does this read off to you?

March 22, 2010

So I just read this article by a mother about her reactions to her four year old

daughter being into girl clothes. I don't know if I've become paranoid or not

about bad mothering, but I just had too many red flags go off. Especially in

the part where she talks about the girl crying in front of the mirror. I'm not

saying the mother has BPD but my reaction was that something was really wrong.

Am I reading too much into this or does it sound odd to you guys?

Here's the link:

ml

I'll quote that bit - remember the girl is only 4:

" In the past few months, she's been understandably more needy and prone to

tantrums and fits of her own. The other day, during one of her meltdowns, she

did something I found so disturbing that my shoulders tighten just thinking

about it. She ran to her room and stared at herself in the mirror as she cried.

I followed behind her and sat by her side as she did, but that only upset her

more. With a glassy stare somewhere between fear and confusion, she took to

looking frantically back and forth between the mirror and me, and it was at this

point that I started crying too. I realized then that my daughter didn't quite

know how to be herself, express herself, without worrying about how she would

appear to others. It was as if our lives at that moment collided. I knew exactly

where she was — stuck between her girly world, a world where people are looking

and judging, a world represented so completely by this mirror by which her

frilly dresses hang and in front of which she has spent hours primping and

posing, and the real world of her mother, a world that lately is hardly simple,

that is full of tears and trials, that makes you work for your triumphs. "

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