To get annoyed with people thinking my DD is a boy?!

[JessieEssex]

My DD is 10 months old and is IMHO a gorgeous little girl. She is however always getting called 'he' by well meaning strangers. She is quite round with not much hair... I don't dress her in particularly 'girly' clothes, but they are still girls' clothes IYSWIM.
I often correct people and never get cross (why would I?) but it really winds me up, and i'm not sure why. I've always been of the mindset that all children should be treated equally and given the same opportunities regardless of their gender, so why am I now so desperate for people to say 'what a lovely little girl'?!

You're being ridiculous, why do you care? I don't even bother correcting strangers who mistake ds for a girl.

Babies just look like babies.

Those BebeDoos are absolutely horrific. Ugh.

I dressed DS in green/white stripes the other day and the HV (who hasn't met him before; we never seem to have the same one twice) referred to him as 'she' for ten minutes. I simply didn't correct her. It makes no difference to DS or myself.

DS has a few 'girls' items ... a sunhat, a few pairs of shorts. It really doesn't matter. He has no gender at this point, he's a tiny baby.

YANBU.

BUT

I always used to feel a bit hurt despite myself at people thinking dd was a boy when she was a baby. To me she looked girly as anything. Now she is a toddler and could not be mistaken for a boy, and when I look back at baby pics I think 'shit, she really could have been a boy'. Babies are quite androngynous-looking really.

androgynous*

I'd say a very few babies look definitely female or definitely male. Dd was very obviously a little girl, her cousin looked very male, but her little brother could have passed for either and I'm sure that's most common.

When ds was less than a year old, I was asked on two separate occassions if/how I curled her eyelashes

I mean WTF??

You say you never get cross but then say you are annoyed and wound up. That means cross.

Buy one of those big springy hairbands for baldy baby girls.

It just makes me giggle. When DS was small I was pushing him along in his blue pushchair, dressed in a blue snowsuit, sucking a blue dummy, and an older lady complimented me on my beautiful little girl. Her next comment offended me a bit - DS had/has loads of thick hair and she commented that it's such a waste on a boy - but mostly people are harmless and just don't look properly.

Short of carrying a big sign saying "it's a boy/girl" what can you do? They always muddle his name up too, they'll ask his name and I'll say "Stephen" and they'll go "Simon? That's a lovely name!"*

• not his real name, just an example. His name sounds similar to another boys name and people always mishear it. It doesn't bother me, I just agree "yes, we think so" and silently add in my head "but it's not what he's called".

I can understand it to an extent with babies. They just look like little people, not little boys or girls, for quite a while. I was a bit barked when my 11 year old DS was referred to as 'young lady' by a woman at half term though. He was wearing quite boyish clothes and she had already heard him speak. At 11 I think you can usually tell from their voice and you certainly can from his. I can only assume it is because he had shoulder length hair at the time and we were in a truck stop.

Baby boys are often "prettier" than baby girls IME.

My 8 year old gets mistaken for a girl on quite a regular basis. He has hair almost down to his waist but still wears very boyish clothes like Star Wars t-shirts and similar and torn jeans (torn from climbing things, I didn't buy them like that).

He also has definite boys features.

Neither of us are really bothered by it. I only get fustrated if I correct someone and they carry on saying 'she'.

Bebe doos, scary. Duggar family scarier

I can understand why someone might be taken aback that their child has mistakenly been thought to be of the other gender, but I don't understand what there is to be 'hurt' about? It's just a mistake, isn't it? It's not as if the child has been confused for a gargoyle or a pot-bellied pig... Why is it so hurtful?

I also wonder if mothers of girls care more, because looks, even at this age are deemed to be so important for girls. More than other attributes.

YABU. Dress her in pink or deal with it, until hair long enough for clips. I used to to think like you but I got fed up and realised if you dont want these comments easier to dress in pink.

bubblecoral once when I was in the gym, a lady in the changing room asked if ds3's white-blonde hair was "his natural hair colour" I was shocked at the idea that people thought I would dye it! He was only one!

I have exactly the same thing with my 6 mo dd. I think she looks much better in blue and green than pink, so she is forever being mistaken for a boy. She had a dress and tights on the other day and someone asked me how old my little boy was! Quite a few people have said, 'sorry, I assumed she was a boy as she wasn't wearing pink.' To be fair to them it's pretty impossible to tell at that age.

This is why I just coo over all babies by saying 'Aren't you gorgeous?' to them ;)

my ds has always had this, has constantly been taken for a girl ever since he was a baby, according to one person, because he is 'too pretty to be a boy'. It doesn't bother me, but he hates it and now at age age 6 insists on having his hair short and runs a mile from any item of clothing that could be considered even vaguely feminine.

Thing is, he does do things that I suspect are not considered typical for boys - he loves sewing club, and takes little bags he has made out of felt and decorated with shiny diamondy things to show-at-tell at school, he notices what my friends are wearing, and whether they have makeup on, and says things to them like, 'You look really nice with mascara on, it makes your eyes look really big', is very graceful and does things like start dancing when standing in goal at football, and just going 'opps' or 'oh' when somebody scores a goal, all things that sadly our society tends to associate with girls.

I get these comments a lot with dd. doesn't help that she often wears her older brother's hand-me-downs and blue shoes (as many shoe shops don't have sensible neutral coloured shoes, either flimsy pink or sensible blue).
I'm not bothered anymore.

Yabu. Babies+small kids all look v similar, so people are bound to mske mistakes, caring about this is basically wanting your dc to look feminine/masculine from a young age, which is unreasonable.

When we were kids loads of clothes were unisex, is crazy how much pink/blue there is now.

I had the opposite with DS1 and DS2 when babies and toddlers - always being mistaken for girls despite wearing boy type clothing. Not worth getting het up about.

YANBU at all hun it annoys the heck out of me, the best being when she was wearing a pink babygro with Mummys little princess on it "oh what a handsome little man"

and last week in a blue denim skirt "gosh hasn't he grown" "she" oh well why is she in blue then" "because she is 2 and its a skirt" [face palm]

oh well guess i can't complain my brother was 15 last time he was mistaken for a girl lol