Why I didnt' want a baby girl

Sheesh I'm glad my parents weren't "rule" enforcers like that. While I like to wear barrettes in my hair and practice cheerleading, I also liked to play football, basketball ans soccer. I loved arm wrestling and playing Mercy and preferred the evil women in Disney movies over the irritatingly weak princesses. Letting kids play whatever they want to play (regardless of gendered stereotypes) has no damaging effects because to them it's just a game. I doubt all of the boys who went to my tea party will end up social rejects.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

puh-lease

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I think we're going beyond normal stuff like boys playing with dolls and girls playing football. There is a line where parents need to address their child is different, and you get nowhere by being angry with the child, just as you get nowhere by ignoring it. A lot of trans people report feeling very lost and feeling like rejects. I want my child to feel like there's nothing to hide so we can deal with it

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

But if you demand to raise your child in a non-gender way then dresses should be put on either child. Non-gender specific, right? If he is put in dresses since infancy, when does it become his choice? Why would it be a trans gender issue?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

All I wanted was to have a tea party. LGBT children are more than welcome to join me of course. The more the merrier.

 

I'm not talking about your tea party. I have never said a word about your tea party. I don't care about your tea party.

I'm wondering about parents who demand to raise their daughters in a non-gender way but cringe at the thought of doing so with their sons. Its all fine and dandy to put your daughter in pants and enroll her in baseball, soccer, etc. But throw the son in a dress and sign him up for cheer-leading? Complete double standard.

 

Or you could put dresses on neither child. It becomes their choice when they tell you what they like and don't like. Like when I told my mom I didn't want to wear skirts and dresses or sandals anymore. It has nothing to do with playing tea party with your boys or battle robots with your girls.

 

do you think you obsess about tea parties?

 

Well excuse me. It's wrong to force your child to do anything they have no interest in. It just makes them selfish parents.

 

I missed your prior post. And yes I had so much fun at my tea party I want to do it again.

 

HA! you obviously don't have kids. LOL I force my kids to do crap they don't want to all the time!

 

I think you raise your child with gender awareness. We live in a heterocentric, sexist world that makes us generally frown upon putting boys in dresses, and I don't think that's fair or logical, but I don't want to socialize my child in such a way that s/he feels alien operating in society. In that spirit, I also don't want to deny my child any opportunity to explore those roles or question them in the context of play and think there's nothing wrong with getting a little boy a tea set or dolls or even a bunch of playclothes with a dress or two thrown in there.

But there is a point where parents also have to have the brains to notice a child is different. If a little boy insists he's a little girl and wants to wear a dress to school, it's a parent's obligation NOT to humiliate him, but to carefully deal with the situation and help their child.

The issue it seems we're politely skirting is how big an influence parents have on a child's gender identity.

 

I meant recreational wise. Like forcing your son to play football when they personally prefer swimming. I did a whole of stuff as a child and when I decided I'd had enough my mother didn't force me to stay in them because recreation should be fun, something you enjoy, and you shouldn't have to suffer through it. Just change to something you do enjoy. It's a belief I hold myself to as well, if I enjoy something it's worth doing if I'm always miserable it's time to leave. Well that's my stance anyway.

 

I think don't really have much influence on a child's gender identity. You are what you are. You just feel ashamed about it or feel accepted.

 

I kind of walk the line on this issue. I certainly got a lot of views on how I view gender from my parents, who even managed conflicting views.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

I've asked myself if my sexual orientation/gender identity would be the same if my parents had thought/behaved differently. I think I'd still be the same at the root of things, but I think that might express itself differently.

 

There was a family here in the US that moved their son to another school so that he could enroll as a girl. He was about 5-6 yrs old.
I am not that good of a parent. I wish I could be but I'm not.

 

What else can you do?

 

Be a girl at home but a boy at school. Like I said, they are better parents than me.

 

Kids, like adults, are lazy. If you don't force them to do things, they'll sit around in the basement playing video games their whole lives. Once they get involved in something, they often find it's actually fun. But if you hadn't forced them to participate, they'd never have had the chance to discover that. You give them some choice, but you guide the choice. You don't say, "Would you rather sleep till noon all summer and do nothing; or get up early every day and play a sport?" You say, "Do you want to play baseball, or soccer?"

 

Yeah, I could see forcing your kid to have hobbies and after school activities and stuff, but not forcing them to do a certain one. They should just be told they need to pick two or however many activities to participate in but it could be whatever they want.

 

That's what I meant. I played basketball with a kid who had no athletic ability. He could barely run straight. He would fall all of the time couldn't dribble couldn't shoot. Even though his team was kind and supportive he often looked like he wanted to cry every time he messed up. He was humiliated and he used to cry to his father about how he didn't want to play anymore, but his father said it was good for him and the life isn't always fun. But basketball is a game it's supposed to be fun. This kid was a very talented artist though and he would draw stuff for us all of the time. He should been doing some sort of art or drawing club not basketball.