The YMCA kids stuff area is one room (with a gym across the hall).
Recently, in the room they put up these large netting "rooms" on one side of the room. 1 "room" has kids furniture, book shelf and books and a little rug. The other 3 rooms change about every 2 months or so. One always has some sort of car/truck/farm toys. The next one is legos or dinosaurs or something and the third usually is more of a pretend play station like a kitchen, or dress up stuff.
Then of course there is just open areas to play and and a table for puzzles and coloring.
So the pretend play station is currently "Princess". The room is decorated with pink tulle and his all of this jewelry, shoes, tutus and dresses. there is a mirror and little dresser.
Last week when I came to pick Deke up he met me at the door with a lovely princess outfit on. Today it was red elbow length gloves, red sparkly shoes, a red dress and a necklace.
He told me that some of the kids were teasing him because he was wearing girl stuff, but then he said, "I couldn't leave because I didn't want to go to the gym and well, I like to dress up." I said, "well, Deke, the reality is that if you are a boy and you dress up like a princess, you probably will get teased. That is just kind of the way it is."
"why?" he asked.
"well, Deacon, boys don't usually wear girl clothes, so people think it is funny when they see it. You just need to decide what you are going to do about it."
He said, "I just like to dress up. I would like to dress up like a dragon, but there are no dragon costumes." I suggested he bring his dragon costume from home.
Anyway, what do you all think? I personally don't think it is a big deal and I don't want to make a big deal out of it, so I don't. Is there a reason to make a bigger deal about it?
2 comments:
I think you did a great job explaining in simplest terms the answer to why. You're really good at having your kids deal learn ramifications of what they do. And guiding (not telling) them what other options they might have.
If he had a sister he'd be doing stuff like this all the time.=) I think girls and boys are curious about toys and clothes they don't normally get to play with. Jer is always running around in a pink necklace and my friend's son runs around in his twin sisters' glass slippers. They like to wear hair bows and get nails painted too. It's totally innoccent and I think you did the right thing in explaining it how you did. Just as little girls need to be trained in femininity, I think little boys need to be trained in masculinity. For instance, we teach Ali not to lift up her skirt and show her undies and not get dressed in front of boys and we'll teach our boys that young men open doors for ladies and help load in the groceries, etc. This is not to say Ali can't be athletic or our boys won't be trained in household chores (they will!) but we will definitely teach them that there are defined gender roles God designed for boys and for girls and thus boys don't wear clothing that girls in our culture wear and girls strive to be feminine and not try to look and act like boys.
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