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Peter_J
Guest
Wait, you had time to do those things in addition to the time you spent being a girl??
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EasterJoy
Guest
Females are famously good at multi-tasking.
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Phemie
Guest
Our eldest is a girl, followed by two boys. The gap in age is 2 years 5 months between each. Girl had a variety of toys, including cars and trucks. She preferred dolls, unlike her mother. I preferred trucks and cars and guns and had no use for dolls. Later on I preferred yard work to house work. I still grew up to be a good wife and mother.
When our youngest was born I noticed at one point that his brother was nursing one of his sister’s baby dolls. There was a bottle for her somewhere but that’s not what he was seeing at home so he mimicked what he saw in caring for his baby. I thought it was cute and never gave it a second thought.
A few months later he was digging through the basket of clean clothes and came up with his sister’s skirt. He put it on and was walking around when sister said, “Scott, you can’t wear that! It’s for church!” I cracked up.
Said son is now happily employed as a cook for a catering company and loves to show off his skills for us when we visit him and his wife. He is hoping to become a dad in the next few years. No sign of gender confusion in him or in his siblings.
Kids are kids. They have great imaginations. They’ll use what’s at hand to be what they need at the moment for the play they are involved in. You can be as non-violent and gun-free a household as you want but sure as God made little green apples at some point some inoffensive toy will be come a gun if that’s the tool needed for the game.
When our youngest was born I noticed at one point that his brother was nursing one of his sister’s baby dolls. There was a bottle for her somewhere but that’s not what he was seeing at home so he mimicked what he saw in caring for his baby. I thought it was cute and never gave it a second thought.
A few months later he was digging through the basket of clean clothes and came up with his sister’s skirt. He put it on and was walking around when sister said, “Scott, you can’t wear that! It’s for church!” I cracked up.
Said son is now happily employed as a cook for a catering company and loves to show off his skills for us when we visit him and his wife. He is hoping to become a dad in the next few years. No sign of gender confusion in him or in his siblings.
Kids are kids. They have great imaginations. They’ll use what’s at hand to be what they need at the moment for the play they are involved in. You can be as non-violent and gun-free a household as you want but sure as God made little green apples at some point some inoffensive toy will be come a gun if that’s the tool needed for the game.
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ToeInTheWater
Guest
My family doesn’t have a hunting tradition but I have noticed that many who do, include women in the activity as well.
While I don’t agree with a complete gender-neutral society, I do think that there are many differences in different subcultures regarding what is considered a “Masculine” and what is considered a “Feminine” activity.
ETA: And sometimes, an activity like cooking is considered “feminine” when done for no pay, but considered “masculine” when done as a paying career - as I have noted before, most successful professional chefs are men.
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Phemie
Guest
Dad took both my brother and I hunting at least once a year. We were both taught to shoot .22s and it was quite exciting to hit the target for the first time.
I must admit that I never had any desire to kill anything and I’m convinced that if I personally had to kill an animal to eat I’d be a vegetarian. My brother didn’t go in for hunting either. The only time I remember him coming close to getting anything, it was a rabbit. He was aiming right at it and Dad, with visions of rabbit stew dancing in his head, was whispering, “Shoot!” Brother answered, loudly enough to scare said rabbit into leaving, “What did that rabbit ever do to me?” Dad wasn’t happy.
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ToeInTheWater
Guest
LOL!
However, I don’t want to pile on to tafan too much especially if he has unsubscribed. I do think it is important for fathers and sons to have one on one bonding time.
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EasterJoy
Guest
Being a chef is a special situation, perhaps. The batch size can be so large for a restaurant that there can be a lot of heavy-lifting involved over a long shift. (Restaurant work is physically taxing, even for the wait staff.)
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Phemie
Guest
Not really, a rat can do it.
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victrolatim
Guest
I think there is a definite difference between playing pretend and dressing up constantly in women’s clothing and proclaiming one wants to be a woman. I played with stuffed animals in my young life a lot, mostly because of limited social engagement (I had a hard time due to disability and being on a different intellectual plane than my peers). The stuffed animals had their own government, legislature, elections, etc. In high school, I had a similar experience to the Shakespeare poster, in which, due to all the members of my group being male, I drew the short straw and became Lady Macbeth. As I recall, I donned a wig and did my best Dame Edna impersonation (which only the teacher picked up on). None of these things caused me to want to be female or effeminate in any way. I am equally well versed in cooking as with power tools (in as much as I screw up boiling water)
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Peter_J
Guest
Well, I guess we could let you off with a warning.
