Blurred Lines

My daughter has two best friends - one boy, one girl. The girl is her best friend from school, and they spend time together outside of school doing fun activities and playing at each others' houses. They see each other a couple of times a month outside of educational hours.

The boy is our next-door neighbor. They see each other almost every day. After school. On the weekends. All the time. The spend a great majority of the time running back and forth between our two apartments, usually leaving the doors wide open (which is a problem for me, but - eh - kids) and screaming to each other to, "Come!!"

Her little boy (that is a) friend is from India, and like my daughter, he speaks a couple of languages. He's a bit loud, and sometimes I have to tell them to take it to the other apartment. Why? Well, other than my growing headache from kids yelling, I've recently realized I don't much like most other kids besides my own. Is that a Mommy Thing? No offense. Your kids are cute and wonderful. In doses. As is mine. To you.

So, he's Hindi. And Daughter is American-Palestinian (heritage)-Jordanian (nationality). It's fun to watch them negotiate each others' cultures and language barriers. For example, he is Hindu and vegetarian. We are Muslim, but we are not vegetarian (just can't quite give up the chicken, for me). So, he usually will not eat anything at our house because I'm sure he's been instructed not to take food without expressed permission from his parents. That's fine. (Especially when he comes over chomping down on a huge cucumber, which then inspires Daughter to ask for one of her own......hey, anything to get her lay off the ketchup chips!)

Usually, Daughter bosses him around a bit, but he's not one to take it lightly. It's easy for him to tell her no or just stand up and leave without a goodbye (prompting her to run to the door, calling after him, to which he replies, "I'll be right back...").

However, despite all their playing and arguing and, most recently, scaring each other with tales of ghosts in abandoned buildings nearby (?????), they've never broached the subject of gender. He doesn't say anything about her being a girl, and she doesn't seem to recognize any differences between them.

Until two days ago.

I was cooking....or cleaning....or probably both at the same time....when I saw them come walking into our apartment, hand-in-hand. I thought it was cute and dismissed the idea of anything further. She's five, he's six. Eh. (Hubby and I often jokingly refer to him as our son-in-law between ourselves.)

Well, Hubby came to me yesterday morning and said Little Neighbor Boy had come to ask for permission to marry Daughter. I laughed it off, and he laughed, then said, "No, I swear, he came to me today with a picture..."

I looked up. "A picture of....?"

"The two of them.....he said, 'This is me and Daughter....kiss'."

Uh-oh. While I may come from a "free" background, Hubby and the Neighbors come from more restricted cultures, and I was waiting to see Hubby's reaction.

"Did he draw it?" I asked.

He laughed. "No. She did."

Great, I thought. So, I called in Daughter, and we had a chat that at 5 years old, she didn't need to think about who she was going to marry or even talk about getting married. She agreed, and she decided she should only think about what was important (i.e., playing and Mommy and Daddy). Okay, awkward family discussion over. Until next time.

But a pervading question lingered. . .

As Daughter gets older, I'm more and more selective about what she sees on television. We change the channel if it gets too scary (sorry, "Adventure Time"), too romantic (sorry, most American movies aimed at people over the age of 7) or is a bad example (sorry, English-speaking "Spongebob"). Of course, I'm not always with her, and I'm not a helicopter parent, either.

She's going to be exposed, and I have to be ready for the questions and conversations that are coming. It's natural.

Yet the question that keeps popping up in my head is: how much PDA is appropriate in front of your child(ren)?

I always said if I got married I was going to make it clear to my children that my husband and I loved each other. Now, I'm not talking about making out on the couch with the kiddies watching "Dora" on the living room floor.

Hubby and I hug. We hold hands. We snuggle and have a kiss (I'm talking a peck) or dance in front of Daughter (which she gets incredibly jealous of and tries to maneuver her way between us). We laugh and joke, and we tell each other "I love you."

Yet some parents are anti-PDA and don't express these feelings in front of their kids. In fact, some people from Hubby's culture find it inappropriate to even allude to parents having any physical contact AT ALL, let alone kissing in front of their little ones (or older ones, too).

My opinion is that it's important for children to see these actions and know, when the time and conditions are right, they are completely natural, human things to do and feel. Daughter knows she's loved by both of her parents because we tell her every time we get a chance. But I want her to know her parents love each other, too.

And if, by exposure to her father and I having a little peck on the lips once in a while in front of her, she draws a picture of her doing the same thing to her best boy (that is a) friend from across the hall (and across the globe), then I welcome the conversations and questions that follow.

What's your opinion?