that only a mother of solely young female children would have reacted like this?

[OrmRenewed]

On holiday DD went for a hack at a stables. DH had taken the boys to the beach while she had her ride and they came back about 15 mins before she finished. I had a chat with one of the women who ran the place while I was waiting - she had a 6yr old DD. Just before DD was due to get back to the stables she went out into the yard. She came back a few seconds later, aghast, to say in a voice of horror 'there are two boys outside playing with plastic swords....!' DH said ' er yes, those'll be mine' and went out to remove them. She looked a bit uncertain and said 'Well, it's just the horses... you know...?'

AIBU to think that only a mother of girls only would have reacted like that? Anyone else would have felt the need to have finished the sentence with some further explanation, such as '..and they have poked each other's eyes out' or 'they have severed limbs' or even 'they have started a riot amongst the ponies'?

YANBU. FFS how many times do you need to say that your boys were not near any fucking horses!

If horses are that fragile where they get spooked over a couple of children playing then they aren't fit to be taking children out riding are they!?

YANBU. As the mother of girls I would have been horrified and completely unable to handle the sight of two boys rough housing.

My girls prefer braiding each others hair, cross stitching samplers and reciting poetry.

Oh is that what "they" are called, SMOG, I'll have to remember that

And I am absolutely fed up with being told that girls are bitchy, mean, complicated, devious, cruel, obsessed with appearance, biddable, twee, frightened, weak etc.

Of course I only have a dd and therefore must join the swelling ranks of girls versus boys.

And smug?

How many times have I read on here 'oh little boys love their mummies so much' and 'they're so much more cuddly'.

It would be nice if everybody could stop it and could praise their own children without polarising the debate further.

Smug mothers of girls or smug mothers of boys, they're just smug idiots. If it wasn't their child it would be their car or house or lifestyle. They're idiots.

So she said 'boys with swords' well so would I. It's a statement of fact and since we weren't there, we can't know any more than that. And it's her stables and her horses, if she doesn't want people sword fighting there then she doesn't want people sword fighting there.

Agreed Libertygibbet - Working in nurseies I have seen lots of parents say my boy would never play with dolls etc he only likes rougher stuff. Then in nursery looks after the baby dolls dressing them, dress up in fancy dress clothes as disney princesses, pretend to be in a hairdressers and do each others hair etc.

The same as the other way round I have seen girls who have to dress nice and the mums say she hates getting dirty, having paint on her etc. Next thing you know she is joining in activities that involve whole bosy painting and being covered in paint from head to toe making prints on big bits of paper on the floor.

I always think its ridiculous how much a lot of parents know about their own children and how much their own gender prejudices affect their own childrens development.

well, there must be something wrong with both my children then, I have a very artistic boy who loves colouring (as much as he loves jumping off sofas and slides head first) and a very boisterous girl who finds farts hillarious and invites us to smell her bum because 'wow, this was the best one ever, did you hear how loud it was".

I hate people expecting children to behave certain ways because of their gender.

I agree that all children are JUST children ... but boys do have a large muscle mass ratio and a different hormonal and neurological set up, telling them to USE those muscles.

And then they are penalised and ridiculed for being active.

Sensible people know that all children should be active - but there is a very particular type of SMOG who thinks that the inactivity of her children is something to be cherished, and the activity of other people's cildren (generally boys, but yes, sometimes girls who will be met with "Eeewwwww she's like a boy!") is to be abhorred.

I know what you mean. I had my boy first and did a lot of banging on about 'parents of girls' and how they just didn't get it.

Then I had a girl and she is just as bad .

They are both usually covered in chocolate and grass stains (from playing charming little garden games like 'Dinosaur Wars' or 'Sharl Eats Puppy'), and they are almost constantly running around very fast making some kind of very loud noise (roaring/singing/giggling/bawling).

My kids are the kids old people in supermarkets tut amnd shake their heads at.

Ach well.

YABU. No one should not be acting like that around horses. The owner very probably was worried about Health & Safety too.

Shark eats Puppy. It's their favourite game at the moment. It involves one of them being a cute ickle puppy playing on the seashore and the other being a scary shark who captures the puppy and bites its head off. Nice.

colditz - A lot of girls are actually larger than the boys at toddler age. Its because girls often develop faster. In the under 2s especialy it is often the girls who are way too rough with the boys as they arent aware they arent the same size. I have never met the eww like a boy type of people.

