I Do Not Want My Daughter to Be ‘Nice’ [View all]

I really like this article and probably because it is very close to how my daughter and I act so differently. I grew up as the "nice girl with the big smile" even though there were times I wanted to tell people to f-off. My daughter is NOT like that at all. She doesn't smile indiscriminately nor does she put up with people she does not care for.

I remember when she was only 6 y.o. and we were waiting in line at the pharmacy. There was an older woman behind us who kept telling her that she needed to smile because she was such a "pretty girl". My daughter looked at me like "wtf?" and it wasn't until this woman started getting a little more pushy about my daughter smiling (she even grabbed my daughter by the shoulder) that I spoke up and asked her to please let it go. I regret not telling the woman to mind her own business in a more direct and less kind way. This woman was pushy and frankly rude. There was no reason for my kid to smile if she didn't feel like it and I was so programmed from my own childhood that I didn't take a stronger stance. Now, however, I have changed. It's not that I'm not a good person or that I can't be nice, it's that I don't feel that I have to be nice to everyone even at my own expense or when I really don't feel like it. I have to say that my daughter has been a bigger influence on me in this way than I have been on her.


I Do Not Want My Daughter to Be ‘Nice’
By CATHERINE NEWMAN

My 10-year-old daughter, Birdy, is not nice, not exactly. She is deeply kind, profoundly compassionate and, probably, the most ethical person I know — but she will not smile at you unless either she is genuinely glad to see you or you’re telling her a joke that has something scatological for a punch line.

This makes her different from me. Sure, I spent the first half of the ’90s wearing a thrifted suede jacket that I had accessorized with a neon-green sticker across the back, expressing a somewhat negative attitude regarding the patriarchy (let’s just say it’s unprintable here). But even then, I smiled at everyone. Because I wanted everyone to like me. Everyone!

I am a radical, card-carrying feminist, and still I put out smiles indiscriminately, hoping to please not only friends and family but also my son’s orthodontist, the barista who rolls his eyes while I fumble apologetically through my wallet, and the ex-boyfriend who cheated on me. If I had all that energy back — all the hours and neurochemicals and facial musculature I have expended in my wanton pursuit of likedness — I could propel myself to Mars and back. Or, at the very least, write the book “Mars and Back: Gendered Constraints and Wasted Smiling.”


http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/i-do-not-want-my-daughter-to-be-nice/?smid=fb-share&_r=0