Mom & Daughter Time – Our Day at Glama Gal Spa

Recently, my tween daughter and I were invited to a spa-themed day at the Glama Gal Spa near Yorkdale. I was immediately excited. What a great way to spend a day, getting pampered with my daughter! I love any activity where I can bond with her. I want this to be a natural thing for us – spending time together. As she grows older I want to set a precedent that we take time to together, where she can talk to me and we can stay connected.

I love the Glama Gal Spa. I love the inspirational messages they have all around the spa encouraging the girls to be themselves, to be confident, to be strong. The spa isn’t about getting beautiful, it’s about being a beautiful person and treating yourself with kindness as well as others. This message is important to me raising a daughter.

As a mother of a daughter, I feel like I am constantly walking a thin line. I am the model upon which she’ll most-likely base her future behaviour. As she gets older it’s hard to know what’s okay for her age and what I should wait on. I talk to my friends who also have girls, I read what I can, but I worry I’m going to mess up. And then, the spa-owner told me this story . . .

Another tween wanted a spa-party. She invited her friends. Unbeknownst to anyone but herself, this tween (I so want to call her Heather!) also sent an invitation to a girl who is not in her regular circle of friends. She deliberately put the wrong time on the invitation. The spa-owner told me that a little girl showed up ready for a spa party and the party had been over for at least an hour. She explained the situation to the little girl. The girl showed her the invitation she’d received, trying to hide her devastation at being so cruelly pranked.

The spa-owner called the party-girl’s mother. Let’s just stop here and think, shall we? As a sane, rational being with a pulse, what would your reaction have been???????

This girl’s mother simply did a telephone shrug and said, “Well, yeah, my daughter doesn’t like that girl very much,” and THEN asked the spa-owner to take the little girl’s birthday gift for her daughter and hold it until the next day when she could pick it up. Okay . . . go get a glass of water and walk it off. I’ll wait. (Go ahead, grab a glass of wine if you need it. I sure did.)

Just wow. The spa-owner, bless her, gave the little girl, who was standing in her spa listening to all of this, still devastated at being the butt of a really mean joke, the full treatment that afternoon. The girl left happier and with her birthday gift.

I cannot stop thinking about this story. The mean girl will learn nothing from a mother like that. What kind of person allows their child to do something like that without so much as a “Why?” much less a punishment. It bothers me that there are families like this. We all know that the mean girl in this situation is likely to turn into a mean woman without some kind of intervention.

The best I could manage was to use this story as a lesson for my daughter. We talked it through. I mentioned that should she ever try such a thing, there would be serious repercussions. Beyond that, I don’t know what else there is to do. I’m left feeling grateful that the spa-owner is the kind woman that she is. I’m angry at the mom far more than the girl who played the mean trick. And, I’m just at a loss . . . my only hope is that there can’t be THAT many women like that out there. Can there?

This is a sponsored blog post for Glama Gal Spa. All views are my own. I love to support great businesses!