I recently watched a documentary about companies today and their quest to make products that are considered “cool” so that the teenage demographic will want to buy them. There was some discussion of how the commercial industry shapes culture and how there’s a push for young girls to grow up faster so that they’ll start buying products at a younger age than they might otherwise do – products like make-up and designer clothing that they have to have so that people will think they’re “cool” and so that they’ll look older than they actually are. It was all utterly ridiculous, but a lot of it was so true that it was scary.
The scariest part showed some girls who were in competition to become models for some teen magazine. One girl had been done up to look quite glamorous, and the people running the competition sat down to talk with her and found out that she was thirteen. And their jaws dropped. She looked like she was eighteen, nineteen, maybe even twenty. She wasn’t even in high school, but she was trying to appear much older. She was succeeding.
It was almost terrifying to see a girl so young trying to pass for an adult, but I think it happens a lot. There are lots of kids – especially girls, for whatever reason – who act older than they are because they want to seem older and be treated as if they are older. Somehow, I don’t think these girls have spent much time wishing for Peter Pan to fly in their window and take them away so that they won’t ever have to grow up. I think they would much rather have the gift which was given to another Peter, a boy who was given the chance to grow up as quickly as he wanted to.
The fable is called “The Magic Thread,” and comes from William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues, although it has been retold many times (I’m told that the movie Click is quite similar). The boy in the story, named Peter, is impatient by nature, always wishing to move on to the next great thing. He is visited one day by an old woman who gives him a silver ball with a golden thread inside. Whenever he pulls on the thread, time passes, and depending on how hard he pulls, he can skip over mere hours or through months or years. He is of course overjoyed, skipping through all the disagreeable parts of his life until he finds himself an old man with more regrets than memories, wishing that he could put the thread back into the ball which he had pulled out, but unable to do so. It would be a very sad and sobering tale if that were the end, but the old woman returns and gives him one wish, which he uses to wish himself back to the age when he was first given the magical thread. He wakes from the whole experience feeling as though it were nothing more than a bad dream. (You can read the story yourself here.)
The story is of course intended to teach children patience so that they will savor the beautiful parts of youth and not wish to grow up any faster than will happen anyway. I don’t think the girl from the documentary had ever heard about this Peter.
As the eldest in my family, I had a definite Peter Pan complex, because every new stage in my life was a scary thing, and only over time did I become more comfortable with the responsibilities and privileges of growing up. My little sisters were (and still are) just the opposite. They were always wishing to be able to do the things that I could do. They couldn’t wait to be my age so that they could have the kind of fun that I did.
I’m not saying that the Peter Pan complex is any kind of healthy – it isn’t. But the opposite is equally as dangerous. I believe that even without supernatural means of speeding up time, the thirteen-year-olds who try to skip to adulthood will wake up one morning to find that they never had any childhood, and the realization will be a very sad one. I really pity them. They rob themselves of so many little joys of childhood by continually wishing to be grown-ups. They will watch their grandchildren playing and realize that they skipped over a completely necessary and wonderful stage of life. Or maybe they will see the folly of their ways when their granddaughters follow in their footsteps. Maybe they’ll try to make the little girls understand that they shouldn’t try to grow up so quickly. Maybe they’ll get through to them. Maybe they won’t.
It makes me think of the movie 13 Going On 30. It’s a ridiculous and wonderful movie whose premise is derived from the question of how a thirteen-year-old girl would fare if she were thrust into the body and the life of a thirty-year-old woman. It’s hilarious. But the lesson that the main character learns is that her choices matter – even the ones that she makes when she’s young. Wanting to grow up too quickly causes her to be a horrible person as an adult, and it takes a walk-through from the perspective of a young girl to show her how absolutely dreadful her choices have been.
I suppose the whole point of this is that there is a happy medium. (Isn’t there always? It’s finding that place that’s a trick.) The longing to stay young forever should not be indulged, but neither should children be encouraged to grow up any sooner than they need to. It will only lead to regrets and poor decisions. Yanking the golden thread out too quickly will leave you with a lap full of thread. And nothing else.
I am not a mother – yet. My husband and I are hoping to wait on that until we’re out of college. But we do plan to be parents, and we talk quite a bit about how we want to raise our children. We are of course extremely naive about it. We are quite idealistic, and we’re usually pretty sure that we know exactly how to do it. Of course we know that we must be wrong about a great many things, and of course we aren’t quite sure what those things are, and of course we will make mistakes when we get there. But we can start thinking about what we want to teach our children, and I think that is important.
I vow here and now that I will never push my children to grow up. Nor will I allow them to stay children forever. I will love them, and I will show them how to learn and how to overcome the fears of the unknown that lurks in the yawning darkness that is the future, and I will assure them that it will come soon enough.
Because I know it will.
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