I get upset and angry when I see or hear about the 'kiddie beauty pageants'. I'm now watching a pageant that includes boys.

Perhaps if the little girls were dressed and coiffed appropriately and not like a bunch of hookers it would be more palatable. The only positive I can think of is that it would help to make a child more at ease (a help for public speaking and comfort in front of an audience as she progresses through school/college).

The obvious negatives teach that physical beauty is most important and may instill a superior attitude. Every other girl may be seen not as a friend but a competitor.

Are there any other positives?

No positives ! As far as I am concerned, it is a form of child abuse.
An Australian author, Liz Byrski, dealt with the topic very well in a recent novel "Last Chance Cafe".
And as for the mothers who let these kids be "botoxed" etc..
Edited to add: Whether we are hearing more about paedophile activity, or whether there is an actual incresae, as parents, we should be protecting our kids against such behaviour - NOT encouraging it by dressing kids inappropriately !

it's a shocker of a show that one! i watched about three shows of it and could take no more LOL. What I don't like is that the kids get the message that they aren't actually good enough so they have to get their hair extensions in, fake teeth made, spray tanned, coached within an inch of their lives and given Red Bull to make them perkier (seriously, i saw one where they had given this little girl six cans of Red Bull! Craziness!).

The whole show is wrong on so many levels

Shoot the parents I say!

Definitely. I haev watched bits of it now and again and it is dreadful.

Why can't parents just let their children be children?

I will play the Devil's Advocate here, since you are asking about positives.

Taken in the light that it is a competition, like any other, there are always good things that CAN be taught, like fair play, good sportsmanship (although 'sport' isn't quite right in this context, you get the idea), being a graceful winner or loser, comradeship, and to apply oneself to the best of one's ability.

Also, as in any competition, there are participants (or their families) that take things to an extreme and are prime examples of how things ought NOT to be done. I'm afraid the show focuses mainly on these.

Some interesting thoughts there, Lady C; unfortunately from what I have seen of such competitions, while it is possible that such things CAN be taught, I don't think very much of those things occur in these pageants. The type of parents who think that it is ok to sexualise a four year old in the interests of winning are hardly likely to care about fair play.
And as Vendome said in the original post, under what circumstances is it ok to let your toddlers look like "a bunch of hookers" ?

I still think that these are examples of the extreme, which is what he show focuses on.

The problem isn't the pageants per se. If a child genuinely wants to enter a competition of looks, charm and talent then I don't think there's anything wrong with encouraging that. I think the real problem here is how extreme some of the parents get, going too far, and too age-inappropriate, and doing anything for their child to win.

I'm sure there are plenty of parents whose children compete in modest (but pretty) dress and who wear make-up that enhances natural beauty without crossing the line into sexualisation. These parents are the ones that cheer for all the contestants (though more enthusiastically for their own) and who praise their child for a job well done, no matter who wins the competition.

But who would watch a show like that?

I get your point, Lady C, but I still have reservations about this type of competition, even the healthy variety.

It's difficult to study some aspects of child development - you can't conduct experiments on children, and then see which ones turn out badly. However, what research we have, lately, shows us we have to be careful how we praise children. Adult praise (which is, at bottom, what the kids get out of this) is in the end demotivating - the kids find it difficult to get in touch with their own inner motivations.

My own very unscientific observations of very young children who spend a lot of time and energy performing is that it affects their ability to interact with other children - they have been taught to behave in ways which charm adults, but which other children don't respond to. It also has an adverse effect on creative expression - they tend to be more focused on doing it "right" than on exploring. It's a small sample size, but I've found that if you've got a kid who is avoiding the back and forth of creative play with the other kids, and instead hanging around the adults being "cute", you've got a kid who spends her weekends at dance or gymnastics competitions. It's heady stuff, adult praise, and I don't think we do our children favours when we get them hooked on it.

I don't think it's as harmful when the children are a little older - a ten year old who loves her dance class is much more likely to be motivated by the love of dancing, rather than the love of praise, as opposed to a four or five year old.

I have to say, and perhaps should have said earlier, that I am currently dealing with an adult woman who, because she had a pleasant singing voice as a child, was dragged by a pushy mother to talent quests etc all over the state. Her motivation was "to make Mummy proud of you". Because of this, as well as other factors, she decided that any adult approbation was better than none, and when a family "friend" started "grooming" her, her mother encouraged his interest as he was going to "further her career". Now, thirty years and three failed marriages later, I am working with her to work through those attitudes instilled so long ago.
The damage done by pushy mothers, and there are more than a few of them in the fields of talent quests, beauty pageants and sports, is sometimes beyond repair.
[/quote]I don't think it's as harmful when the children are a little older - a ten year old who loves her dance class is much more likely to be motivated by the love of dancing, rather than the love of praise, as opposed to a four or five year old. [/quote]
Agony, I agree completely.

Please add music to the list. I spent about ten years watching children, including mine, working their way through the county youth music system.

