New Zodiac Sign Dates - Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about hand-picking your baby’s sign? Some parents have gone to the extreme of scheduling C-sections to get the zodiac sign they wanted for their little one.

Turns out, we were doing it wrong. Most of us have been going by the wrong zodiac sign our whole lives, due to a mistake in the zodiac charts. If you’re like me and had your child’s astrological chart done in detail and framed after her birth, you might feel a bit foolish right now.

The zodiac problems are due to long-overlooked subtle shifts in planetary orbits and other things in space. I can’t pretend to know all about it. Happily, Paul Kunkle of the Minnesota Planetarium Society has this one covered. Here’s his corrected zodaic dates, in all their original Babylonian glory.

This new chart makes me solidly a Cancer, instead of right on the cusp between Cancer and Leo. Fine. I always suspected as much. It pushes my mother and my oldest daughter from Gemini into Taurus, though, and that I just can’t swallow. Clearly, they are both Geminis, not earthy Tauruses. Or maybe, just maybe, this astrology thing is only what we make of it. Like any symbol system, it’s meaning comes out of how we use it, not really how the planets spin in the skies.

Still, symbols have power when we believe in them, just like placebo pills can heal people. I wonder if my mom and my daughter will become more grounded once they find out they’re secretly Tauruses. The new zodiac dates could give us all a playful moment to revisit personality traits we thought were entrenched in ourselves or our children. Your little Ares doesn’t have to be stubborn just because she was born that way. Surprise! She probably wasn’t.

This just proves that anything can change. Even the stars in the sky.