If your child exhbited atypical gender tendencies?

Freiheit

Would you try to change them, to redirect them? or would you allow them to be themselves?. Such as boy prefering pink or dolls or make up or a girl preferring blue, or cars or or tractors etc?. And if you would attempt to redirect them why?.

I don't mean the above in any critical or judgmental tone, I'm just curious as to how parents would act?.

Sure a boy in current Irish society with a preference for pink will need an awareness that it's likely to result in some negative remarks from peers due to current, but not necessarily future,attitudes? but would you permit him to be himself regardless? or visa versa?.

Saw a Swedish pre school has adopted gender neutral pronouns only.:)

A trinity college professor is attempting to raise his male child in a gender neutral way....Thoughts?.

Ayla

Personally, I think the whole blue=boy & pink=girl is society driven. If my girls ever were interested only in trucks/dumper/blue/etc I wouldn't give a toss. And yes, I know most people would think it's ok for girls to feel this way but not for boys to only be interested in dolls, etc, but I personally think that's rubbish.

I think this whole attention to the gender gap is unneccesary, unnatural & unfair to those kids who don't fit into the average. I think people of all walks of life should just be that - people. It takes all sorts to make the world go 'round.

yellowlabrador

My daughter, age 3 decided to be a boy, she called herself David and wore shorts and tshirts. Her hair was short at the time. We played along, and didn't belittle her or argue. A couple of weeks later, she reverted to being a girl again. Let them be, let them be happy. When she was 7, she became very girley, all bows and frills. again by the time she was a teenager, she never came out of trousers, we never saw her legs. Children explore these things and it's society that tries to pidgeonhole people. There are many excelent fathers out there that are equal to any woman in looking after babies. Let children have 'girl'toys and' boy' toys, and let them learn from both.

Now she's a wellbalanced 28 year old.

silja

I have 3.5 year old boy/girl twins. They always share toys, and so while we tend to buy gender- stereotypical stuff to some extent, they end up with eachother's stuff anyway- for example my daughter likes my son's dinosaur toys and my son's favourite video is a pink Carebear movie and his favourite cup a pink one with cats on it.

They are starting to choose their own clothes now and I have to be honest, it would make me uncomfortable going out in public with my son in a dress, whereas I have no problem with my girl in shorts and t-shirt (these things are pretty gender neutral these days). I probably would re-direct him, both for my sake and his (bullying). I'd have less of a problem with it if he was 16 and choosing goth make-up, because by then it's a conscious choice with awareness of consequences.

metrovelvet

I wouldnt care if he played with dolls or pink or whatever.

Honestly, I would be very worried and disturbed if at school going age he believed himself to be a girl and insisted on going to the girls school and wearing the uniform and truly believed he was female, when he very clearly is not female. I dont know what I would do, but it would be problematic.

Daisy M

metrovelvet wrote: »

I wouldnt care if he played with dolls or pink or whatever.

Honestly, I would be very worried and disturbed if at school going age he believed himself to be a girl and insisted on going to the girls school and wearing the uniform and truly believed he was female, when he very clearly is not female. I dont know what I would do, but it would be problematic.

I agree would be completely at loss as to what to do. When my daughter was born my son often played with her dolls and play kitchen I had no problem with that he also played with the traditional boys toys. My two daughters have played with some of his old toys to a certain extent but they also prefer the traditional girls toys. When my older daughter was the only girl on my side of the family 2 of her boy cousins used to love playing with her baby dolls as these were toys they didnt have. I let them brng one each home as she had so many, their mums didnt mind, but it used to drive my mother mad, she would call them sissys.:mad:

Wantobe

Girls wanting to be boys are known as 'tomboys' and it's perfectly acceptable. I was one myself.

But the other way around, much more difficult for parents, I'd imagine.

metrovelvet

Wantobe wrote: »

Girls wanting to be boys are known as 'tomboys' and it's perfectly acceptable. I was one myself.

But the other way around, much more difficult for parents, I'd imagine.

There is a spectrum. There are tom boys and then there are girls who really do think they are boys. They refuse to go to girls school. Refuse to use the ladies room.

Honestly, at that level I think it is weird and something is amiss.

January

metrovelvet wrote: »

There is a spectrum. There are tom boys and then there are girls who really do think they are boys. They refuse to go to girls school. Refuse to use the ladies room.

Honestly, at that level I think it is weird and something is amiss.

