A Lesson From "The Princess and the Frog"

My daughter and I watched "Snow White" the other day on DVD. On the DVD was the first six minutes of the upcoming movie "The Princess and the Frog." The color wasn't completely filled in on every scene, but watching it got me really excited for the movie to be released. Just in that short span we learn how important it is to be supportive of our kids and to always encourage their dreams. In thinking about that movie I realized that it's important to not only be supportive of the things our kids want to do, but be encouraging of things that they do that may not be so "important." It can be something just as small as braiding hair for example.

I've mentioned before that my daughter is six. She will be seven next month. This year, we've been getting our hair braided a lot. Well one day she came out of her room and said "Mommy, look what I did." She had braided her dolls hair and put rubber bands on the end to hold the braids. I may be biased but I thought the braids were really good for a six year old. I know I couldn't braid my dolls hair at six. I asked her where she had learned how to do it, and she said she taught herself. My guess is she had watched some of what my girlfriend was doing in braiding our hair, and then proceeded to do it on her dolls hair.

On our trip to Hawaii, she also had fun braiding and styling the hair of So In Style Stylin Hair Grace. I enjoyed watching her do it.



I bring up all of this to say this is one of the areas that I realize I should encourage her in. I am not trying to pre-define what her permanent job will be in the future, but this could definitely be a skill set that she could possibly make money on the side, if she chose to. She may braid other people's hair in high school or even college, to have a little spare change. Or this could be what she chooses as her profession. Maybe she does neither, and after marrying has a baby girl. She will be able to save money, by not sending her child to the hairdresser, and doing her hair herself. In either of the scenarios the outcome is positive.

So make sure to not only encourage the dreams of your children, but give them the all important praise and affirmations for "insignificant"(no not really) things like braiding hair.

Nay