Just thinking about boys/girls toys

[nwcrazy]

Yesterday, I took my daughter to a birthday party for another kindergartner girl. As the birthday girl was opening her presents, I noticed that ALL of toys were, what we considered to be, "girl" toys. The one exception was the toy my daughter had picked for her-- a Hot Wheels track/car kit. In the background, a couple of older girls giggled that it was a "boy" toy.

(BTW my daughter wanted the Hot Wheels toy for herself, but I told her it wasn't her birthday)

I find it amusing that society seems to have pidgeonholed, very early, the kinds of toys girls and boys should play with...

My child loves dolls, stuffed animals, My Little Pony tv show just as much as Hot Wheels and the Transformers Prime tv show, along with Tinkertoys and Legos. I think playing with BOTH, traditionally girls and boys toys is a good thing. I just hope that as time wears on, peer pressure doesn't affect her too much.

Just a random thought

[cybele]

My kids always had a mix of both, but I did notice that with their 'phases' they gravitated towards gender stereotypical things, which in the end, did mean that we had more "girls toys" in the house.

Ive heard a LOT of arguments against gender sterotypical toys, admittedly, most on parenting blogs, some from parents out know in real life though, mostly against "girl toys" and I cant say that these arguments against the 'girl toys" that ive been hearing have really been the case in my experience, but of course everyone experiences different things and all kids act differently. I dont really see how it makes such a huge difference to a child's outlook in the long run.

Older SIL was HUGE on anti-gender stereotyping, she's generally a pretty extreme person and takes things way too over the top thn they need to be, and she was like that when her daughter (who is now 24) was little, there were to be no pink toys, no stereotypically female toys, no pink clothes, no dresses. It was really too over the top for my comfort, but her daughter, her rules. I always found it a bit strange how amazed and intrigued she was by Dita's "girl toys" when they were younger, Dita went through a huge mermaid phase when she was 4-5 and EVERYTHING had to have a mermaid on it, and Josie would come over to our house (keeping in mind, she is much older than Dita, around 11-12 at the time) and fight Dita for these "banned" toys, she pocketed a few when she left too, they were just these little treasures to her. Same goes for when Dita got a meow-chi (does anyone else with teenage kids remember these awful things? the amount of batteries they used...) for her birthday, which was a robot cat that was silver and glittery with pink whiskers and a pink tail and its eyes lit up in with love hearts when you called it, Josie was a teenager so really should have been past the pink glittery robot cat phase, but she was obsessed with it and the only thing I could put it down to was her mother's extreme view that anything remotely girly, she could not have.

I know thats not at all what youre saying, but its what has shaped my view of not really being bothered by whether my girls like girly things or if my boys like boy things or being concerned about balance or whatever.

(On an ironic note, Josie is now a beauty therapist, which her mother cannot bear the thought of)


Sorry, ive gone way off. But its just one of those things that I think is one of the biggest non-issues of parenting nowadays that many people are very concerned and upset about and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.

[singledad]

Originally Posted by nwcrazy

I find it amusing that society seems to have pidgeonholed, very early, the kinds of toys girls and boys should play with...

I find it kind of sad... I'm not over-the-top against "girl-toys", but I'm not at all concerned about buying my DD traditionally "boy-toys" either. Perhaps I'm just a little uninformed - I was stunned when I found out that Lego is considered a "boy" toy (after I bought her several sets). WTF? My DD, who is deeply into anything pink and glittery, loves her Lego!

[cybele]

Whats the deal with the pink glittery horse lego then?

[mom2many]

My kids just get what they like. My 5 year old has been riding the 2 year olds pink Barbie 4 wheeler. We asked him if it bothered him and he said "heck, NO it's fun". I do think though that at some point kids just gravitate towards the "girl" stuff or the "boy" stuff.

[parentastic]

Originally Posted by nwcrazy

I find it amusing that society seems to have pidgeonholed, very early, the kinds of toys girls and boys should play with...

I think when they are young, it's all about their parent's bias, not about them. However, very soon, children learn to decode their parent's non verbal. A doll for a boy? A car for a girl? Frown. Concern. Unconscious (or sometimes blatant) non verbal saying: that toy is not for you. So fairly fast, children unconsciously adapt. By the time they get 3-4 years old, they have internalized this and are now actively seeking "genderized" toys, IMO.

[akmom]

I have both genders in my family, and all the kids have experimented with all the toys at some point. But they do gravitate heavily to the stereotypical toys. When my daughter got a new doll house, she and my son played with it for hours. When we got them both swords, they played with them all day. But once the "newness" wore off, my daughter was still playing with her dolls every morning as soon as she got up. It was what she obviously looked forward to doing. She's not interested in the swords any more, but my son still thinks they're the most fun thing ever invented, and when he can't convince someone to fence with him, he'll "fight" the furniture and play-act for hours. It cracks me up how "girly" and "boyish" they are! We don't "give" them toys, so to speak, but they are free to explore in the toybox and select their own. They cross-play a little, but 90% of the time, our daughter plays with girly toys and our son plays with boy ones.

[jollysmith123]

Lots of girls love cars and play with them. So we cant say they are girl toys or boy toys. This is the classification by adults, but the kids should be left to choose what they want to play with