One of my favorite things to do as a mom is to sit back and watch my kids at unstructured play. This is a time when their imaginations really shine, and when they practice important skills like sharing ideas and working together to fix a problem. It's also a way for me to gauge how they have absorbed what they are exposed to and how they apply that learning during playtime.
Most of the time, they make me laugh, but sometimes they teach me things too. Like when I heard my daughter bossing her dolls around with an inflection that she clearly got from me, reminding me that sometimes I need to soften my tone. And sometimes playtime leads them to ask me questions that make me wonder how to best teach them what I believe in a realistic manner.
Last week, Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess wrote this thoughtful piece on how to respond when her almost six-year-old daughter asked why girls have to wear bathing suit tops (or one pieces) and boys don't. I read the post and comments with interest because, while we are a family that is very relaxed about nudity and not overly concerned with closed doors, in America, at some point it is no longer acceptable for a girl child to be out in public without a top. Even if she's flat as a pancake. However, my own almost six-year-old is a boy, so I thought I had more time to consider the issues of boys, girls, societal pressures and equality before Maureen, now 3 1/2, started asking questions.
And, as usual, I was wrong.
Earlier this week, my kids discovered a packet of colored index cards in our art basket and proceeded to use them to label their belongings. That meant the Lego bucket had a card with Johnny's name taped to it, and Maureen's stuffed cat had a card with an M written on it, because she can't write her full name yet. Eventually, they labeled the downstairs bathroom as the "girls room" and the upstairs bathroom as the "boys room." When I asked how I was supposed to know that the stick figure on the card on the upstairs bathroom was a boy, my son rolled his eyes at me and said, "Don't you know? Girls wear skirts!" When I looked at the card on the downstairs bathroom, sure enough, it looked like this.
Clearly, he had absorbed the lesson my husband taught him--how a child who cannot read can distinguish which bathroom is which using the symbols on the door, a la Dan Brown.
He followed this with, "See! Boys can't wear skirts.....can they?"
Thank you, Internet, for providing photos of men from cultures that do wear skirts, the most famous being the kilt.
However, the fact remains that in the United States, men usually don't wear skirts. When I recounted the conversation to my husband that evening, I said something along the lines of there being no law preventing a boy from wearing a skirt. And he looked at me and said, "So if he's in high school and he wants to wear a skirt to school, you'd say yes?"
And that's where it gets complicated.
I'd like to say that, yes, my answer would be yes. But when I was in high school, there WAS a boy who wore skirts to school. It was a black cotton floor-length skirt, and he wore it with a heavy metal t-shirt and Doc Martens. I can't remember his name, but I do remember that lots of other kids thought it was weird, gross or gay, and I remember that he had a bit of a reputation among the teachers as being a troublemaker. Could I send my own kid to school knowing he would be ridiculed or judged? Is it worth it to rock the boat to prove a point?
Maybe you think I'm over thinking this. It's an innocent question asked by a small boy who may never actually want to wear a skirt, in public or otherwise.
But here's the thing. I don't like being told that I can't do something, especially if the reason is as stupid as being a woman, or a mom, or married or too old or too young. And I really don't like it when someone has a stupid reason for telling my kids they can't do something. If you've been a reader for awhile, you might remember how I bristled when a stranger questioned my son's career goals.
Plus, I just finished reading Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. The two main characters, actual people, were vitally important in the world of finding fossils, but they lived in a time when a woman was considered a spinster if she wasn't married by age 25, when she couldn't walk on a beach alone with a man without being gossiped about, when an intelligent woman interested in science was considered peculiar. These women were unable to reach their full potential simply because they were female. At one point, I wanted to throw the book across the room in a fit of rage, because one of the characters was continually marginalized, ignored, taken advantage of, because of her gender. Even though this woman has been dead for 163 years, the injustice of it left me seething. And obviously, things have changed a lot, because someone had the courage and strength to stand up to societal norms that were ill-conceived or just plain unfair. My kids have rights and opportunities that are only available because someone else chose to rock the boat.
I want my children to continue to ask me difficult questions, because even as I struggle to come up with age appropriate answers, they make me think good and hard about what I believe and why I believe those things, and if those beliefs need to be changed. So I can support them if they decide something is unfair and they want to challenge that unfairness.
What do you think? How do you teach your children to challenge societal norms without exposing them to ridicule, bullying or labels? If your high school student wanted to wear a skirt to school, how do you honestly think you would react?
