“That’s a girl’s toy!”

A little while ago, a boy (X) came home for a play date with my son (V). For a while, they played what is typically considered boy games – mostly pretend battles. After the battles were done and breaking for a quick lunch, my son proposed that they could do some art/craft. X, it seemed, was not particularly into arts or crafts. So they kept discussing and debating and evolving their ideas of what / whether to build, what to play and so on.

Dramatic play is one of V’s favorite things to do. So after a while, V asked X if he would play Calico Critters and X agreed, despite not knowing what it was. V brought out his Calico Critter toys. As soon as X saw the toys, he immediately walked away from them exclaiming, “That’s a girl’s toy! I don’t want to play with that!”

My heart skipped a beat and I cringed. But I kept my mouth shut, to see how it would play out and intervene only if necessary. So X went off to V’s room and brought some other toys that interested him and started playing with those. And then this debate ensued:

V: X, hey you agreed to play Calico Critters! You cannot break your word! You agreed!

X: But I don’t want to play that! Can’t I play something else on my own? I don’t want to play that!

V: But you said you’d play!! And then you simply looked at it and said you don’t want to play that! Can’t you even try it for a few minutes and see if you like it or not? You don’t know what it’s about if you don’t even try it and just decide based on how it looks dude!

X: Aaah, but I don’t want to play that!

V: But why? C’mon! You gave me your word! How about you play for five minutes and then decide whether you like it or not?

X: Well, ok, I’ll try after I play with these toys for five minutes!

V: No No No! You said you’d play this first and you gave me your word! Can’t you try Calico Critters for five minutes? If you don’t like it after five minutes, you can go back to your other game, I promise! Why can’t you just give it a try!

X: Ok, fine! I’ll try it. But only for five minutes, OK?

V: OK, OK!

The two then proceeded to dramatically play with Calico Critters for, at least, the next 30 minutes, and they had SO much fun playing that X forgot all about his “boy” toys for that time!

This was such a profound moment for me. We’re big on keeping things as gender neutral as possible in our household. In our world, we don’t do girl toys and boy toys, girl colors and boy colors. We don’t address boys as “sport” or “champ” or girls as “princess”. But every step of our parenting journey, we’ve encountered enormous biases of the sort, being passed down to the next generation. The problem with these biases is that they are rather polarizing and limiting.

I am not denying that there are some inherent differences between boys and girls in how they develop (both physically and emotionally) and consequently in how they play sometimes. But we’re now living in a highly polarized world of our own making – we categorize toys and colors and activities and clothes and music and movies and whatnot preemptively *for* them – which is troubling in more ways than one – especially when they feel compelled to make choices because of how they are perceived by others, rather than exploring their own authentic thoughts.

I was proud of V for standing up against a gender-biased comment. Not only that, he had inadvertently demonstrated this phenomenon to X. He had negotiated with X that he should try it first before deciding whether he actually liked it or not, not decide based on what it merely looked like.

I have come to believe through my experiences that children learn more from watching their grown ups do what they do, rather than listening to lectures and lessons on humanity. The best way to teach is to model – which means – work on yourself, your own flaws and biases, live your most authentic life. As the age old saying goes – practice what you preach and our children will pick up on that from the environment. Biases aren’t born out of nothing. X said what he said because he had heard it enough times from his grown ups or other kids and grown ups with gender biases. He didn’t realize what it meant but picked up on it because it had likely been in his environment.

Time and again, I come back to the same conclusion, that parenting is not a verb, it’s not something we do to our children. It is a relationship and a two-way one at that. As long as we keep working on becoming our most authentic selves, they will too. And that’s worth striving for.