It totally stands to reason that Green mom as I try to be, I have a little girl who loves a shopping mall. What is it with the shopping mall thing? Admittedly, if giant mega malls with cloying perfume smells, loud music, cheap plastic accessories and giant sugary drinks had existed when I was eight, I would have put a trip to the mall on my list of best places to visit too. However, as much as I put myself in her shoes, it still irks a mom like me who’ll grab a Fair-trade hemp purse over it’s sweatshop counterpart any day of the week. I’m beginning to realize that being a Green mommy is relatively easy until your darling one makes it known that they have a mind of their own and that they actually hate that nasty recycled cashmere dress that you bought because they’d much rather be like all their friends and wear the latest skinny jeans from the cheap store we all go to where you can get this year’s runway fashions for tots (made in China,) for the price of a large latte.
I occasionally go to the skinny jean store because 1. She’ll grow out of the jeans in 2 seconds and 2. I don’t want her to be the only girl at recess in recycled 
cashmere (never mind that it cost as much as a dinner out for four,). So what does a Gorgeously Green mommy do? I don’t want to be like the mom in the movie “Almost Famous” who becomes a caricature of crunchy/granola – a figure for her teenage children to poke fun at – so I try to temper my eco-passions by meeting her half-way. However that half-way mark can get pulled in the direction of the treat-seeking missile rather too easily, landing me on the slippery slope towards plastic electronics, bedazzled shirts and unpleasantly toxic-laden lip gloss. The key is to make earth-friendly fun and flirty, or for boys, adventurous/dangerous. This is clearly easier said than done. My daughter would much rather hear it from the lips of Taylor Swift, than her overly-earnest mom, however, deep down inside there’s a little Green light glowing and as long as it’s her bossing me and not the other way around, we’re in good shape.
She loves berating me for not being “Gorgeously Green”, when I throw away a recyclable in the trash or leave the water running while cleaning my teeth – LOVES IT! Maybe I’ll try some reverse psychology on her with the conspicuous consumption thing: I’ll say: “Come on, I insist we go to the cheap skinny jeans store so that you can get all these clothes to be just like your friends at school. Further, I will not allow you to be different – you have to be the same.” Ohhhh – that could be dangerous – but it’s worth a try. I know my mom always got me to try to do things by pretending that she didn’t really care if I did it or not, but kids have a really good parent-pretending-radar, and I smelled it a mile off. The one thing that really helps is taking her to actually see things that are made differently.
This weekend we went to a holiday sale thrown by Priscilla Woolworth, who specializes in beautiful Fair-trade home wares. My daughter found a little tree ornament, an angel, made by a Zulu tribe out of old juice pouches. On the way home, she read the story on the attached tag, which was incredibly moving. She then decided she wanted to go back and buy one for her two best friends instead of the friendship necklaces that she’d seen in the mall. I u-turned my Prius so quickly to get back before the sale ended and now 2 other little girls will be moved by the story of a community of kids who have to make these beautiful little ornaments in order to get food for their families. I hope that the purchase of that little angel has as much of an effect on the children that made them, as it did on my daughter as we drove home.
Trials of a Green Mom to be continued..