If two children are doing roughly the same thing, and then one gets put ahead, the parents of the child who wasn't promoted will often snub the parents of the child who was. Go to a concert, and there will be a small, loud group announcing that their child sets the standard for all the other children.

One such child, whose mother would bring a camcorder and sit in the front row at concerts, started going out with another young musician. Her mother said the best thing she ever did was dump him. He had spent six months putting her down. Camcorder Mum had convinced him that he was, and needed to be, the best at everything, so nobody else was allowed any pride in their own achievements.

Or delete music, and substitute anything that children do because their parents want them to.

I've done my time with many many children and in two countries and many different environments in those countries. There's a very fine line between a child who is really attracted to the stage or the foreground and one whose parents would have liked to be there. I remember many times people telling me my firstborn was so outgoing and could sing in front of an immense audience (they got her to do that at a big camp she was at with her grandparents, not me!)at three or four years old that I should 'promote' her or get her an agent. I was flattered at first though I tried not to be, but then, I reasoned that she needed to do this with a higher quality form where she learned the right things. I chose a dance class that accepted boys as well and didn't require the 'ballet mom' behavior that I'd never provide. They learned about composers, and life skills like folding their clothing and taking care of their own things in the background at an early age. It was age appropriate. There weren't any elaborate innappropriate costumes either.

When I switched her over to a new place when we moved, I quickly realized the schools weren't alike! This one was like the good ship lollipop, and it was a racket to get the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to purchase tickets to the productions by giving kids tiny roles in the big moneymaker, the Nutcracker. If you calculated the business aspects, it was really lucrative. It was a good production, but, I decided to opt out. I'm sure my daughter might understand it now but at that time, I was unpopular.

When I've seen other children totally encompassed by something as well thought out, I have seen others pushed into something I find rather unhealthy. Theatre would be good for kids to gain confidence if they enjoy it, but only if it's taught by caring individuals. Beauty pageants...I find it hard to conceive of one of those that would fill the bill.

I watched a programme last night, because I hadn't change the channel, and it was a UK one with girls of ten being entered into disco dance competitions. The girls were made up, wore extravagant costumes and the pressure on them was intense. There was one child at the chiropractors as she was in so much pain, he said that normally he would suggest rest for several weeks but that he knew it wasn't an option for her with the big competition coming up. There was another girl, her mother said that she always became unwell shortly before a competition and the doctor said that it was stress-related to which the mother told the person interviewing her "How can it be stress, she is ten yars old". It was all appalling.

On the same tack , do you get the series of programmes about little children in the Gymnastics schools in China?
Now those are horrific! Taken away from home at 4 and forced into a terrible regime of stretching and gymnastics day and night. Enough to give you nightmares.

Some of the gyrations of the hips that these ten year old children were very suggestive, gross.

I saw the Disco kids programme last night, and was horrified to hear mothers playing down the injuries and stress to such a degree as to imply it was a figment of our imaginations! That blonde kid looked totally exhausted, and the trip to the physiotherapist should have been a wake-up call that they were going too far!

The costumes are something else again, and I dread to think just how much money those families are shelling out to kit their kids out in them!

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but personally I really don't see the good in these pushy competitions, especially where young kids are expected to dress and act in a manner totally inappropriate to their age!



Now I was brought up doing Irish dancing, including regular performances in the public parks and feis competitions at the weekends. Not once was I *expected* to come "in the top three or else ...", and the attitude of my own family was 'it's the taking part that counts, not the winning or losing', it was a great day out with my friends, and if we were lucky we could even buy a packet of sweets and have a soft drink or two! My dance costume was hand-sewn for me by my aunty, who also had a stab at embroidering a modest design over the skirt of the dress and on the shawl. Nothing too fancy, just enough to turn it from a 'regular dress' to something more like a real costume. (*Nostalgic sigh*, Oh for bygone innocent times, eh?).

However I did see plenty of other kids who were expected to do well for their family's and their dance-school's glory, where the costumes were tailor-made and ever more elaborate. Some of them really do weigh a ton, between the yards and yards of fabric, lining, interfacing and then all the heavy embroidery that goes on top of it all. I got out of the game before it got to the stage where the curled hair, fake tan and made-up faces became par for the course, and am disgusted to see that even this humble activity is becoming as artificial and misplaced as the more obvious beauty-pageant and pop-dance scene. The clue is in the title of the activity, folks: traditional dancing!!! In my book 'traditional' most definitely does not include every Irish-dancing-girl having bouncing curls, freckled complexion and a glowing fake tan!

For those who didn't see it, one of the girls was wearing what was supposed to look rather like stockings and suspenders, highly inappropriate for a ten year old, especially when added to gyrating hips thrust forward. A paedophiliacs dream programme.

That's really quite sad...both that the parents thought that was appropriate for a child, and that it's teaching that child some seriously screwed-up messages on how to succeed in life.

I can't help but think of the film 'Little Miss Sunshine'. It's a good film in its own right, but also has some points to make about child pageants.