Over the weekend I decided to give Angie and me a manicure. I bought an acrylic nails kit and decided to give it a try. I have had my nails done at a salon before and I have been talking to Kelly about getting them done again. I just didn’t want to spend the money or the time on them. This is when I got the idea to just do them myself. I let Angie have a manicure too and when I put on her nails she wanted them really long. Kelly protested and tried to reason with her that they were too long and they were going to get in her way. I kept telling him to just leave her be and let her have them long for a while. My mom never did anything like this with me and I wanted her to have a little fun.
I also figured if I left her alone she would get bored of them on her own and get this whole long nail thing out of her system. What do you know the next morning one of her fake nails fell off… what a surprise cheap grocery store nail kit! I glued it back on. Then again the next day it came off and she started complaining about them. She wanted me to take them all off. I had her soak them in acetone and they came right off. The lesson of the long nails is that sometimes letting your kids have something with supervision is better than fighting with them. She figured out for herself that she is not ready to have long nails. Now, I won’t have to worry about her whining that she wants her nails long… at least not for a while anyway.
I am pretty relaxed about what I let my kids do. They have supervision so I don’t see the harm in it. I let Angie do a lot of the things I was not allowed to do when I was kid. I just supervise her. When I was in middle school my stepmom wouldn’t let us wear makeup and wouldn’t let us shave our legs. The makeup wasn’t the end of the world but I still remember to this day how I felt being the only kid in school that didn’t shave. Kids would pick on my sister and me. I think we were the only girls in school our age that didn’t shave. I swore to myself when I had kids I would not do this to them. This is why I let Angie shave her legs and wear makeup.
Now, I don’t let her go out in public with bright red lipstick and purple eyes – she would if I let her. But, I do let her wear light lip gloss and light colored makeup out in public if she wants to and then I let her wear the bright colors around the house to play dress up with. My stepmom could have easily bought light colors that barely show and I would have been happy with this. See if my stepmom would have let us wear makeup I am pretty confident that I would have gotten bored of wearing it all on my own and I wouldn’t have grown up resenting her for this. . Lesson of the long nails…
I am not saying that there aren’t times when I just say no to my kids but I pick my battles and I try to let my kids figure some things out for themselves.
Tags: manicure, shaving legs, wearing makeup
