”. I explained to him that it really isn’t a girl’s place to ask a boy to be her boyfriend. It was a boys place to do that and not until you’re much older do you even think about that. Right now you just need to have friends. I have to say that I felt a bit old fashioned as all of this was coming out of my mouth. Our culture is so different today and many women fight like crazy for their rights and equality with men. And our young girls are being shaped by it.
Mitchell and I finished our conversation by thinking of other ways he could respond if he were ever asked that question again. And guess what? He was asked again. The summer of second grade he had a girl call our house to talk to him. She wanted to hear about his summer. I explained that I’d be glad to tell her all about his summer, but that Mitchell wasn’t allowed to receive calls from girls. But she wasn’t interested in talking to me about his summer. It might’ve had to do with the conniption I had when I realized a girl was calling our house for the first time. Or maybe it was the Mom style intense interrogation she experienced upon asking for Mitchell. Poor kid.
Our son’s experience with aggressive young girls has driven me to more of an urgency in my heart to train my own young daughter to be ladylike and with the realization that it really can’t start too soon.
Practical ways to help teach our girls to be ladylike:
- Teach her to let her Daddy or brother open the door for her and for other boys as she gets older
- Talk openly about not being aggressive and going after boys. There’s a beautiful quality about waiting to be pursued by the one God has for her.
- Discuss the power of the tongue and how our words, even as young girls, have the power to destroy. Growing into a young lady involves holding our tongues from gossip as well as from flattering boys with a flirtatious spirit/words.
- Help her see the value of simple friendships
Leave a Reply