The ones that I have written about who say my boy doesnt, or my girl doesnt are more often the more affluent, middle class parents. I think this is usually because the middle classes often care more about image so dress their girls in ridiculous frilly dresses and outfits and drill in to them that they are expensive, keep clean etc. It is also because a lot of the parents that say it are just going off what they were allowed to do when they were younger etc. Most of the time it is just parents who are insecure in their parenting (both the boys and girls who are stopped from doing things). We allow for this in our practice and realise that some parents dont have much experience with children or are overly concerned with societal expectations.

The children from the more working class background often have less differences between the genders.

At toddler age and 3 years old they are all much of a muchness, yes. But this is not true by the time they are 7.

Yes colditz and those people are twats. As sunny says, their beliefs about what gender means interferes with a child's natural development. There have been experiments carried out where people have been shown a baby and told its gender (the same baby dressed in different clothes actually) and it is found that the 'girl' is referred to as delicate, beautiful, dainty, fragile. The 'boy' is strong, big, robust. When the same footage of the same baby crying is shown in gender neutral clothing, the 'boy' is angry, cross, acting up. The 'girl' is frightened, lonely, in need of a cuddle. Experiments show that a girl and a boy exhibiting the same behaviour will be talked to in different ways. Boys are told directly 'no' or 'stop' or 'that is wrong'. Girls instead are talked to, their options discussed. They are just a few experiments. I'm not denying hormones and muscle mass and gender difference but socialisation is affecting natural development all the time.

Of course you refer to your own experiences and no doubt you are defensive of the behaviour of your own children. But it's no worse than other gender presumptions from other parents. As I said, I have to listen to the 'oh God at least I know ds won't end up a bitchy, manipulative, hormonal, pink-obsessed, eating disorder-ridden girl'.

I know Dads who will not allow their sons to do ballet because it's gay or for girls. I know Mums of boys who won't let them have a doll, worry when they play with dd and dress up as fairies, make apologetic faces and tell me dh must be disappointed not to have a boy to play football with. DH doesn't care. DD likes rugby as it happens.

And if a child is running towards dd and I can see that that particular child is going to crash into her and I pull her out of the way, I do so because I'm attempting to limit any damage to the pair of them. But if that child happens to be a boy, then the mother looks at me like I'm frightened that a boy is near my girl and is being too robust. No doubt some mothers of girls think that way but just because I have a girl and an isolated incident takes place, like I don't know referring to the two boys outside playing with swords, doesn't mean I am making value judgements about their gender.

I just thiink labelling them SMOGs and saying they are the worst and boys are criticised and penalised more is not fair. Twats are twats. And they don't limit their twattish behaviour to exclude judgements about other people's children.

colditz - yeah if parents havent been shown that girls and boys can enjoy a range of activities by the time they are 7 usually the boys aor girls do what please the parent. That is why I think nurseries are so important to children as they let children explore a wider range of options than a lot of parents allow them to do. Its starting to spread over the genders as well and managed risk is less allowed for all children.

It is stunting their development and independence skills. I think it is a really interesting subject and studied it for my degree.

I haven't labelled anyone doing 'boisterous child damage limitation' as a SMOG. I've labelled people who say "I would have invited your Ds's but they'd probably not have wanted to play with the princess dressing up and it would have ruined it for my DD's" as SMOGS. And "Still not potty trained? Typical man, boys are filthy creatures" as SMOGS. And """"I'm lucky I don't have to do sports tings at the weekend because I've got girls" as SMOGS - especially that one because actually I know for a fact that her daughter very much enjoys sport at school and would probably relish football as opposed to the obligatory ballet.

I've started really noticing this odd behavior since my children started swimming lessons, so there may be something in what you say about "aspirational" parenting. I live on a coucil estate, in a rough catchment, and the girls round here are ususally found pushing each other down the hill in an old pram - and not in a nurturing way.

