It’s a man’s world – or rather a boy’s world

Our ‘Timan’ is not a baby or bubba anymore, no, he is a boy now. He entered the ‘boyhood’ around the time he lost his diapers and when he started to tell us explicitly what he likes and wants and what he despises and therefore doesn’t like at all. Luckily he’s not aware of the word ‘hate’ (yet) and I’m so happy about this. 🙂

I am always trying to treat him in a gender neutral way, at least emotionally. We do cuddle and snuggle a lot, he’s running to Mommy to kiss his booboo away and if he was a girl it wouldn’t be any different. ‘Timan’ is wearing shorts and t-shirts and no skirts, of course (I do not want him to be exposed to people’s jokes), but not the type of clothes saying something about ‘boy’ on it. Some of them are blue, yes, because it’s Mommy’s favorite color and some of them are any other color looking good on him.

And then came the time he started to wear underwear. So we went shopping together and I let him chose the ‘undies’ he liked. All of his choices have either a car, plane, truck or train on them. Boy-underwear they are.

Concerning the toys it was always Mommy’s or Daddy’s choice in the past. Now it’s his own choice. Now he can tell us clearly what he would like to get. And it’s always something with a car, a bus, a truck …. , well, a ‘boy’-toy. And well in his ‘terrible two’ he’s never throwing a tantrum in town because of a ‘girl’-toy he sees in a store. But if he happens to see the car … oh boy oh boy.

Sometimes we are visiting friends with daughters. In their house he never plays with ‘girl’-toys, he might pick the car out of the ‘Barbie and Ken’-set and when the girls want to play ‘mommy, daddy and baby’ with him, he escapes within the 1st minute. Well, I think not entirely because of the game itself, but because being the smallest one, ‘Timan’ always ends up being the baby in the game.

I’m still amazed how much of his so gender typical behavior is coming from himself, without influence from the outside. It looks as if ‘Timan’ is ‘programmed’ to behave like a typical boy, and I think it doesn’t matter so much where we are living or who his parents are or with whom he’s living with.

He’s still likes to ‘help’ around the house, hanging laundry and cleaning things with water (because of the splashing involved, I guess), but when he sees Hubs working on the car, he wants to ‘fix’ his own set of wheels right away and leaves everything else behind.

‘Timan’ has entered the world of boys and there is no way back. He loves to do boy things, loves to ‘paint’ the wall with his pee, plays with boy toys, starts to fix about anything in our house (broken or not, it doesn’t matter 😉 ).

I believe in todays western world it’s easier for little girls to do all the things little boys are doing, at least most of them. Starting with the type of clothes girls can wear and ending with the typical ‘boy’-toys they are playing with. And nobody will say anything. ‘Timan’ is making his own picks and if he would choose a ‘girl’-toy or a ‘girl’-color for his clothes, no problem. When he’s old enough to go to school, he can wear a skirt after school if he wants to, no problem with me (all kids have to wear school-uniforms). But I’ll definitely warn him about the consequences, the laughter, the staring and bad talking of his peers.

Where do we get from here? I hope he keeps his mind open for all the things labeled ‘female’ in this world and in his life, doesn’t stop using the soft touch he still has and never forgets Mommy and all the other females are not from Mars, but from Venus.

How is it with your kids? Is you boy doing the typical ‘boy things’, or maybe not? And what about your girl? Is your child ‘acting’ according to his/her gender?