This is my daughter. She will be three in November, and here she models what every up and coming preschooler is wearing this season. An electric blue and pink princess dress over top of a light blue skirt to a different princess outfit, paired with a plaid visor and oversized glasses. Because you have to be prepared in case the paparazzi takes your photo while you are walking your baby.
Johnny has never been the kind of kid who cared much about his clothes. We had various hats when he was younger, but he mostly used them to transport blocks or trucks.
Maureen, on the other hand, loves dress up clothes. She loves hats, she loves purses, she loves necklaces and bracelets and headbands and shoes. She frequently vetoes pants or shorts in favor of dresses or skirts, and she's all about the pink. My mom recently tried to get her to use the potty by promising her a new purse, and while she didn't go for it, it gave me an idea. Instead of the chocolate we used as abribe reward when her brother was potty training, I'll entice her with accessories.
I'm sort of glad I ended up with a girly girl. It's fun to do cute stuff with her hair and dress her in frilly clothes and listen to her mother her dolls. It makes a nice change from the constant truck noises and banging and poop references that I get from her brother.
Still, sometimes I wonder how much of her nature comes from her genes and how much is introduced and encouraged by those around her. The whole nature versus nurture thing. She is just so very different from her brother. I know I have made a conscious effort to treat them equally. That doesn't mean I treat them exactly the same. Maureen has always been a more sensitive and cautious child and that means I have to adjust my parenting for that difference, especially when it comes to discipline. And while Johnny has always been an outgoing and gregarious child, Maureen takes separation a little harder and is slower to warm up to strangers. (However, once she decides she is comfortable with you, prepare to have your ears talked off!) So while my approach to each child is different, they still get the treatment that is appropriate to their personalities. I'm not harder on Johnny just because he's a boy nor do I let Maureen slide because she's a girl.
On Monday at school, we talked about the importance of consistency when setting boundaries and establishing effective discipline with kids. Over and over, it came up that within families with more than one child, there was always one kid that makes it harder to be consistent. When siblings are raised with the same mother and father and the same rules and the same parenting philosophy, they still present as individuals with their own set of challenges. In other words, while some things may be easier with a second, third or more child, they'll still keep you guessing.
I've also read that while parents may make a conscious effort to not introduce or perpetuate gender stereotypes, we still do it unconsciously. We're all familiar with the knee-jerk reaction that comes when a boy wants to dress in pink; either because a person really believes that boys belong in blue, or because of a desire to shelter our sons from ridicule from others who believe that.
When he was still an only child, Johnny had plenty of stuffed animals because someone gave us a couple of them and they bred in the middle of the night and took over the house. Since I was not working many hours and had much more time to sit and play with him than I do now, I tried my darndest to make him play with them, but they mostly sat and gathered dust. With Maureen, not only does she play with them, but she nurtures them, pretends to feed them, bosses them about wearing hats in cold weather. My mom came home from Tennessee with Webkinz for both kids, and while Johnny has shown little interest in his stuffed dog, Maureen carries her cat everywhere, sleeps with it, pets it and includes it in her pretend play. (However, when I get around to doing the computer part with them, I suspect that the virtual world aspect will hold Johnny's attention much more than Maureen's. After all, you can't pet and cuddle a two dimensional image.)
One of the most interesting parts of having two kids is observing how they take the exact same toy and play with it in different ways. Both mine play with blocks. Separately, Johnny builds airplanes and bulldozers and Maureen builds beds for her dolls. Together, Maureen makes requests for bathroom furniture for her Curious George figure and it's Johnny who fashions a monkey sized toilet and a sink with moving faucets while Maureen hands him the pieces. Both mine play with trucks. Johnny makes the trucks plow imaginary fields and haul imaginary loads to imaginary roads. Maureen covers them up with blankets on the couch and tells me not to wake the trucks from naptime. Both kids play with the doll stroller, but while Maureen actually walks her dolls in it, Johnny fills it with Legos and uses it as a dump truck. I wonder if it's possible to "make" Johnny cradle a doll or if he's just not wired that way. I wonder if she'd never been introduced to dolls and strollers and hats and pretend bottles, if Maureen would actually use the trucks to do truck things. I'll probably never know, but always, I wonder.
What do you think? How much of it is nature and how much is nurture?
Johnny has never been the kind of kid who cared much about his clothes. We had various hats when he was younger, but he mostly used them to transport blocks or trucks.
