Book recommendations for 4 ½-year-old. Theme: just be yourself.
April 8, 2015 9:45 PM   Subscribe

My little girl just declared that maybe if she could be prettier, then maybe a boy in her preschool class would be better friends with her.

I believe that a year or more ago, my daughter and this boy were very tight-knit friends, but for many months now she’s complained that he isn’t nice to her. Our sense is that this means sometimes he’d really rather play with some other kids. In the meantime, she often laments to us that she wishes he would play with her more, and once she announced (with a sigh) that she really wants to marry him.

Tonight she just about made our jaws drop when she told us that she wants to have prettier clothes and look prettier, and maybe then he will be better friends with her. She had the whole idea surprisingly well developed for a 4-year-old. We tried to ask her questions to get her to think about it more carefully, but I think my wife was having a hard time holding back a lecture on the matter.

We felt like we’ve done a good job avoiding exposure to the kind of TV or media that would promote this kind of thinking. I’m planning to ask her teacher about it tomorrow, since I suspect this comes out of some kind of talk among her classmates. FWIW, I don’t think we’ve been prudes about keeping her away from the princess-industrial complex, but we tend to naturally steer away from it, and thus far she’s shown only a little interest in all things princess.

She loves reading books, and I believe that some good books have done a good job of helping us explore some good ideas. So I’m seeking recommendations for picture books for young kids that do a good job with the theme of “just be yourself”, or otherwise address the problem here.
posted by polecat to Human Relations (29 answers total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
There's The Paper Bag Princess, which isn't your normal princess story. The illustrations are particularly charming.
posted by mochapickle at 9:51 PM on April 8, 2015 [13 favorites]


well...Olivia is a terrific character for that age - who is relentlessly 'herself'. but, she does like to fancy-up with clothes 'n stuff.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:04 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Break out some Amelia Bedelia and tell her that she is very pretty but boys are stupid at her age. They are mean to the girls that they love. Tell her to keep her wedding plans to herself until he is at least 34. Men younger than that 34 seem to be terrified of a woman with plans. And then make her an ice cream cone.

On a side note- she does crave male approval. This is a good age to start daddy/daughter dates. Find a time that you can always be there for her and commit to it. Monday morning breakfast together or an evening out on the town- it doesn't matter. What matters is that she knows that you value her enough, and think that she is pretty enough and smart enough, that you want to spend time with her. If you treat her like a princess then the mean boys won't matter so much.
posted by myselfasme at 10:21 PM on April 8, 2015 [9 favorites]


My go-to book for being ecstatically happy with being yourself, Tiny-Human Edition, is The Wizard of Wallaby Wallow by Jack Kent. There are no princesses in it -- there's a schlubby wizard and lots of anthropomorphic animals.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 10:27 PM on April 8, 2015


Paperbag Princess for sure. We also combatted this by getting our daughters dolls that looked like them. (They're biracial and get a LOT of comments about their appearance which has at times really affected them both- but in different ways .)

If you're looking for massive resources Amy Poehler's website is great linky link But the best of all is A Mighty Girl.
posted by taff at 10:40 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


A non-book activity that has helped for this has been to print out pictures of a huge range of beautiful people and children who aren't just a narrow aesthetic as a "Princess & Queens Gallery" pasted on her bedroom wall. Mix in family photos too. We've got Disney princesses next to 18th century peasants and Soviet astronauts and South African activists, and it's been great to see her start to pick up on "Look I have muscles like her! Look, my hair is fluffy like hers!" Books are great, but having a wall of brave, strong and inspiring women of all ages and ethnicity with your parents complimenting them "Wow, she's so beautiful with her long grey hair, it's like a silver river!" in positive ways has helped our princess-obssessed kid.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:43 PM on April 8, 2015 [32 favorites]


In addition to books, sports.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:41 PM on April 8, 2015


Please please do not tell your very smart daughter "When boys are mean to you, it means they like you!"

In fact, don't ever downplay other people's unkind behavior. Fuck that.

Instead, please teach her to reframe and sidestep and respect her peers preferences and/or actions. Tell her age-appropriate Truth, and give her the Skills to Cope with what she perceives.

My son just turned four. I have no books for you. I know being told that "when boys are mean it says they like you" led me into thinking people that were narcissists and users and later, abusive, didn't really mean it when they hurt my feelings. Anywho....

Four is not too young to learn that friendships ebb and flow, and that Best Policy is to put effort where it is returned. Is she lacking friends? Teachers can help introduce her to new playmates. Start there with her teachers. Start reframing what feels to your daughter as rejection into an opportunity to branch out and make new friends.