I wouldn't think it was weird and something amiss... I know a few transgender people and it is genuine... Don't ask me how I'd deal with it if it was one of my children because I've nooo idea at the moment but I'm sure we'd figure it out if it came to it... Baby steps...

metrovelvet

January wrote: »

I wouldn't think it was weird and something amiss... I know a few transgender people and it is genuine... Don't ask me how I'd deal with it if it was one of my children because I've nooo idea at the moment but I'm sure we'd figure it out if it came to it... Baby steps...

I do think its weird.

I kind of look at it like people who think the world is flat. It's not flat, it is round, no matter how much you want to perceive it being flat , it is still round and no matter that several centuries ago many many people thought it was flat, didnt make it so.

You have a penis. You are a boy. You have a vagina, you are a girl. You have both, you are both. You WANT to be the other, different story.

cooperguy

Its apparently more complicated than penis=boy vagina=girl in some rare cases. There is a hormonal imbalance in the brain which causes the confused gender feelings

yellowlabrador

metrovelvet wrote: »

I wouldnt care if he played with dolls or pink or whatever.

Honestly, I would be very worried and disturbed if at school going age he believed himself to be a girl and insisted on going to the girls school and wearing the uniform and truly believed he was female, when he very clearly is not female. I dont know what I would do, but it would be problematic.

What about a mixed school? If by school age a child feels so strongly about it, obviously you need to listen and help your child. Children aren't born with imagined conditions. If deep down he feels he's in the wrong body, he was born that way. Listen to your child.
There are too many unhappy adults walking around who were made miserable by preconceived ideas imposed on society by things like religion.

Transgender is a fact, and I once read an article that claimed that there are more children born intersex than with downs. Doctors take decisions at birth without consulting the parents and realign the childs sex often without checking the dna. This subject is still taboo.
I know an old lady, who only discovered she wasn't a woman on her wedding night. She looked outwardly like a woman but had no vagina. Can you imagine the unhappiness and of course no help from anyone in those faraway days.

Ayla

metrovelvet wrote: »

I do think its weird.

Well of course it is weird, in that's it's unusual. That doesn't make it wrong.

A child who is displaying unusual (ie: atypical) gender behaviours is, in my opinion, too young to be playing it up. They are simply acting as their natural instincts allow, and how unfair it would be to force them into some preformed and society-driven box of normal behaviour!

Solair

It wouldn't worry me in the slightest.

I think some of what the OP has said is actually very worrying. I mean, pink and blue have nothing whatsoever to do with gender. They're just colours.

As for girls liking sports, dumper trucks, etc... what has that got to do with their gender or sexual orientation? Are you going to tell your daughter that it's inappropriate to have an interest in engineering? Plenty of people in the 1950s would have thought that it was wildly inapprorpiate for a girl to be an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer etc etc etc.

Same goes for boys playing with dolls or being into dance or anything like that. Are you going to tell your son that he has to be an emotionless automaton and that he cannot express any interest in arts?!
It seems that some kind of homophobic rubbish was invented which freaked men out about showing any kind of artsy / creative / emotional side and it has persisted from the 1800s and is only really breaking down again in recent decades.

Sexual orientation and gender stereotyping have basically nothing whatsoever to do with each other. You'll meet plenty of very girly lesbians and some of the most macho guys I've ever met are gay. While some of the campest guys I know are about as straight as it's possible to be! However, there's a lot of nonsense still there about how if you do X you're gay if you do Y you're a lesbian.

A lot of this stuff is just stupid social constructs and much of it was developed during the dark-ages of Victorian social oppression.

Just let your kids be kids and don't worry about things that really aren't problems.

Freiheit

I agree with you Solair. I was reflecting widely held stereotypes, not my own personal views on how children should behave. Because I do know of friends who have attempted to discourage their children from playing with 'gender inappropriate toys' (as society prescribes, again not my personal opinion), amazing how many people cannot see that most of this is socially constructed. It's a very gendered world.

pickarooney

is mise astra wrote: »

I agree would be completely at loss as to what to do. When my daughter was born my son often played with her dolls and play kitchen I had no problem with that

Are play kitchens considered girly toys? Most of my son's friends have these and I've never heard of them being gender-specific. Same with dolls, practically evert kid I know has some sort of doll. It's a bizarre notion that it should be normal for a boy to play with dinosaurs, farm animals, pet zoos but not model humans.

The blue/pink colour thing is also a complete anomaly. It's only very recently the colour had any significance and then it became a token symbol of masculinity, then femininity then homosexuality. Unless a kid has read extensively on gender politics and symbolism how can you possibly read anything into his liking the colour pink?

