no boys allowed in the room!!!!

But yeah - I think there've been a lot of articles about this - focusing on girls - how they're really self-assured and awesome when they're 9-11, and then they start having a lot of the standard problems associated with teenage-ness and become unhappy/insecure.

I have read some articles about studies showing that girls tend to be very confident until they hit puberty, at which point the Patriarchy Oppression Machine really kicks in and girls start to report feeling like shit/hating themselves. XP!!!!

I had some rough childhood years from 7 until about 13, so I definitely don't identify. I think I first really started feeling comfortably like myself when I turned 30.

i was a lot more introverted as a child. even though i'm not the most outgoing person now, i'm like 10000x less socially anxious than i was at age 10. i don't think it helped that i transfered from nerdy montessori school where my weirdness was encouraged to public school in grade 4 and was immediately pegged as a horrible dork.

tbh i like myself better now than at any previous time in my life. it's fun to be nostalgic for old times, but i don't think i'd ever want to relive them.

Ahh! That makes so much sense. Probably in a few minutes either Amanda or horseshoe or Jenny will come along and tell us she did a dissertation on such things and it will all become clear. xp hah!

yeah - my childhood was a bit rough too - i hit puberty pretty early - I think I was 8 or 9, which was kinda traumatic, but it meant that i looked older and was taller than most of the kids in my class, even though i was the youngest. I was a weird kid, but I don't think i had a clue that i was weird, or that it mattered until junior high.

but when i was 10, i liked playing music, and making up stories with my friends, and performing, and reading, and making up lessons and lectures about things - and uh, this isn't all that different from what i do now that i really enjoy.

tbh i like myself better now than at any previous time in my life. it's fun to be nostalgic for old times, but i don't think i'd ever want to relive them.
truth bomb

Well no! I mean, look at how much of what we all thought about was purely aspirational? It was about what we wanted to BECOME, not who we were. Which strikes me as pretty healthy/normal for the younger ages but obv now is better!

Eeeee Sarah I remember being in fifth grade and a couple of boys snatching my purse and threatening to look in "that little zipper pocket" which of course contained a tampon. Gut wrenching terror.

Yeah - it's just working through the baggage of the interim years, and the things that constrained you when you were younger - some of that being the limits of childhood awareness of the world, as well as environmental and family stuff - but recognizing the hope and joy of those years, and a certain authenticity to self - maybe? But of course, it's better being in your 30s, because you have more power over your life.

xp - jenny - i got my period the day before my 10th birthday - and i was having a slumber party at my house.

yikes
i didn't get mine for real til i was 15, but i was built like a mosquito so

Also now if boys try to get into the little pockets of my purse, I just offer them a tampon. Or call the cops, whichever.

Aw, Sarah! That's the pits! I was ten when I got mine. I didn't get my first period at camp, but I went away to camp sometime during my tenth year, and of course had my period, and of course forgot to take a pad out of the pocket of my shorts, which the counselor washed, and then held up as an example to all the other bleeding girls about the importance of checking one's pockets before sending clothes to the laundry.

This is my "favorite" period story. The daughter of our junior high school nurse was in my class. During "The Talk," the nurse was talking about different kinds of pads and tampons and the importance of hygiene during that special time when she suddenly got really adamant and said, "And if you leak, don't just throw your bloody panties in the laundry for your mother to clean up! You wash out your panties yourself!" My classmate, who had obviously failed in this little test of responsible womanhood, likedta died, the poor thing.

holy shit!! that story is great!

oh gosh that poor girl!

TBF I have never thrown my blood panties in the laundry for my mother to clean up, and they say it's all worth it if you get through to just one kid, so...

omg that is one raw story

I watched a movie last night in which an unpopular girl got a (clean) pad stuck to the back of her dress at a party and made fun of, and two of my best adult female friends were saying how they would have been the kind of 15-year-old who did the deed, and I had to say I would have been the 15-year-old who had it done to her. Interesting moment. At some point I became IRL friends mostly with former bullies.

i am irl friends with jenny !!

High five!!!

Late to party as usual (stupid timezones) but I was always weirded out by horsey girls in school.

