pop?u?lar /?p?py?l?r/ [pop-yuh-ler], Round 2
As I was washing dishes tonight, Boo (4) approached me and said:
“Mom. Marissa (a girl at daycare) is fabbyliss, and she is MEAN.”
I said “Fabulous?”
He said “I mean, popplyer. But she’s MEAN.”
I said, “Well, if she is mean, then she probably isn’t popular.”
“Oh, but she IS. Marissa TOLD US she’s popplyer.”
Lightbulb moment!
Is that the secret? Proclaiming your own “popplyarity?”
Based on our previous discussion, I engaged Drue in the conversation and asked her what popular means.
“It means you are famous, and sing on a stage, mom.”
I told them both, (acknowledging Druesy’s definition as on-track) “Popular means that people like you.”
Then I realized that in reality, kids often refer to mean and nasty kids as “popular.”
Oh, the challenge this brings to a parent.
Among my bazillion other parenting goals, I now embrace a mission to promote the immunity of my own children against self-proclaimed “popular” kids who are mean.
Who’s in it with me?
this is an important mission!! i've told anabell she doesn't need to try and be friends with people who are not nice to her…it's ok to find someone else to play with.
That is AWESOME.
Go-go, Cornelia! Thumbs up to your awesome motherly advice!!!
How sad that popularity is an issue for even younger kids than it was for us growing up! I don't think I even fully understood the meaning until middle school when my parents sent me to a private school. I very quickly learned about cliques and popularity then!
Oh, Laurie… I went to public school and 6th through 8th grade were just awful. I remember that in choir, girls would inspect labels on the shirt of the girl standing in front of them, and if it wasn't a name brand, you would get picked on mercilessly. Looking back now, it's all so stupid. I hope to teach my kids to be proud that we may try to save money on things that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.