Got to Dance?

With a toddler running around my feet and a baby needing lots of my time it can be very difficult to find things to do just for myself, however, the girls have been getting better at having one nap a day at the same time allowing me five minutes to put my feet up.  Often during this time I stick the telly on and recently I have been watching Sky One's "Got to Dance".  I like the fact it is a competition where people do it for the love of dance rather than a desire too get famous.  I like that it is gentle and I love that the kinds of dance are so wide and varied.

Today, though, I watched it and my heart broke.  A dance troop came on, it was entirely made up of 10 and 11 year old girls.  Little girls.  Precious little girls.  They put on their game faces and they danced, danced like their lives depended on it to the dance track, "I'm sexy and I know it".

Everything in me wanted to buy each child a doll and get them to sit down and play with playdough, or maybe to build a den.  They can play with cars for all I care, I don't buy into gender stereotypes  I'll be honest, they can even dance, they can do street dancing, I have no problems with that, I approve of them getting some physical exercise.  It was all about the song.

These children were not sexy, they were 10 and 11, no-one should even begin to think of them as sexy, least of all themselves.  They should be young, innocent, protected from such concepts and yet instead we get them running around a stage showing us how sexy they are.

Why are we so desperate for our girls to grow up? They will have years and years where they can be sexual beings (as one I can confirm it is rather a lot of fun) but don't make it start when they are 10.

Am I alone? Am I old-fashioned? Should I just accept that my little girls will be thrusting her groin when her age has only just hit double figures? Or should I help them stay young, innocent and pure for as long as I can?

I will be trying my best to shelter them for as long as I can, regardless of whether I should or not.  I will do everything I can to keep them children for all the time I can, as their mother I believe I owe them that much.