She's not too young. Don't lie to her. Give her tools to navigate social interactions, not false platitudes on either end of the spectrum. Learning to shift her attention towards people and situations that make her feel good is a skill she can cultivate. Teaching her the difference between what feels Positive and what feels Badly is your job as a parent. Go ahead! You can't fail for trying!!
posted by jbenben at 11:47 PM on April 8, 2015 [67 favorites]


You know, I'm going to chime in something that may be unwelcome. This is just my experience.

I am a woman who was a girl raised by 70s parents who vowed to keep me away from gender stereotypes, who banned Barbie and her ilk from our house. I happily played with Tonka trucks and wiffle-bats-as-light-sabers and soccer balls and baseball gloves. I fought for My Little Ponies, but I wasn't allowed accessories for them -- In my parents' philosophy, just the horses should be enough. For the most part, I ran and climbed trees and built forts and turned big cardboard boxes into rocket ships. My main toys were crayons and paints and clay and whatever I could find in the yard or the neighborhood or creek or the woods.

Until I hit a certain level of self-awareness at school.

Boys didn't want to play with me because I was a girl. Girls didn't want to play with me because I played "like a boy." I was weird to both. I wound up not being able to play with anyone, because I had no experience with other kids and their expectations or how to navigate them. Very quickly after that, girls my age started finding boys "cute" or "icky" and vice versa. I had an even harder time navigating this. Very quickly after that, I found that "pretty" girls got attention from boys even though they didn't seem to want it, while I, a girl who just wanted to play rambunctious games with the rambunctious boys, couldn't get anyone's attention.

It was extremely isolating.

I am happy for the foundations I had and for the philosophies that were set very early on because they turned me into a little riot grrl and then into a take-no-prisoners feminist, but man, I wish my parents had guided me through navigating gender roles at an early age. I would have understood it if someone had explained it to me, but I think they didn't try because they thought telling me what other people might expect might instill in me the desire to meet that understanding. However, the lack of a concept of what other people might expect coupled with the desire to interact with other people can be really, really tough to reconcile for a young child.

It's a tightrope, and a goddamned tough one to walk.

I wish I'd been educated on typical gender roles and societal expectations earlier on in life. Educated on, not indoctrinated into. I may have pleased my parents by nonconforming, but I sure as hell wasn't old enough to navigate a sometimes-very-harsh world with the baselines I was given.
posted by erst at 12:14 AM on April 9, 2015 [52 favorites]


I Like Myself! by Karen Beaumont has a positive message. From the description: "High on energy and imagination, this ode to self-esteem encourages kids to appreciate everything about themselves--inside and out. Messy hair? Beaver breath? So what! Here's a little girl who knows what really matters."
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 12:15 AM on April 9, 2015


This blog has some good suggestions.
posted by billiebee at 12:58 AM on April 9, 2015


Pippi Longstocking - oldie but still good
posted by mumimor at 2:16 AM on April 9, 2015 [5 favorites]


Leo the late bloomer. Just what you're looking for.
posted by chasles at 2:31 AM on April 9, 2015


You absolutely need a copy of Princess Smartypants. It should fit the bill very nicely.
posted by scratch at 4:48 AM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon is all about the "be yourself" theme.
posted by true at 5:02 AM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm going to zag a little and recommend George and Martha. They're friends, they're both hippos (so their attractiveness is definitely in the eye of the beholder) - and it's a great demonstration of how good friendships work - you support each other, you tell the truth, and you like each other for who you are.
posted by Mchelly at 5:33 AM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


The Big Orange Splot is great and shows, in a totally 4yo-appropriate way, that even (male) adults deal with this. The main character in A Bad Case of Stripes is a ~7yo girl and addresses this in a funny way, too. Both my kids (boys) loved these books and we occasionally use a shorthand from the books when they feel pressured to be a certain way, saying things like, "Well my house is me and it looks like all my dreams," or "Careful, you might catch a bad case of the stripes."
posted by cocoagirl at 5:38 AM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Nthing taff. A Mighty Girl is a fantastic website for just this sort of content.
posted by JimBJ9 at 7:19 AM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


My son is about to turn 4. We've been pretty good about keeping him away from all of the Disney / princess crap (as well as superheroes and other branded characters) but the other kids in the class are exposed to it regularly. Consequently my kid is still intimately familiar with these characters. There are even times when the preschool shows movies to the kids (end of the day on Fridays, so we try to pick him up early).

So this isn't necessarily about keeping your own kid away from character influences, they get exposed anyway through peers. And it's possible that that message about being pretty somehow got conveyed to your daughter from her peers at school. I agree with the advice above; teach her that being nice is about being nice, and being mean is about being mean, and it has everything to do with the other person and nothing to do with any shortcomings on her part. And then support her through her feelings.

