Generational Wardrobe Gap?

Watching Maya play here in the house gets me to thinking about games I played too as a child -the pretend syndrome, ya know.

I used to get into one cupboard in my Grandparents room where I knew my Grandma had a big bag of very (and I do mean VERY) old dresses from around the turn of the century and I would try those dresses on to pretend to be going to some fancy dance or some such event.

Maya has a box full of items purchased with the sole intent of a child wearing them for pretending to be a princess or a ballerina.

When I was a year or two older than Maya is now, my heroine was the late Dale Evans and my dream was to be a cowgirl, complete with a holster set and 2 guns!

Okay, so I was a bit of a tomboy is what many would say about those childish visions I suppose.

Lately though, Maya has been really concentrating on dancing around in the living room, trying her level best (without instruction) to stand and then twirl on her tippy toes. She's now thinking along the lines of being either a ballerina or a cheer leader, since that's another outfit she has in her "pretend" bag of clothes.

When I was a kid, we used to play Cowboys (or cowgirls, I suppose) and Indians -no special outfits required for us to play in then.

I hope that Maya doesn't decide she wants to be a cowgirl now though cause then Mandy would have to go shopping for some kind of equestrian apparel I suppose. (I think the thrill of playing Cowboys and Indians has decreased because one rarely sees any western programs on the TV these days for kids to get ideas to copy that genre though.)

In truth, I do enjoy watching her run through the different outfits she has to wear in her pretend play. Imagination as it begins to blossom in young children is a really fascinating thing to observe, ya know.

Last summer, after watching the physician's assistant remove the staples from my abdomen (from my surgery), she wanted to be a doctor then. She's absolutely fascinated by any little cuts or bruises she might see on my arms or legs and goes running for the bandaid box to apply bandages to those tiny marks she finds and then tells me that she's making it all better for me.

Of course, one has to keep an eye on her ideas there because if you aren't careful and she finds those little bitty injuries, she's also just liable to decide to scratch at them till she gets the healing process disturbed and it begins to bleed then.

Makes me wonder if she reverts back to the idea of a career in medicine, just what kind of surgeon she might turn out to be since often she's the one inflicting the injury -or re-injuring it, at the very least anyway.

It's all in the name of play right now though, isn't it?