Last Sunday, I had pancakes with my favorite 8-year-old. Let’s call her “Abby.” Abby is very smart for her age and though I hate tossing the word around, I wouldn’t hesitate to describe her as precocious. Like any child her age, she’s got her obsessions. She loves mummies. The first time we met was when Abby’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend brought her to see a museum exhibit on Chinese mummies and I joined the three of them. I learned just as much from Abby as I did from the exhibit. She even has her own personal favorite Egyptologist, whose voice she recognized from the other room when he spoke on CNN during the riots there last January. She excels in this category of history, it’s definitely her strong suit, but just like everybody, she struggles in other areas. She is, after all, just a kid.

A few days before I visited with these friends I had read this article by Lisa Bloom: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-little-gir_b_882510.html. In it, Bloom talks about the modern-day girl and ways to help promote their intellectual growth and focus less on physical appearance. “Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of meaning, a life of ideas and reading books and being valued for our thoughts and accomplishments.”

Keeping this fresh in my mind, I re-assessed my interactions with Abby. How had I treated her during our one-day day camp this summer? Did we talk about boys or fashion or how cute I think she is? I think she’s an adorable young girl and will grow up to be a very good-looking woman, just like her mom. But that’s not what we did together. We built a puppet together and brainstormed over Chinese food about what kind of puppet show we’d put on for her mom when she got home. Abby is thoughtful and creative and yes, that dreaded word, precocious. But the reason I feel comfortable about using that word is because of this one little detail – while we were planning out our puppet show, getting everything ready for Violet the purple bunny rabbit’s big debut, Abby insisted that we play a book on CD to listen to. We could’ve played music or had a television on, but she wanted to hear the adventures of Pippi Longstockings in the background while we worked. And that to me was a very important indication of how bright Abby’s future will be, moreso than whether or not she’ll be pretty enough to find a boyfriend.

I’ve always tried to treat kids as adults, while at the same time treating myself like a big kid. I guess that’s why it’s easy for me to relate to them. I like cartoons and comic books and board games and my imagination is always running wild so I can keep up with their games pretty easily. So while I talk to them like adults, I also like to keep them thinking like kids. Innocent and inquisitive, children can have thoughts that we’ve long outgrown and can express them in interesting ways. Concepts and ideas that we’ve come to see as second nature can be confusing to them and it’s nice to see their tiny gears turning in their heads as they try to understand a new idea. Abby is this way, that spark in her eye when she learns and retains a new fact from the mummy documentaries she dives into full-force. And although she struggles with her homework sometimes, she would never take the easy way out and have someone do it for her. No matter what J. C. Penney might suggest.

I’m sure I’m not showing anyone anything new when it comes to this infamous shirt, sold for only a few scant hours online at jcpenney.com.

The thing that bothers me about this shirt is that, even though I don’t have a daughter of my own, I still know girls like Abby who are at the age where they might see this and think too hard about it one way or the other. They could see it and think, “That’s funny, and that’s right, I AM too pretty to do my homework!” Or they could see it and think, like I hope Abby would do, “Hey! I’m just as smart as my brother. Probably smarter!” I have two sisters, both of whom are smarter than me. My younger sister was high school valedictorian. I know all the lyrics to “The Weird Al Show” theme song. I’m not winning any Nobel Prizes any time soon. And as long as Abby stays thirsty to learn, she could very well be her school’s valedictorian one day.

So what did Abby and I talk about after pancakes? When we were done watching a National Geographic special about the Silver Pharaoh, I asked her about school, which was starting up again the following week. I asked her what grade she’d be in and what she was excited to learn about and never once questioned what she’d wear on the first day. Whatever she wears, I know she’ll do her homework on her own when she gets home, hopefully while making jokes, being silly and curious and, well … a kid.