Me, I was into mermaids. Drew them and wanted to be one. Um.

I went to a mixed primary school and then we moved and I ended up at a single-sex secondary school. Went from being a tomboy with 95% male friends to having pretty much none at all. These were the years when I also realised that I was ugly and nerdy and that this was going to matter. Often wonder if the boys I'd previously been friends with would've stuck around if I'd gone to the same school, and what difference this would've made to my adult psyche.

(Wasn't exactly alone cz I had friends at school, but at parties the boys would not talk to me at all, and my friends would of course go to where the cute guys were, which was generally wherever I was not. Eventually I realised that I hated this and didn't have to do it and ducked out of having much social life outside school.)

I dunno about being more me at any point, but puberty definitely felt like a long series of pummelings to the self-esteem, starting with the first time I ever stopped to ask myself if I was a good person, and reached the answer "probably not, really, no," aged abt 9 or 10.

I feel like being a tomboy, playing with boys' toys, reading books with male protagonists whose maleness is not really spelt out because why would it be, I was in denial about the whole growing up to be a woman thing until that first period. Like, I was just going to be a person who does things and is cool and awesome, and people who do things and are cool and awesome don't happen to be women, according to my view of the world age 7 or so. This is either pretty much universal or a really weird thing to admit, I have no idea which...

i don't know how weird it is - but then i was kinda similar - i was pretty oblivious to gender stuff growing up, being raised on the whole "Free to Be You and Me" thing by liberal parents.

I wasn't really into horses even though I rode from 5-13 or so and had a horse for a while. It was just never really my thing. My real thing was music and I played the violin and piano for years and almost went to music school. I guess I was an orchestra geek when it comes down to it.

I happened to have this pic on FB - that's me on the R and my still v good to this day friend Phoebe on the left. The horse was called Two Eyed Friday.

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2303/137/25/727781067/n727781067_2530176_3217.jpg

i would have been amusic geek but our schools did not have good music programs so instead i went to reg school half days and arts school half days (there it was acceptable to be a music geek). when i went to music school for college everyone just assumed i went to juilliard bc it was a music school in ny. no one knew that there was anything in ny state outside the city. lol.

Yeah my music talents were trashed because I went to a shitty rural state school with no resources and had piano lessons and nothing pushing/driving me :( Least, thats how I see it. If I really wanted to I could have done better I suppose.

Tza you went to Eastman, right? I almost went there! :)

yep

Guys, when I was a freshman I begged my parents to get me a HS jacket that actually said, instead of a sports team, "orchestra" on the back. Yes, it was that bad. What's worse is that my dad still has the fucking thing and tries to convince me to wear it every single winter. :/

hahaha i did varsity swimming but i did not et the jacket bc lol

Yeah, I know - exactly. I went to an all-girls HS (read: was socially inept), had braces, Sally Jesse Raphael lolhuge glasses, a varsity ORCHESTRA jacket and was fat until I was about 16. I was NAGL. Pretty late bloomer tbh.

tbh i think i just bloomed like 3 years ago.

Does anyone else agree/identify with the statement that their adult mental/emotional journey is about getting back to being 10?

in a lot of ways, i sure do. i can tell it's taken a long time to even start to get away from learning in my early teens to be super cynical, negative, etc., feeling like a complete freak and weirdo, which tends to happen when people say you are that. small towns. high school was the worst! i switched schools, my parents split up, and the few kids i hung out with were messed up in the head & treated each other (and me) pretty horribly. i was prob awful to them too in my own way, and didn't realize. i think everything started to go wrong around 6th-7th grade when i started feeling like i was ugly, had bad glasses, didn't know how to dress. patriarchy oppression machine + catholic church (what's the difference?) it's nice to know other people had some of the same experiences.

wait i thought "since" and "fence" did rhyme!? now that i've tried to say both words about a dozen times, i can tell how they don't rhyme, but i'm pretty sure when i normally say them, they do.

they are completely different vowels!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

not if you say it like "sense". it's supposed to rhyme with "wince" i suppose?

