The Morning Conversation Between My Husband and Our Oldest

My husband takes our four-year-old daughter to preschool every morning. Before they leave, he always asks her, “Which car do you want to take today?” And she’ll say:

“The blue Por-she (Porsche)!” or “The white Por-she (white)!” or “The Golf!”

So off they go in whichever car she chooses. Sometimes my husband will suggest, “How about the white Porsche today?” But if she says, “No, I want the ○○,” they end up taking the car she asked for.

Honestly, even as her mother, I have to say… this is pretty outrageous.

In July, the four of us also traveled to the United States with our one-and-a-half-year-old younger daughter. It was the girls’ first time abroad, and they had a wonderful time (I kept reminding them, “You’re so lucky to visit another country at four! It’s not something everyone gets to do,” until they got tired of hearing it, haha.)

Watching the world my daughters are growing up in, I’m reminded just how different it is from the one I grew up in. I had a happy childhood with everything I needed, and I’m truly grateful that my parents were able to send me to a private university. But we generally had one car per family, we rarely ate out, and I didn’t travel overseas until after I started university, when I saved up from part-time jobs (though times were different back then, of course).

When I was a student, I thought “foreign cars are for people who live in a completely different world from mine.” So when I heard that a friend’s dad drove a Mercedes-Benz, I was stunned: “Wait—you’re a rich girl?!” (；ﾟДﾟ)

Still, I’m glad I grew up with my parents in that environment; I believe it helped make me who I am today. That’s why the life my daughters have now feels so privileged—and sometimes makes me worry a little about the future.

Thinking About Our Daughters’ Futures

My husband and I sometimes talk about how we want to raise our daughters. Neither of us has a particular career in mind for them or a set idea of what they should become. We just hope they’ll discover what they want to do and confidently make their own way in life.

That’s why we have no plans to push them into entrance exams or sign them up for lots of extracurricular activities. (If either daughter decides on her own that she wants to take an entrance exam or try an activity, we might consider it.)

More than anything, we want to give them plenty of experiences while they’re young—experiences that will broaden their choices and possibilities for the future.

At the same time, I don’t want them to grow up as sheltered, entitled rich girls.

I hope they won’t measure everything by money, take other people’s help for granted, or assume they’re special and act selfishly toward others. Instead, I want them to see more of the world, have all kinds of experiences, and learn about both the hard and the good sides of life—the front and the back (though “the back” sounds a little ominous). I hope they’ll draw on what they’ve experienced and learned to understand the value of things around them, and make thoughtful decisions and choices for themselves.

So I often tell my husband, “Don’t go buying the kids cars as soon as they get their licenses (if they want a car, they can get a part-time job—or make their case to us if they don’t have the money)” and “Don’t put them straight in business class on a plane (economy is more than good enough to start with).”

I say all this to my husband as if I have it all figured out, but I still haven’t managed to wean our one-year-and-eight-month-old younger daughter… (-_-)

She’s Already Getting Used to It…

The other day, I was out walking around the neighborhood with our oldest when a Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe came toward us. I was thinking, “Oh, an E-Class Coupe!” when, as it passed, my daughter called out loudly:

That car was tiny! (*ﾟ∀ﾟ)!!

…

…Whoa, whoa, whoa! ((；ﾟДﾟ))!!!!

There was so much to correct that I didn’t know where to start. Flustered, I blurted out, “No, no, that car isn’t tiny at all! It’s actually on the big side! And it’s a really nice car! Also, you can’t shout something like that as a car goes by!” My daughter just stared at me, looking puzzled.

Thinking about it, she only said the car was small, and maybe I overreacted…

But to our oldest, who usually rides in a Panamera, an E-Class might genuinely seem small. It hit me that her sense of what counts as “normal” may already be drifting away from everyone else’s—and that’s a little scary. I need to make sure she doesn’t head straight down the path of becoming a sheltered, entitled rich girl. It’s a lesson I keep reminding myself of these days.