| orthodoc |
03-11-2014 07:17 PM |
Maybe growing up in a culture with actual princesses is a reality check, as Sundae says. It's easy to romanticize/relegate to fantasy something that you never see in real life.
My anecdotal contribution relates to my own kids. I homeschooled the four of them until my oldest was in 6th grade. I bought Lego sets and science kits/toys for all of them and let them each explore the things that really interested them. We did plenty of math and English, but history, geography, science, and everything else was a huge mash of everything that interested us. My daughter gleefully made volcanoes and built Lego kits and refused to wear dresses - until she went to school. At which point she decided she liked pink, which she never had before, and became frilly. And although she's bright and talented, to this day she's convinced she cannot learn science or math. Thank you, public schools and peer pressure.
I guess I was weird enough that peer pressure didn't 'take'. Actually, I was unpopular enough, shy and geeky enough, that there really was none. I always did well in math and science and hung out with the male geeks. My home environment was one of benign neglect with respect to academics. I wasn't expected to do anything in particular but neither was I pressured into specific choices. So in the end it was probably a benefit, although I didn't see it that way at the time.
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