Maureen, on the other hand, loves dress up clothes. She loves hats, she loves purses, she loves necklaces and bracelets and headbands and shoes. She frequently vetoes pants or shorts in favor of dresses or skirts, and she's all about the pink. My mom recently tried to get her to use the potty by promising her a new purse, and while she didn't go for it, it gave me an idea. Instead of the chocolate we used as a
I'm sort of glad I ended up with a girly girl. It's fun to do cute stuff with her hair and dress her in frilly clothes and listen to her mother her dolls. It makes a nice change from the constant truck noises and banging and poop references that I get from her brother.
Still, sometimes I wonder how much of her nature comes from her genes and how much is introduced and encouraged by those around her. The whole nature versus nurture thing. She is just so very different from her brother. I know I have made a conscious effort to treat them equally. That doesn't mean I treat them exactly the same. Maureen has always been a more sensitive and cautious child and that means I have to adjust my parenting for that difference, especially when it comes to discipline. And while Johnny has always been an outgoing and gregarious child, Maureen takes separation a little harder and is slower to warm up to strangers. (However, once she decides she is comfortable with you, prepare to have your ears talked off!) So while my approach to each child is different, they still get the treatment that is appropriate to their personalities. I'm not harder on Johnny just because he's a boy nor do I let Maureen slide because she's a girl.
On Monday at school, we talked about the importance of consistency when setting boundaries and establishing effective discipline with kids. Over and over, it came up that within families with more than one child, there was always one kid that makes it harder to be consistent. When siblings are raised with the same mother and father and the same rules and the same parenting philosophy, they still present as individuals with their own set of challenges. In other words, while some things may be easier with a second, third or more child, they'll still keep you guessing.
I've also read that while parents may make a conscious effort to not introduce or perpetuate gender stereotypes, we still do it unconsciously. We're all familiar with the knee-jerk reaction that comes when a boy wants to dress in pink; either because a person really believes that boys belong in blue, or because of a desire to shelter our sons from ridicule from others who believe that.
When he was still an only child, Johnny had plenty of stuffed animals because someone gave us a couple of them and they bred in the middle of the night and took over the house. Since I was not working many hours and had much more time to sit and play with him than I do now, I tried my darndest to make him play with them, but they mostly sat and gathered dust. With Maureen, not only does she play with them, but she nurtures them, pretends to feed them, bosses them about wearing hats in cold weather. My mom came home from Tennessee with Webkinz for both kids, and while Johnny has shown little interest in his stuffed dog, Maureen carries her cat everywhere, sleeps with it, pets it and includes it in her pretend play. (However, when I get around to doing the computer part with them, I suspect that the virtual world aspect will hold Johnny's attention much more than Maureen's. After all, you can't pet and cuddle a two dimensional image.)
One of the most interesting parts of having two kids is observing how they take the exact same toy and play with it in different ways. Both mine play with blocks. Separately, Johnny builds airplanes and bulldozers and Maureen builds beds for her dolls. Together, Maureen makes requests for bathroom furniture for her Curious George figure and it's Johnny who fashions a monkey sized toilet and a sink with moving faucets while Maureen hands him the pieces. Both mine play with trucks. Johnny makes the trucks plow imaginary fields and haul imaginary loads to imaginary roads. Maureen covers them up with blankets on the couch and tells me not to wake the trucks from naptime. Both kids play with the doll stroller, but while Maureen actually walks her dolls in it, Johnny fills it with Legos and uses it as a dump truck. I wonder if it's possible to "make" Johnny cradle a doll or if he's just not wired that way. I wonder if she'd never been introduced to dolls and strollers and hats and pretend bottles, if Maureen would actually use the trucks to do truck things. I'll probably never know, but always, I wonder.
What do you think? How much of it is nature and how much is nurture?
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1 comment:
It's my belief and experience that nurture can only do so much...there's a lot already hard wired in a person's personality.
The Howler has had dolls and trucks from her earliest days. She plays more readily with the trucks than the dolls, and the dolls get most of their attention when there are other girls over to play. (remarkably, even the friends with brothers have no interest in the trucks and cars.)
She identifies with girls, but if whatever the boys are doing interests her, she doesn't let being a girl get in her way!
She's just wired to like what she likes and the rest of the world can get over it.
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