I ALWAYS allowed for every sort of play in my house. colouring, dolls, bricks, cuddly toys (although I hate them), balls, cars, pushchairs a cooker ...

but all the pushchair gets used for it carting things around, the doll never gets touched except by a visiting girl, despite me actively encouraging dolly play, paper for colouring is made into paper aeroplanes ... the only 'nice' game my children play is with their stuffed animals, which get carted around in a pillow case and arranged in 'beds' all over the house.

I always believed children will behave as raised, not as born, but the gender divide is real, and I now truly believe it is innate, because despite my best efforts to raise children, I have raised boys!

No I didn't mean you labelled boisterous child damage limitation as SMOG behaviour but that because people encounter smug mothers of girls occasionally, I am treated as one just because I have a girl and I might do something such as moving dd out of the way or referring to two boys with swords as 'two boys with swords'. I'm saying the sensitivity you have towards it due to your experiences means that you might unwittingly treat a mother of a girl as a SMOG, therefore creating the impression of yourself as a DMOB. And I don't mean you, I mean in general.

So it's better to endeavour to raise your own children as individuals, avoid the twats and accept that mothers of girls, boys and mixed sets have to put up with all sorts of fuckwittery from other parents, the media, old ladies in supermarkets etc.

No one is saying that some girls aren't boisterous and some boys aren't gentle - just that some mothers of compliant girls aren't tolerant of boys. My cousin (who really wants a boy to round out her perfect family) was horrified that she had a two year old boy over, put out crayons and paper for the children to draw, and then the boy knocked the crayons over and didn't want to draw. That is a SMOG.

When I take just my dd (20 months) out to a tumble tots class I feel like I look like a perfect parent. She joins in the stretching, she stands in queues, she does all the activities. I would feel smug if it wasn't for the nightmarish memory of taking ds to tumbletots. He refused to sit down, ran away, pushed other children. Everyone must have thought I was a terrible parent.

All most girls do at nursery is use the pushchair to cart things round in. Its mostly the girls with children in the family or who have contact with children that actually treat them as babies.

I know aspirational parenting is real and thats why I think most behaviour is learnt else why would there be a difference through the classes? Children also act very different in a home environment to a nursery or school as they can sense that parents think that boys should prefer rough play etc. Even if you dont think you are doing it if they are your beliefs children pick up on it to please their parents. Thats why children often act different when they arent around their parents.

Yes tryingtoleave, but what I'm trying to say is that just as some mothers of girls aren't tolerant of boys, some mothers of boys aren't tolerant of girls.

Boys are wrongly labelled as destructive and naughty as often as girls are labelled bitchy and manipulative.

And by using terms such as SMOG and by passing value judgements on an incident at a stables and a single woman that neither we nor the OP actually knows, then we're just exacerbating the problem, sticking labels on people, lumping people together based on their gender or the gender of their offspring.

Those SMOGs as you call them are just prats. Just like my DF's xp who won't allow his boy to do ballet or have a doll or the woman in the village who actually pities me having only a girl. She says this in front of dd. DD is only a girl . That's just twattery. It's not the fact that she has 4 boys, it's that she's rude and thoughtless.

Totally agree with libertygibbet. It's just so pointlessly 'my kids are great and nobody must criticise them' to start boys v girls threads.

And anyway, if your own child is a girl then why can't you just invite party guests who will want to party in same manner as the birthday child?

I was at my neices' party once and my neice and her best friends ended up sitting silently on the sofa while the boys fought over/ monopolised the playstation.

I'd have been making a mental note only to invite like minded friends to the next party - surely it all evens out as the boys can have as much physical fun as they like playing with each other and at each other's parties.

'Everyone must have thought I was a terrible parent.'

See this is what a lot of parents worry about. Parents gooff their experinece of one, 2 or 3 of their own children and they havent got a clue about children overall. They just worry about what they look like to other parents and it is seen as wrong for girls to be roughhousing and boys to play with dolls etc.

Most children push over crayons and knowck things over when they are put in front of them when they are in certain moods. A lot of parents generally havent really got a clue about children overall they just want to impress other parents and fit in. Children pick up on their parents opinions as well. We have 2 year olds who say things like my mummy doesnt like me doing that.

tryingtoleave your cousin has very little experience of children if she doesnt think that girls knock over all the crayons when you put it out for them!! Or that girls dont run around, always listen or push other children! I think parents should have to work in a nursery before having children and realise most things they believe are a complete load of rubbish.