Sunday, October 7, 2012
Week 3
This week I really took a liking to the article What's the Difference Between Boys and Girls? By: Blum, Deborah, Life, 00243019, July 99, Vol.22, Issue 8. As a female myself and having a daughter I can relate to several things that "most" parents go through at one point or another in parenthood. I believe that a child whether boy or girl should be able to play with whatever allows them to be content. For instance, as an adolence I was the "tomboy", I raced motorcycles, was always dirty, and loved the agressive sports. My daughter has really taken a liking to the same types of things; she runs outside all day, always dirty and loves the agressive sports! I have never denied my daughter a toy because it was for a "boy", if she wanted to play with it I allowed it. Furthermore, my childhood bestfriend has two children (a girl and a boy) in which all of our children played very well together. Yes, the boy played with barbies as the girls played with GI Joes. Do I think there is anything wrong in this? NO! Simply because the type of play is different. As stated in the article the boys wanted the barbies to chop their heads off, well this played out true because the boy was always breaking the barbies in one way or another. However, when the girls played with the GI Joes it was more of "playing house" with them and they happened to be the men of the house. I believe that this is how our children learn, which happenes to be through play and to deprive them of their imagination will set them back further down the road. This is how our children our developing the skills of managing competition and agression. Play is important rather than sitting in front of the TV or on a video game.
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We have some things in common. I also was a tomboy who rode dirt bikes and was a catcher (girls fastpitch). I liked getting dirty, still do. I also have a daughter who plays soccer and rides a skateboard. Like the article mentioned, I had a three year old son who bit his chunk of cheese into the shape of a gun. At the time I remember being puzzled by that because I hadn't encouraged guns or even bought them. I do agree that our biology sets us up for certain likes and dislikes and we shouldn't box those into specific for boys or girls. Or if we do make generalities about what boys like and what girls like, we shouldn't limit our children's interests based on those categories.
ReplyDeleteI do sometimes think that if my daughter had a more feminine mother who encouraged her to pick from the pink isle and wear dresses that she might be more apt to ask for that. Either way, I always encourage my kids to be who they are and their interests are not gender specific.
I feel it is extremely important to let a kid be who they are. I think the worry that a boy playing with dolls will make him girly, or a girl playing with trucks will make her become boyish is just silly to me. I believe a child's sexual orientation is determined from birth, and isn't that a lot of what this is referring to? I have two girls. My oldest did nothing but play with Barbies and collect other dolls. She is now an adult and is more of a tomboy than my youngest, who was an outdoor, tree climbing tomboy when young, but grew into a dress up, girly girl. There's nothing more interesting to me than the diversity of the human race. What a bore it would be if we all wore pink!
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