I don't have any specific book recs, but we quite liked the Llama Llama series for talking about feelings. Might be a little young now for your daughter though.
posted by vignettist at 7:34 AM on April 9, 2015


Nthing The Paperbag Princess. Here's a great, new feminist children's e-book: Petunia, the Girl who was NOT A Princess by M.R. Nelson. I also enjoyed the author's USA Today column, So what if my girls are princesses?, especially this quote from her piece:

"I don't care if my daughters are princesses. We decided the battle was doing more harm than the princesses would. We were inadvertently telling our daughters that their interests weren't "right" or good enough for us, and that "girl things" such as princesses weren't as good as the "boy things" we seemed to prefer. We live in a society that tells them fashion is frivolous but football is a fine diversion. I will not add my own voice to that message."

OP, candidly and gently, I think the "princess" concern is a bit of a red herring in your particular Ask here. More to the point: at the tender age of 4, your wise daughter has correctly and rather precociously intuited the patriarchal messages that our larger society eventually tells all women: As a girl or woman, you will have the highest social value if you are a cis-gendered heterosexual female who looks physically attractive to men and boys. I guess the real question for us is: What does feminist parenting look and sound like? How do we as parents deal with inconvenient, messed up, and sexist bits of social truth our kids bring home from daycare and school? Do we lie to our daughters and say things like "looks don't matter at all!" Do we double down on the lie and basically say things to the effects of "Wear whatever you want! You'll never be teased for falling to perform the so-called 'correct' gender." Or rather do we say "There are people out there who think THIS. Here's why we think they are wrong. Here's what we happen to appreciate about awesome girls in this family. Here's what you could say if you see a little boy being teased for wearing pink to school or asking to play mermaids with you. Here's what you could say if a little girl does not want to play with dolls." Basically: sexism begins early, here are some age-appropriate tools and scripts for a 4-year-old to begin countering the larger society's sexist messages. Any kid should be able to play with any toy and wear any color or style -- that should be our cultural norm but it sucks that it isn't. See also Roland Humphrey is Wearing a WHAT? by Eileen Kiernan-Johnson, and When Kayla was Kyle by Amy Fabrikant, and Jacob's New Dress by Sarah Hoffman.
posted by hush at 8:33 AM on April 9, 2015 [16 favorites]


Sort of related: suggesting that girls are cool and can do just about anything: I'm Bored, Michael Ian Black. and My Friend Is Sad, Mo Willems: Elephant wasn't cheered up very effectively by Piggie being something else other than herself.
posted by dlwr300 at 8:41 AM on April 9, 2015


I would normally think she's on the young side for this, so maybe file it away for later, but if she's got the attention span for it you could read her Dealing with Dragons. Pat Wrede's Princess Cimorene is not a proper princess, in that she enjoys fencing and cooking and runs away to live with a dragon, but then has to deal with repeated unwanted "rescue" attempts from well-meaning but oblivious knights, navigating the captive princess social scene, and draconic politics. I think it's marketed for age 10 and up but I enjoyed it at around 7 or 8.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:24 AM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Seconding Princess Smartypants.
posted by flabdablet at 9:54 AM on April 9, 2015


I will second the recommendations for the Elephant & Piggie series, because they are delightful and the friends also struggle with feeling jealousy and abandonment. Piggie also avoids most of the stereotypical "girlie" gender markers of picture books, like long eyelashes and bows. I Am Going! and My New Friend Is So Fun! seem relevant.
posted by nicebookrack at 10:41 AM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. It sounds like I have a lot of great book ideas here, and I appreciate all the thoughtful comments and suggestions.
posted by polecat at 11:05 AM on April 9, 2015


Free to be You and Me!! This has been around for over 35 years and it still is one of my favorites. I know you said you wanted a book (it's a DVD). I think every child should watch this. (Yes, it's from the 70s and the actors aren't any that the younger generation has probably heard of, but the information and stories are timeless.)

Here's an excerpt of what it's about: "The idea for Free to Be…You and Me came about when my sister, Terre, had her first child, a daughter. I went out looking for a book of wonderful bedtime stories to read to her. But I was shocked to find that all the children's books I found reinforced old gender stereotypes of what girls and boys were supposed to be or ought to be. None of them talked about all the possibilities of what girls and boys could be."
posted by ATX Peanut at 11:56 AM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea

About a goat who gets jealous of a unicorn, then they realize they both are awesome at different things.
posted by haunted_pomegranate at 3:31 PM on April 9, 2015


Hi!

I'm not sure if The Rainbow Fish is what you are looking for, but it's a nice story for little kids and it has to do with friendship and "looks". I love(d) it.
posted by divina_y_humilde at 4:05 PM on April 9, 2015


I have mixed feelings about Rainbow Fish because the lonely glittery-scaled fish gives away their shiny scales to make other fish their friends. "Sacrifice what makes you special and/or literal parts of your body so people will like you" is the kind of destructive selflessness that makes The Giving Tree skeevy to me in retrospect.
posted by nicebookrack at 4:26 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


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