Talking to little girls

I recently read an article about how we talk to young girls, and the impact our interactions might have on them. It seemed timely, given all the new baby girls surrounding me lately, from Skye to Dayla to Annika.

Lisa Bloom suggests in "How to Talk to Little Girls" that we focus too much on little girls' appearance, feeding into our culture's obsession with looks, especially for women and girls. I've caught myself doing this (as she says, little kids are just too darn cute not to notice it!) so I'm glad I have a couple years to practice before these babies are more interactive.

And, by the way, I think we do similar things to little boys, but the article happens to focus on girls. I'll have to start paying attention to people's interactions with boys vs. girls and discover how much difference there is.