Can I be proud of DD here please?!

Good for her!

Some parents shared similar anecdotes when I was preparing an article for Let Toys Be Toys recently.

I was (and still am) too scared to speak up most of the time but I hope my daughters will be more self-assured.

a suggestion for next time, list the bags and ask everyone to queue for who wants what.
And go her

Some cool outspoken children here :) My ds is much better at challenging things than my dd although she has become more confident as she's got older. She cares more about what people think of her, and while some of that is personality I'm sure some is learned too. ds has never cared about other people's opinions or the consequences of his actions very much (which has been problematic at times to say the least!) but I'm sure he has got way more validation for being opinionated and outspoken.

Love that How women have to speak link. Depressing, not generally my personal experience but very funny

Quote: “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Woman in a Meeting: "I don’t want to toot my own horn here at all but I definitely have been to those places and was just honored to be a part of it as our team did such a wonderful job of conquering them."

Well done OP's DD! The rudness was entirely on the part of the venue, thinking gendered party bags are in any way acceptable. Glad they were called out on it. I'm not sure I would have had the confidence to speak up as an adult (although I'd certainly have written a strongly-worded letter!!)

OP, your daughter sounds fab and I can't see any rudeness. Rude would have been to say "I don't want this stupid fucking party bag, it's a load of sexist old cobblers" and chucking it back at the employee

I only wish I had been encouraged more to say what I thought as a young child. The level to which I was made to defer to adults and never, ever question them has made my adult life much more difficult that it needed to be. We don't do this to boys to anything like the extent we do it to girls, and if that isn't a valid field to have a bit of a feminist shout about, I don't know what is.

Yes, proud of Satan's and ShowofHands' DDs and all the other feminist DDs in training.

I'm proud of her too.

Did anyone mention cake ?

Satan - I didn't read all of this because I couldn't hack it after Bubbletree et al weighed in...I'm sorry about some of the things they've said about your daughter. Anyway - she sounds totally fantastic and I'll be proud if mine turns out similarly. Good for her (and you for raising her, obviously).

See, FWR posters are nice, helping out with cakes and stuff.

DS1 was at a birthday party, they had spare cake, I said I'd help them out with that :)

A rather nice layered chocolate cake if you were wondering.

Chunky has tea and cake??

Yes Plays, it's strange. I generally feel quite uplifted after reading the feminism section and feel there is a sense of camaraderie here, in the main, even though I'm not really a part of it. Most disagreement is rationalised in a respectful way. Yet aibu, where this generally isn't the case, doesn't get told 'be nice or you'll scare other poster's away'.

people don't blindly agree with each other in any section of mn

Exactly. Many other sections have very heated debates, but even a mildly challenging remark in FWR will prompt the "this is why I never post in the feminist section" remarks.

Lovely thread! Your DC are excellent! :D

Agree with pp, precocious is only directed at females.

Exactly. I spent my whole life thinking "precocious" meant "horrible, irritating little brat" until I was informed by XH that it actually means "beyond one's years". As a girl and a boy respectively, we'd been given the same label in vastly different ways.

It's that they want us to care about it that gets me.

I think she sounds brilliant.

Now, since she is so above-average, you can have a chat with her about how the person she spoke to probably can't do anything about it, and write a letter as well.

It's a secondary flounce isn't it - we sit here eating cake and having generally civilised discussions, people pop their head up, get bizarrely annoyed at something said to them and tell us that's why they don't post here.

Meanwhile I sit here with a cup of tea half way to my lips and wonder what on earth they're reading that I'm not that makes them think this.

AIBU, and anything to do with kids lunches/school time holidays I stay away from. It can get very judgy indeed.

welsh... sadly, there is a large section of MN posters who believe that, if FWR regs were just nicer to everyone, then people would want to post here. Odd that, given how utterly hideous a lot of the posters are in AIBU, to each other and to anyone who dares dip their toe in, and yet it's one of the busiest parts of the forum, no?

I understand that might be difficult for parents of more average children to envision but it's what happened

No children of MNers are average - they're all top set and headed for Russell Group universities

Way to go to all the dc here! Although it's a shame that feetheart's dd's girl guiding group is a bit rubbish.

And you wonder why so few MNers bother posting in the Feminist section.

You know iPaid, to my knowledge, people don't blindly agree with each other in any section of mn. Would be quite boring if they did IMO.

She is awesome :o I don't think she was rude. She was asking a perfectly valid question.