most of the U.S. : fence rhymes with sense; it does not rhyme with since or wince, which rhyme with each other

other parts of the U.S.: these words all rhyme: sense, fence, since, wince - though some pronounce them all with the short "i" and others pronounce them all with the short "e"

ie substitution is a linguist's worst nightmare!

here's a thing - that's sorta gender related, maybe, in the sense that women are supposed to be other-focused and conciliatory and such. My accent changes depending on whom I'm speaking to. I occasionally feel like I don't have a "real" accent, because of this. I was having drinks with a friend, who grew up in Chicago a while ago, and she said I totally have a Midwestern accent, and then I suggested that I have a Midwestern accent when I'm talking to her or her & her husband because they both have Midwestern accents.

my dad picks up other people's accents when he's talking to them and he's not very conciliatory or other-focused!

I lettered in band! And theater!

allow me to drop some SLA here:
that's not necessarily gender related -- sometimes one's attachment to one's phonological patterns (or language in general) is sometimes referred to as the language ego. People with strong language egos maintain their original phonological inventory even in situations where no one else is using their dialect. They also have difficulty learning new languages because they are very attached to the way that they speak, for whatever reason. This is not you.

People who do not have strong language egos often shift dialects and have less difficulty learning new languages because they are willing to hear different sounds coming out of their mouths and are comfortable sounding different than they usually do.

This is not to say that there aren't sociolinguistic reasons why women accomodate or even mimic the dominant speaker's dialect, but men do it too. Depends on how you look at it I guess.

Before I became a sullen teenager, I was a language nerd -- in 6th grade for national reading week (or whatever it was called) I went with my mom to have a special tshirt made. On the front it said "I LOVE TO READ" and on the back it said "ME GUSTA LEER" and guess who everyone made fun of that national reading week.

:(

Amanda, that shirt is awesome and people who made fun if you are the herkiest jerks ever and I totally would have hung out with you.

Aww! :(

Interesting post. Where does one's "language ego" come from? Does a strong language ego impair the un-spoken aspects of language learning, or just cripple your chances of speaking convincingly?

I love the idea of learning foreign languages, but actually I only really speak English. My French and German accents were both terrible and I'm not confident at speaking other languages out loud; when I have lived in other regions of the UK I've enjoyed learning new slang or noticing accent differences, but I haven't picked up the accent naturally and would be scared to try it consciously in case it sounded like mockery. I would love to change this but I guess it is too late to weaken my language ego.

i never thought of it that way. i am good at learning languages because i can memorize a lot of small things and patterns well. but i am not good at making accents. i hated taking french because it sounds crazy to me and impossible for my mouth to make those ridiculous sounds. i still got like a 100 in the class. does that mean i have a strong language ego or i'm just too cool for school?

Does a strong language ego impair the un-spoken aspects of language learning, or just cripple your chances of speaking convincingly?

yeah this is more what i mean

i would think the answer is no but at the same time i'm better at writing (well, not on internet message boards lol) than speaking irl too. maybe i just don't value speaking that much.

irl = in english

It's never too late, but it can be painful and difficult during the process. Take it from one who knows...

I'm not sure where it comes from precisely -- what's important is to recognize where yours is and, if you wish, be aware of the implications it has on your language learning. I'm sure that there are ramifications for written language as well, but usually it affects spoken language more because it's subject to more ridicule. On the other hand, I will add that a lot of people I work with (native Spanish speakers) have no problem speaking to me in English, but refuse to write email because they're afraid of making mistakes. They often don't realize this is why they "don't like" email, but this is why. They're afraid of being judged. It happens. (Of course I wouldn't judge them, but fear doesn't care about that)

I teach people to speak another language all day long (except during winter/summer breaks, natch) and I see all types -- but in general, successful language learners are not afraid to make mistakes, sound weird, or hear unfamiliar sounds coming out of their mouths.

Coincidentally, this applies to developmental learners as well. You have no idea how much resistance I get to the word "subsequently." "But no one uses that word!" "It's weird!" "It's stupid!"

Sigh. Back to work today, btw.

xp - part of communicating is speaking, so i would say you have a strong one