Most of the time, they make me laugh, but sometimes they teach me things too. Like when I heard my daughter bossing her dolls around with an inflection that she clearly got from me, reminding me that sometimes I need to soften my tone. And sometimes playtime leads them to ask me questions that make me wonder how to best teach them what I believe in a realistic manner.
Last week, Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess wrote this thoughtful piece on how to respond when her almost six-year-old daughter asked why girls have to wear bathing suit tops (or one pieces) and boys don't. I read the post and comments with interest because, while we are a family that is very relaxed about nudity and not overly concerned with closed doors, in America, at some point it is no longer acceptable for a girl child to be out in public without a top. Even if she's flat as a pancake. However, my own almost six-year-old is a boy, so I thought I had more time to consider the issues of boys, girls, societal pressures and equality before Maureen, now 3 1/2, started asking questions.
And, as usual, I was wrong.
Earlier this week, my kids discovered a packet of colored index cards in our art basket and proceeded to use them to label their belongings. That meant the Lego bucket had a card with Johnny's name taped to it, and Maureen's stuffed cat had a card with an M written on it, because she can't write her full name yet. Eventually, they labeled the downstairs bathroom as the "girls room" and the upstairs bathroom as the "boys room." When I asked how I was supposed to know that the stick figure on the card on the upstairs bathroom was a boy, my son rolled his eyes at me and said, "Don't you know? Girls wear skirts!" When I looked at the card on the downstairs bathroom, sure enough, it looked like this.
Clearly, he had absorbed the lesson my husband taught him--how a child who cannot read can distinguish which bathroom is which using the symbols on the door, a la Dan Brown.
He followed this with, "See! Boys can't wear skirts.....can they?"
Thank you, Internet, for providing photos of men from cultures that do wear skirts, the most famous being the kilt.
However, the fact remains that in the United States, men usually don't wear skirts. When I recounted the conversation to my husband that evening, I said something along the lines of there being no law preventing a boy from wearing a skirt. And he looked at me and said, "So if he's in high school and he wants to wear a skirt to school, you'd say yes?"
And that's where it gets complicated.
I'd like to say that, yes, my answer would be yes. But when I was in high school, there WAS a boy who wore skirts to school. It was a black cotton floor-length skirt, and he wore it with a heavy metal t-shirt and Doc Martens. I can't remember his name, but I do remember that lots of other kids thought it was weird, gross or gay, and I remember that he had a bit of a reputation among the teachers as being a troublemaker. Could I send my own kid to school knowing he would be ridiculed or judged? Is it worth it to rock the boat to prove a point?
Maybe you think I'm over thinking this. It's an innocent question asked by a small boy who may never actually want to wear a skirt, in public or otherwise.
But here's the thing. I don't like being told that I can't do something, especially if the reason is as stupid as being a woman, or a mom, or married or too old or too young. And I really don't like it when someone has a stupid reason for telling my kids they can't do something. If you've been a reader for awhile, you might remember how I bristled when a stranger questioned my son's career goals.
Plus, I just finished reading Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. The two main characters, actual people, were vitally important in the world of finding fossils, but they lived in a time when a woman was considered a spinster if she wasn't married by age 25, when she couldn't walk on a beach alone with a man without being gossiped about, when an intelligent woman interested in science was considered peculiar. These women were unable to reach their full potential simply because they were female. At one point, I wanted to throw the book across the room in a fit of rage, because one of the characters was continually marginalized, ignored, taken advantage of, because of her gender. Even though this woman has been dead for 163 years, the injustice of it left me seething. And obviously, things have changed a lot, because someone had the courage and strength to stand up to societal norms that were ill-conceived or just plain unfair. My kids have rights and opportunities that are only available because someone else chose to rock the boat.
I want my children to continue to ask me difficult questions, because even as I struggle to come up with age appropriate answers, they make me think good and hard about what I believe and why I believe those things, and if those beliefs need to be changed. So I can support them if they decide something is unfair and they want to challenge that unfairness.
What do you think? How do you teach your children to challenge societal norms without exposing them to ridicule, bullying or labels? If your high school student wanted to wear a skirt to school, how do you honestly think you would react?
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1 comment:
Did you hear about that kid whose parents are raising him/her gender neutral as far as clothes, toys, hairstyles, etc. Some days wears dresses, some days pants. They never use personal pronouns just his/her name. They say they will let him/her reveal it when he/she feels comfortable.
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