Cat Melodeon

My nearly 2-yr old boy loves cooking, playing with his baby doll (which he pretends to breastfeed), loves dancing and singing, adores Peppa Pig (and has a pink backpack) and likes to put on make-up when I'm putting on mine. He also loves trucks, cars, dinosaurs, climbing, playing in muck, eating insects, wrestling and building/destroying lego. Having a willy doesn't somehow disqualify him from doing the first lot of activities, not does it particularly equip him to do the second lot. If we have a girl next time, I'd imagine she'll be doing pretty much the same types of stuff. She'll also be wearing all of my son's cast-offs, I'm certainly not going to spend money unnecessarily on pink frilly things just for the sake of it.

My father-in-law thinks it's a bit weird that my son has a babydoll, my siblings joke that I'm 'turning him gay' . All I know is that he's a very happy kid with a wide range of interests for his age. Maybe as his social circle grows he'll be exposed to other people's narrow judgements and might feel uncomfortable doing 'girly' things, but I'm certainly not going to limit his interests now or any time in the future. Same for any girls we might have.

cynder

My fella now aged 4 has only seen a few dolls and when he does play with them he only wants to gouge their eyes out, he also played with tea sets (one which i bought for him as his play skills were limited) other boy (5)has no interest in girls stuff. my eldest girl can be a bit of a tom boy but still loves her pink, she stopped playing with dolls/baribies/babies at 6.

Links234

metrovelvet wrote: »

I do think its weird.

I kind of look at it like people who think the world is flat. It's not flat, it is round, no matter how much you want to perceive it being flat , it is still round and no matter that several centuries ago many many people thought it was flat, didnt make it so.

You have a penis. You are a boy. You have a vagina, you are a girl. You have both, you are both. You WANT to be the other, different story.

do you seriously think that?

Freiheit

A penis enables the male reproductive role. The question is whether that governs an entire personality, how the child is treated and allowed to express themselves. I actually think that variance from traditonal male and female gender norms is actually a lot more common than people think but as it's discouraged and leads to social disadvantage, it's less visible. Censorship will lead to mental health problems, people can only truly be happy,mentally and physically healthy, living as their true selves.

Ayla

pickarooney wrote: »

Are play kitchens considered girly toys?

Exactly, especially when you think that most of the most famous and successful professional chefs are male

Das Kitty

My little guy picked out a baby doll from Smyths when I brought him recently, he loves it. When we got home my husband looked at me like I had gone mad getting him a doll!

Once I put it to him that he looks after James, changes his nappy, feeds him and that this is what James wants to do for his doll. To be like Daddy. He was OK, I was a bit shocked by his reaction though! I was told other types of doll were off limits, but I told him that if James wanted to play with another type of doll that's his business.

Then my mother saw the baby doll and nearly lost her life with the shock!

I seriously don't know sometimes!

Cat Melodeon

Freiheit wrote: »

A penis enables the male reproductive role. The question is whether that governs an entire personality, how the child is treated and allowed to express themselves. I actually think that variance from traditonal male and female gender norms is actually a lot more common than people think but as it's discouraged and leads to social disadvantage, it's less visible. Censorship will lead to mental health problems, people can only truly be happy,mentally and physically healthy, living as their true selves.

+1. I also feel that it is much more acceptable for girls to experiment a little with their identity. It's very normal to be a tomboy, or for a girl to engage in 'typically male' activities like competitive sports, or to wear clothes that traditionally were for boys. But if a boy shows and interest in 'typically female' activities like fashion or dance or if he wears skirts or make-up, he's automatically considered to be gay or odd. This is entirely based on my own opinion and a bit off topic, but I wonder does the strict social controlling of male identities have anything to do with the fact that young men are more likely to experience mental health problems than young women? It must be pretty damaging to feel alienated from who you really are.

pickarooney

Das Kitty wrote: »

My little guy picked out a baby doll from Smyths when I brought him recently, he loves it. When we got home my husband looked at me like I had gone mad getting him a doll!

Once I put it to him that he looks after James, changes his nappy, feeds him and that this is what James wants to do for his doll. To be like Daddy. He was OK, I was a bit shocked by his reaction though! I was told other types of doll were off limits, but I told him that if James wanted to play with another type of doll that's his business.

Then my mother saw the baby doll and nearly lost her life with the shock!

I seriously don't know sometimes!

God forbid he might be encouraged to be a caring human being and a good parent one day.

The toughest of my son's friends (real hard-chaw, likes his rugby, a scrap and laying down the law) has a frilly white dress he loves to wear to picnics. Nobody's ever been brave enough to challenge him on it. Well, actually I don't think the others have picked up on it being 'wrong' or 'weird'.

Das Kitty

pickarooney wrote: »

God forbid he might be encouraged to be a caring human being and a good parent one day.

