Little Boys and Dolls

Picture Credits: Swords and Snoodles

You see this picture? It was shared by a friend of mine on facebook and the moment I saw it, I shared it on my own profile.

Over the past 9.5 years that I've worked as a Nanny, one of the biggest things that I have had to combat with both parents and children it the idea that things are gendered. That there are boy things and there are girls things.

Here's the thing, there are no boy things or girl things. They're just things that we as adults have put a gender on and then marketed towards that gender. Developmentally, nothing bad is going to happen to your child if you little boy plays with dolls.

In actual fact, you'll find that he is developing social skills as well as gross and fine motor skills. Playing with dolls is an amazing tool that we like to use in childcare because it helps children to develop empathy when they care for the doll. It develops social skills when they play barbies or mums and dad. Fine motor skills are developed through dressing and undressing dolls while gross motor are used through movement of the dolls.

Children also do this think known as mimicking, where they will copy things that they have seen their parents or other adults doing through their play. You see this a lot with young kids pretending to breastfeed their own babies, whether they're a boy or a girl, because they've seen their mum doing it. It can cause a little giggle but it is a part of them developing.

I grew up on a farm with two brothers and most of the time we only had each other to play with. Many people might read that and think that I spent a lot of time play with cars and pretending to be a superhero, and while that is partly true, my brothers also spent a lot of time playing dolls and dress-ups with me. In fact, in terms of the dress ups, they didn't really fight me when I said we were getting dressed into dresses for some reason or another. They would just go along with it.

Part of the power of being an older sister I guess.

The Barbie my brother J loved.
Picture credit: Pinterest

Even though that makes it sound like I would force them to do these things, they often came willingly to play with my dolls. My brother J had a favourite Barbie (a black bubble fairy barbie) that he always had to play with not matter what. My other brother B spent 12 months of his life stealing my favourite doll, the baby born that I had saved my birthday money for, and taking it to bed with him despite my annoyance. That thankfully ended when my Grandparents bought him his own doll, a boy doll he called Lissy after our friends new baby girl Larissa.

None of these things did anything to affect my brother's sexuality and the reason for that is that if they were gay, it was because that was how they were born, not because they had played Barbies with me as a child.

Now if you've read all this and you're still annoyed at your little boy playing dolls, allow me to share this little tidbit of information.

Before World War 2, little boys were dressed in pink and little girls were dressed in blue. Blue was seen as more feminine and dainty while pink was seen as a stronger colour. Then the war hit and suddenly on the other side little boys were dressed in blue and little girls in pink because manufacturers decided to change it. Thats right, this whole change was due to how something was marketed to you.

There is also a train of thought that many people believe that it changed due to Hitler as, during the War, Hitler used pink triangles to on bands to identify homosexuals. You can kind of see how the leap is then made.

At the end of the day it is up to you as a parent to decide what is best for your child, but please keep in mind that by saying something isn't for boys or something isn't for girls is molding them to believe that. Everything that you say to your child molds the way they are going to think. You're also taking away a developmental tool that is very helpful for them to learn skills that they need in their lives. 

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)