As a stay at home dad, I don’t get all caught up in trying to portray some manly macho image to my kids or to the world to counter act the fact that I stay home and do a traditionally female role. It honestly doesn’t cross my mind 99% of the time. We have 3 boys and 1 girl and I can’t say that I go around intentionally trying to steer their play time toward “gender appropriate” toys. If my daughter wants to play with monster trucks or footballs then I let her and if my boys want to play with princesses and baby dolls then I let them do that too.
I’m sure school will give them plenty of pressure to act gender appropriate later on, particularly my boys. They don’t need any extra pressure from me. For now I’ll just let them be kids. One of my sons took a trip with his grandfather to run some errands the other day. Along the way they stopped at a Dollar Tree and my son was allowed to pick out 2 toys. He picked a purple piggy bank and a tiara. He was so proud of those two things he was carrying them all around the house the next day. When it came time to go down to the bus stop to get our oldest from Kindergarten he ran to grab his tiara to take to the bus stop.
I’ll admit I had a moment where I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to walk with me in public wearing a tiara. But I quickly had a “who cares” conversation in my own mind and I let him wear it without any issue. While we were waiting for the bus I started to wonder why exactly he had picked a tiara out of all the other things in the whole store he could have chosen. So I asked him.
He looked at me with a puzzled face that seemed to imply he was surprised I didn’t know the answer to such an obvious question, and replied:
“Because it was very awesome and I wanted to wear it.”
I wonder if I could pull off the tiara look as good as he can?
So how about you, would you let your son wear a tiara?
He looks great and his smile proves that his choice of toy was a good one! Thanks for sharing…
🙂 yes he was the envy of the bus stop that day!
Well, I don’t have any boys. All I have is two girls, and being that my house is full of women, I would like to think I would let him. After all, we would be out numbered, and if you can’t beat them, join them, lol.
It might end up being you at the bus stop with the tiara 🙂 and that would be pretty awesome!
Just question/comment… Do you think this would have made it into your blog if it was Ella carrying a hammer or monster truck?
That’s a great question. It probably would not have been something I’d have thought to write about. She has actually taken a matchbox car with her to the bus stop and I never had a moment where I needed to convince myself it was ok.
I’d attribute this to 3 things:
1) I’m a male so I’m probably more in tune with worrying about this from a male perspective.
2) Because Ela is outnumbered by the boys she often joins what they are doing and I see her playing with “boy” toys so frequently, I dont think twice about it anymore.
3) It has long been ok for girls to act like boys. Society calls these girls Tom Boys and there really isn’t any negative conotation associated with that term. What is society’s term for boys that act like girls?…Sissys.
It is an interesting double standard.
Im glad you have an open view of the world! Many people are close minded when it comes to those things. You should see the looks i get being a trans dad when my son says dada, in south carolina!!!
Yes, I can imagine you get the side-eye quite a bit.
If I had a son I would so let him wear a Tiara, I also let my daughter bring over her girlfriend 😉