The toughest of my son's friends (real hard-chaw, likes his rugby, a scrap and laying down the law) has a frilly white dress he loves to wear to picnics. Nobody's ever been brave enough to challenge him on it. Well, actually I don't think the others have picked up on it being 'wrong' or 'weird'.

Cool.

James is a rough little boy as well, always kicking balls and eating worms and bashing things, but he's so gentle with his doll it's just lovely to see that he has that side too. I have a tea set for him as well that I'm going to fish out soon as he's nearly old enough for it.

It's funny though, because my husband is fully open to the idea of having a gay child but something about him having a "girl's" toy struck something within! I think once he's had a think through he'll change his mind.

Daisy M

pickarooney wrote: »

Are play kitchens considered girly toys? Most of my son's friends have these and I've never heard of them being gender-specific.

In the last few years play kitchens appear to be geared at both boys and girls, but when my son was small they were mainly geared at girls. Thankfully things have changed due to parents been more openminded.

Ayla wrote: »

Exactly, especially when you think that most of the most famous and successful professional chefs are male

So are the most famous hairdressers and fashion designers but you dont see model dolls heads or design your own outfits been geared at the boys market.
I think children should be let choose and play with toys they like and that grab their imagination.

moley

Gender identity and sexuality are utterly and completely different things, the concept that a boy liking to bake cakes suddenly makes them turn into a homosexual has always seemed totally bizarre to me. My husband loves Hello Kitty and pink, this has no bearing on his sexual orientation, on the contrary I think it affirms security in it if anything. We have a 5 year old girl and a 2 year old boy, they're being raised just as I was where there is no emphasis placed on whose toys are whose and nothing is 'only' for boys or girls. My daughter loves dinosaurs, bugs and pretty ponies while my son loves pretend cooking, purses and dump trucks ... there is nothing strange or wrong about anything children do it is only our perception that is coloured with the societal norms and rules we grew up with. Besides that, there is no way to truly change them whatever their gender identity may be. If you tell them what they are attracted to, whether it be clothing or toys or tv shows, is wrong all you're doing is shaming them for something that isn't mat all shameful. Accept them as they are, give them love and support and they turn out just fine.
I have 7 siblings, we all grew up in a 'gender neutral' household where we weren't told what was for boys or girls, and all 8 of us turned out fine - more than fine in my brothers' cases really as I've rarely seen men so nurturing to their children and such good cooks

moley

Cat Melodeon wrote: »

+1. I also feel that it is much more acceptable for girls to experiment a little with their identity. It's very normal to be a tomboy, or for a girl to engage in 'typically male' activities like competitive sports, or to wear clothes that traditionally were for boys. But if a boy shows and interest in 'typically female' activities like fashion or dance or if he wears skirts or make-up, he's automatically considered to be gay or odd. This is entirely based on my own opinion and a bit off topic, but I wonder does the strict social controlling of male identities have anything to do with the fact that young men are more likely to experience mental health problems than young women? It must be pretty damaging to feel alienated from who you really are.

I am curious about the last question there myself, it's very possible. And I have always hated that double standard that it's totally okay to be a tomboy but being even slightly effeminate makes a boy 'strange'.

efb

I'm glad all the children who played with 'opposite gender' toys turned out 'fine'- what's the opposite called?

Freiheit

To have one's true self censored causes lot's mental health problems. Anxiety,depression and lack of self esteem are natural consequences. How can one have self esteem if your natural tendencies are being suppressed?In affect meaning it's not ok to be you and that will cause huge social problems.

I've personally always found the rigid gender system as oppressive. To me a penis or a vagina represent only reproductive organs,not a personality.

Daisy M

efb wrote: »

I'm glad all the children who played with 'opposite gender' toys turned out 'fine'- what's the opposite called?

Presumably when people made a reference to "turned out fine", they meant that the person referred to grew up to be a well rounded individual happy in their life, not whether they turned out to be gay/straight/transexual ect, there was no implication that someone who is any of these things has not turned out fine.

Freiheit wrote: »

To have one's true self censored causes lot's mental health problems. Anxiety,depression and lack of self esteem are natural consequences. How can one have self esteem if your natural tendencies are being suppressed?In affect meaning it's not ok to be you and that will cause huge social problems.

I've personally always found the rigid gender system as oppressive. To me a penis or a vagina represent only reproductive organs,not a personality.

Tbh lots of people have to supress their true selves to fit in with society. I think every individual probably has something in their personality that they have to change in order to fit in, ie naturally chatty people have to learn when to keep stum, people who have quick tempers cant just let fly when they feel like it or there will be repercussions. In many situations if people dont conform somewhat it can make life harder.