Reply to Girls marginalized, boys allowed to control limited resources

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[quote=Anonymous]OP here. I sincerely appreciate everyone's feedback, which has been super helpful.  Parenting is hard, and I appreciate that this community of parents helps me when I get stuck.  Here are my thoughts a day later, in no particular order:

1. It's not feasible to "get over it" and move on to another camp if I don't like it.  This kind of thing happens everywhere, so it's not like I have oodles of better options somewhere else.  The "if you don't like it, leave" advice works only when the thing you don't like is an isolated problem.

2. I'm not making my daughter a victim by calling out sexism where I see it.  I am teaching her how to live in the real world, where she gets to decide what behaviors she will accept from others.  Maybe she, you or others see it differently, and that's ok, we can still be friends (except for me with my daughter, because I am her mama, not her friend).

3. As an introvert myself and a former shy, quiet, compliant kid, I sincerely understand the urge to see the similarities between this situation and comparable personality-driven situations, which are also painful for kids.  But there is a clear current of sexism here in the adults' willingness to let the boys control the video equipment and the direction of the project without intervention.  It is part of a familiar pattern for many of us, myself included, and so is something that I have to resist on purpose.  I also agree that my daughter's choices impacted how the situation turned out, but disagree that the solution is to hold her alone responsible for navigating these tricky problems.  Part of the solution is for her to know that this sort of thing is common, whatever the reason, and figure out how to respond to it or work around it, but the other part of the solution is for the adults to do better next time.

4. I spoke with the camp and they expressed sincere regret that the lack of adult supervision allowed the comment about little girls vs. men to get into a final work product meant to showcase the kids' work for parents.  They also told me that the portions of the project that my daughter had contributed to were inadvertently cut from the video that was shown to parents, again because of a lack of adult supervision of the editing portion of the project.  They are sending home a copy so that she can finally show it to us.  And, they also said that this particular group of three boys had really struggled this summer with being able to hear and incorporate the ideas of others, and that the adults should have done a better job of identifying this as a potential issue when my daughter joined their group halfway through the summer.  They are planning program changes to address these issues, which they had already in part identified.  With this feedback, I would feel good about sending my daughter to this camp again next year if she wants to go.  [/quote]

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