Aa
Is it normal for a 4 and a half year old girl to say she's a boy?
My daughter is four years old and 8 months old. She love to play pretend, but she always like to pretend she's some male (and mean) character: Scar from Lion King, the horse from Tangled, Pong from 101 Dalmatians, the prince in Sleeping Beauty or LIttle Mermaid... the list goes on and on. She was a shy little girl until she started going to pre-school last year. She became way more outgoing with children her age (both girls and boys) soon after she started going to pre-school. At school she started hanging out with this one boy. They became best friends. The second half of the year she became friends with another boy and another boy. She will hang out with one boy at a time. She also had girl friends, but not at school. Just daughters of friends of mine, and she loves (still does) playing with them. This is her second year at the same school, with the same class and most of her friends are boys, but now she plays with a group of them and there are also a couple of other girls in the group. However, recently, my daughter has started saying she's a boy. She doesn't get mad when I tell her she's a girl. She's still wearing normal girls clothes but she doesn't like to wear dresses. About year and a half she was into dresses, but now she doesn't want to wear them. Two nights I had this dialogue with her:
Me: Are you a boy or a girl?
Daughter: I'm a boy.
Me: Do you want to be a boy? or are you a boy?
Daughter: I'm a boy.
Me: Why do you think you're a boy?
Daughter: Because I like boys.
Me: What do you like about boys?
Daughter: I don't know.
Me: Why do you like boys?
Daughter: I don't like girls.
Me: Why don't you like girls?
Daughter (sadly): Because they don't like playing with me.
Then I reminded about her girl friends who she used to play with during the summer and her face lit up. She asked me to go to the house of one of them to play (which I'll be arranging for next week).
My question is, does my daughter have this Gender Identity Disorder (or something like that) people keep talking about these day? Or is this kind of normal? Is she saying she's a boy so the her boy friends at school keep playing with her? My native language is Spanish and I speak only Spanish to my daughter (she's bilingual. My husband is American and only speaks English) and in Spanish every adjective is either masculine or feminine. My daughter always uses the feminine form when talking about herself.
Once, when she told me she was a prince I said: You can't be a prince. You're a girl" And she said: I know, Mom, but I'm pretending to be a boy who's pretending to be a prince :-). What do you think?
Thank you!
Me: Are you a boy or a girl?
Daughter: I'm a boy.
Me: Do you want to be a boy? or are you a boy?
Daughter: I'm a boy.
Me: Why do you think you're a boy?
Daughter: Because I like boys.
Me: What do you like about boys?
Daughter: I don't know.
Me: Why do you like boys?
Daughter: I don't like girls.
Me: Why don't you like girls?
Daughter (sadly): Because they don't like playing with me.
Then I reminded about her girl friends who she used to play with during the summer and her face lit up. She asked me to go to the house of one of them to play (which I'll be arranging for next week).
My question is, does my daughter have this Gender Identity Disorder (or something like that) people keep talking about these day? Or is this kind of normal? Is she saying she's a boy so the her boy friends at school keep playing with her? My native language is Spanish and I speak only Spanish to my daughter (she's bilingual. My husband is American and only speaks English) and in Spanish every adjective is either masculine or feminine. My daughter always uses the feminine form when talking about herself.
Once, when she told me she was a prince I said: You can't be a prince. You're a girl" And she said: I know, Mom, but I'm pretending to be a boy who's pretending to be a prince :-). What do you think?
Thank you!
I think NOW you are seeing the light! LOL! That is EXACTLY what I meant by information overload! The internet is a great technological advancement but geeeeez u can really get yourself freaked out if your not careful... I love your train of thought now! Your daughter is an absolutely wonderful 4 yr old who is exploring the world around her.
VERY interesting!!! I'll try to get the book. I've always believed that all extremes are negative. I'm certainly glad to see my daughter is not obsessed with princess and all pink, but I'm also glad, at this points, that she likes dolls and princesses... all while still liking cars and airplanes :-). Yesterday my husband and I took our daughter to the movie theater for the very first time. We watched Frozen, the new Disney movie. What a cute movie and it's interesting to see that even Disney is changing the way princesses act and think. They are way less helpless that the classic Cinderella or Snow White. They are aggressive in a positive way and they don't live waiting for a prince to come and rescue them. In Frozen (watch out: spoiler coming :-)) the true love that saves the princess is her sister's love. Beautiful!!! Well, my daughter hasn't let go of her Anna doll (one the main characters in the movie) since yesterday evening and our mission today is to find Elisa, the sister :-).
You know what else I've been thinking this Thanksgiving weekend? Before I came to this forum I read any article that I could find on-line about children gender.... Most of them (not to say all of them) stated that when a child (boy or girl) prefers to play games or with toys typically associated with the opposite sex, then that child suffered from a condition called "gender confusion".... Reading this only made my fears about my daughter gender identity worse! Now I'm starting to feel quite annoyed by such a statement.
I've been thinking a LOT about my own childhood and I remember how much I liked playing with toy cars, and how I would jump from one piece of furniture to the next pretending I was Spider Man, and how I loved to play with the toy soldiers in parachute my dad would buy for me. I remember how I was never crazy about playing with dolls (my daughter is way more into dolls than I was at her age, that's for sure) and I don't remember EVER wearing something pink... of course, back then this craziness about all princess and all pink didn't exist.
My point is I was NEVER confused about my gender. I always knew I was a girl and I grew up to be a heterosexual woman. So, the idea that if a woman or a little girl likes something other than dolls and pink she's confused or there's something wrong with her is sounding more and more ridiculous by the minute!! What do you think?
