How we talk to kids matters from day one
a few things around gender we parents muck up from time to time
When do we most often gender things we don’t have to? As in, when do we unnecessarily force kids into gender roles they may not be interested for no other reason than, “that’s just how things are.” The thing is, with some work on readjusting how you interact with gender, you can shift how you talk about gender with kids too. For sure they will still be confronted with stereotypical ideas around gender at school, with family, and in media, but at home you can remove some straightforward instances where parents often enforce incorrect and unnecessary things things.
When talking about body parts with our kids, good sex education has us teaching our kids the correct terms for our anatomy. But, this is also an opportunity to get trapped in a gender-binary situation. “Girls have vulvas and boys have penises,” on the surface is a better way than talking about “we have private parts we don’t talk about,” but it is still not correct. “You have a penis,” or “you have a vulva,” or identifying individual situations allowing for intersex people versus what sexes are “supposed to have.”
Oh god, sports. One of the most hot-button topics that exist because boys and girls must play separate sports and boys who become girls cannot play against girls because girls deserve to play against girls only. Look, this is confusing when we think that all the kids in our lives are growing up to be Olympic and professional athletes (where they will also be punished for being trans obviously but I’m not going to get into that). It can be hard to be the kid in class who is always left picking a side they need to be on because we are breaking things into boy or girl sides, but that’s what our education system does. We don’t think at a “what is best for an individual” level, we need to operate at a “what works for everyone” level.
It feels wild to still be talking about this, but by nature, there is no such thing as a boy toy or a girl toy or girl hair or boy hair. We are so caught up in seeing long hair on girls and short hair on boys in mass media and in classrooms and really everywhere we look, that we mistakenly default ourselves into believing this. But it is quite obviously untrue and doesn’t even take much critical thinking to understand. Kids can play with, and learn from, any toys at any time.
Ok, time to wrap it up. Clothes are clothes, they really don’t have gendered roles. Boys can wear t-shirts with rainbows even if angry dads with military-style haircuts often go into clothing stores and film videos of themselves angrily throwing fits when a boy section shirt says “I’m kind and caring” instead of “I’m a ladies man who will grow up and demand I get to carry my gun in public.” Let kids pick their outfits and let them help you when you’re looking for clothes. Ideally, kid’s departments would not be separated into boys and girls sections but we seemed closer to getting there five years ago than we are today. I can’t really explain further that it’s just weird to think a boy wearing any shirt with anything flowery or colourful on it is wrong.