Growing up too fast….

I walked past my daughter’s bedroom this afternoon and saw this….

She’s sat on her bed with her teddies practicing how to put make up on by watching Youtube tutorials.

Lately, she seems to be in such a hurry to grow up and I just want to slow it down a little bit but I’m not sure how to do that, if at all!

Take the make up issue for example, she’s not allowed to wear it outside the house (although she’d like to) but I do let her spend some of her pocket money on buying daft bits and bobs (have you seen the Superdrug clearance sections – she got loads of bargains there for between 10p and 30p per item).  She loves to experiment and is actually quite good at putting it on thanks to Youtube although some of the tutorials she watches use some rather expensive brands – she actually asked if we could go look at the Mac and Benefit make up counter the other day when we were out shopping!  My reply went along the lines of  ‘no, because a) you’re too young and b) we could practically do a weekly shop for the cost of a lip gloss and mascara’.

In all seriousness though, I know it’s only natural for her to want to experiment at her age, I remember doing the same thing when I was younger.  I used to do my makeup, get dressed up, try on some of my mam’s jewellery and then parade around the house pretending I was a popstar.  Then I used to take it all off and start again with a different look!  My mam just let me get on with it and I turned out OK – maybe it’s because she has Youtube so she’s been able to learn to put it on way better than I ever could that it bothers me more than it will have bothered my mam.  I’d have just looked like a clown when I did it whereas she can make herself look a couple of years older!

Another issue is the internet issue – for obvious reasons (to me anyway) she’s certainly not allowed a Facebook account as some of the children in her class have but a lot of the games that her classmates play also allow an element of social interaction – chatting with other ‘children’ online.  Where possible, I restrict her to the highest security settings so she can’t join in the chat very much as she can only use set phrases but this frustrates her because most of her friends can just chat freely.

She often comes home and shows me Youtube videos that they’ve watched at school and the school actively encourage them to get online – their homework nearly always includes an element that needs to be researched on the internet!  She does have her own Youtube account but that’s more because we do quite a lot of things that she wants to be able to share with her friends so we video them to put them on there – she’s asked if she can do little Video blogs on there but I’ve said no to that at the moment.

Then we have the independence issue – she’s just desperate to walk home from school herself.  Even though we live half a mile away from the school and I’m there anyway to pick up Master Frugal.  I’ve told her that we’ll consider it when she starts year six and that’s because I know there’s only one big road to cross and that has a lovely lollypop lady who’ll see her across that.

And don’t even get me started on clothes!  Why do the shops all sell clothes for 10 year olds that wouldn’t look out of place in a nightclub.  We never agree on clothes and it’s always a compromise between what I think is appropriate and what she wants to wear.

I feel like the time is just flying by and in no time at all she’ll be all grown up.

I just wish the clock would stop for a little while so she would stay my little girl for just a little bit longer….