You know what else I've been thinking this Thanksgiving weekend? Before I came to this forum I read any article that I could find on-line about children gender.... Most of them (not to say all of them) stated that when a child (boy or girl) prefers to play games or with toys typically associated with the opposite sex, then that child suffered from a condition called "gender confusion".... Reading this only made my fears about my daughter gender identity worse! Now I'm starting to feel quite annoyed by such a statement.
I've been thinking a LOT about my own childhood and I remember how much I liked playing with toy cars, and how I would jump from one piece of furniture to the next pretending I was Spider Man, and how I loved to play with the toy soldiers in parachute my dad would buy for me. I remember how I was never crazy about playing with dolls (my daughter is way more into dolls than I was at her age, that's for sure) and I don't remember EVER wearing something pink... of course, back then this craziness about all princess and all pink didn't exist.
My point is I was NEVER confused about my gender. I always knew I was a girl and I grew up to be a heterosexual woman. So, the idea that if a woman or a little girl likes something other than dolls and pink she's confused or there's something wrong with her is sounding more and more ridiculous by the minute!! What do you think?
I read this today and thought maybe it would be of interest to you... Sounds like a good read :-)
In Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture Orenstein sets out to discover the origins and ramifications of this cultural shift. “I didn’t know whether Disney Princesses would be the first salvo in a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting (and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results),” she writes. “But, for me they became a trigger for the larger question of how to help our daughters, with the contradictions they will inevitably face as girls, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. It seemed, then, that I was not done, not only with the princesses, but with the whole culture of little girlhood: what it had become, how it had changed in the decades since I was a child, what those changes meant and how to navigate them as a parent.” With the keen perceptions of a seasoned journalist, the emotional investment of a mother, and a wittiness that’s all her own, Orenstein ventures to the land of Disney and American Girl Place, visits the toy industry’s largest trade show, even braves a Miley Cyrus concert. She talks with historians, marketers, psychologists, neuroscientists, parents, and children themselves. She returns to the original fairy tales, seeks out girls’ virtual presence online, and ponders the meaning of child beauty pageants. In the process, she faces down her own confusion as a mother and woman about issues that rearing a girl raise about her own femininity.
An intelligent, candid, and often personal work, Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers an important exploration of the burgeoning girlie-girl culture and what it could mean for our daughters’ identities and their futures.
In Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture Orenstein sets out to discover the origins and ramifications of this cultural shift. “I didn’t know whether Disney Princesses would be the first salvo in a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting (and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results),” she writes. “But, for me they became a trigger for the larger question of how to help our daughters, with the contradictions they will inevitably face as girls, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. It seemed, then, that I was not done, not only with the princesses, but with the whole culture of little girlhood: what it had become, how it had changed in the decades since I was a child, what those changes meant and how to navigate them as a parent.” With the keen perceptions of a seasoned journalist, the emotional investment of a mother, and a wittiness that’s all her own, Orenstein ventures to the land of Disney and American Girl Place, visits the toy industry’s largest trade show, even braves a Miley Cyrus concert. She talks with historians, marketers, psychologists, neuroscientists, parents, and children themselves. She returns to the original fairy tales, seeks out girls’ virtual presence online, and ponders the meaning of child beauty pageants. In the process, she faces down her own confusion as a mother and woman about issues that rearing a girl raise about her own femininity.
An intelligent, candid, and often personal work, Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers an important exploration of the burgeoning girlie-girl culture and what it could mean for our daughters’ identities and their futures.
Yay!!!! See!!!
Ladies, sometimes it's not a matter of preference... I would've loved to have at least one more child, but God had different plans :-). We consider adopting a couple of years ago, but we don't have the $10,000 that it costs to adopt in our area :-(. My mother comes from a VERY large family: 13 children; but she doesn't have the best relationship with her siblings. Most of them have passed away but there were awful fights among then in the past. When I was a child I would've given anything to have a brother or a sister. My parents are older so I felt lonely sometimes. As an adult, I wish I had someone to share the responsibility of taking care of my parents, but in general, I'm happy being an only child :-).
As of my daughter.... this afternoon she was playing in her room while I cooked dinner. She called me and said: "Mommy, look at me"... I went to see and she was wearing her Rapunzel dress and a smile on her face :-). She hadn't put that dress on in a looooooooong time. She came downstairs holding her dress like a real princess! :-)... She kept the dress on for the rest of the day :-). Not that I want her to be an all princess kind of girl (I love middle grounds) but I'm happy :-D.
As of my daughter.... this afternoon she was playing in her room while I cooked dinner. She called me and said: "Mommy, look at me"... I went to see and she was wearing her Rapunzel dress and a smile on her face :-). She hadn't put that dress on in a looooooooong time. She came downstairs holding her dress like a real princess! :-)... She kept the dress on for the rest of the day :-). Not that I want her to be an all princess kind of girl (I love middle grounds) but I'm happy :-D.
I doubt that the bulk of studies would support this. In any case studies can be skewed and must be analyzed carefully. I come from a large family (and a large extended family). It is my experience that large families promote competition.
However, some people may be happier with small families, and that is completely reasonable.
However, some people may be happier with small families, and that is completely reasonable.
You are reading content posted in the Child Behavior Community
Fearing autism, many parents aren't vaccinating their kids. Can doctors reverse this dangerous trend?
Is a gluten-free diet right for you?
We answer your top questions about the flu vaccine.
Learn which over-the-counter medicines are safe for you and your baby
Yummy eats that will keep your child healthy and happy
Healing home remedies for common ailments