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EasterJoy
Guest
With a ride, LOL…Not really, a rat can do it.
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Bonnie
Guest
My husband was in seminary from the 8th grade on & he had similar experiences. He has a horror of pink & anything remotely effeminate, so I guess it didn’t do him any harm. But just realized, maybe that’s what caused him to dislike pink & long hair!
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EasterJoy
Guest
Back to the subject of the thread, I think parents ought to be very careful that they’re not so afraid of “encouraging” their son to develop some kind of gender dysphoria that they’ll freak out if God blesses them with the next generation’s Fred Rogers.
There are some very sweet, gentle and nurturing little boys out there who need kind, accepting and understanding treatment to simply grow up into what God made them to be, which is sweet, gentle and nurturing grown men.
If you freak out when your son shows signs of becoming that kind of a man, what you may push him into becoming instead is a nervous wreck who is constantly fearful that he’ll fail to become a man *at all *if someone doesn’t “do something about” him. Fear is *not *how a young man develops any of the masculine virtues!! Fear has its place, it can keep us from being flippant about avoiding vice, but fear does not teach virtue.
I wouldn’t want to leave a child to one zone of comfort, whether all he wants to do all of the time is to be an athlete or a poet, but at the same time I believe everyone ought to be encouraged to see that no matter who we are there are appropriate and saintly ways to act “like ourselves.” The rambunctious boy has physical courage–we don’t need to freak out and assume he’ll be a bully rather than a defender of the weak. We don’t have to freak out and worry that the girl with more than the usual share of physical courage cannot learn to go out in public in a skirt without embarrassing herself.
Likewise, the gentle boy who has a natural desire to be a comforter and caretaker for little children has a character virtue, not a vice, even if it is a virtue that comes naturally to more little girls than little boys. Every virtue has a vice on its flip side, but parenting is in bringing out the virtue far more than spending too much time concentrating on the vice.
If you treat a sweet, gentle and nurturing boy as if he is not headed to becoming the next Divine but rather the next Mr. Rogers, he is going to turn out better no matter what kind of psychological make-up he has. He may even be the next St. Francis. One never knows!
There are some very sweet, gentle and nurturing little boys out there who need kind, accepting and understanding treatment to simply grow up into what God made them to be, which is sweet, gentle and nurturing grown men.
If you freak out when your son shows signs of becoming that kind of a man, what you may push him into becoming instead is a nervous wreck who is constantly fearful that he’ll fail to become a man *at all *if someone doesn’t “do something about” him. Fear is *not *how a young man develops any of the masculine virtues!! Fear has its place, it can keep us from being flippant about avoiding vice, but fear does not teach virtue.
I wouldn’t want to leave a child to one zone of comfort, whether all he wants to do all of the time is to be an athlete or a poet, but at the same time I believe everyone ought to be encouraged to see that no matter who we are there are appropriate and saintly ways to act “like ourselves.” The rambunctious boy has physical courage–we don’t need to freak out and assume he’ll be a bully rather than a defender of the weak. We don’t have to freak out and worry that the girl with more than the usual share of physical courage cannot learn to go out in public in a skirt without embarrassing herself.
Likewise, the gentle boy who has a natural desire to be a comforter and caretaker for little children has a character virtue, not a vice, even if it is a virtue that comes naturally to more little girls than little boys. Every virtue has a vice on its flip side, but parenting is in bringing out the virtue far more than spending too much time concentrating on the vice.
If you treat a sweet, gentle and nurturing boy as if he is not headed to becoming the next Divine but rather the next Mr. Rogers, he is going to turn out better no matter what kind of psychological make-up he has. He may even be the next St. Francis. One never knows!
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chevalier
Guest
Nothing wrong with ‘interested’. Heck, I played with boys and girls both, and dolls were just fine. It’s not like theatre — and that’s essentially what it is — is for women only. Most playwrights at the very least have been male — and not quite trans- or homosexual, most of them.
What the parents need to assure is not that the boy doesn’t develop a caring streak or interest in house/family life, but that he doesn’t miss out on becoming a tough guy who does, one way or the other, what a man ought to do.
In terms of sin, even toddlers can sin, but I wouldn’t really go out of my way to find sin in children’s journeys of (self-)discovery. I believe a much more central issue there morally is whether the parents are providing sufficient supervision and, even more importantly, guidance.
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