to give a girl boy's stuff?

[beatricequimby]

I try to make expensive purchases, like winter coats, unisex (eg red anoraks) hoping they will do for all my children. Same with their bikes. I buy a red one and expect them all to use it turn. My girls do still have plenty of girls clothes and toys as well but this saves me money and I suppose I don't really like everything the girls own being pink or purple. But my dd (5) is objecting more and more to this (big fight over the red bike cos she wanted a Barbie one.) And none of my friends do it, their girls just have girls stuff. So AIBU?

And apologies for the mistake with the apostrophe (before anyone else points it out).

Not at all.
A bike is a bike - I hate all this obviously gendered crap.
And I detest pink.

No a red bike is perfectly fine. Perhaps you could buy a Barbie sticker and put it on it or a Barbie bell to keep some peace?

I never had a pink bike. I had a blue bike, a red bike and a black bike.

Nope. Not U - sensible! I'm starting to do this with DD and DS. DD (2.8) would love everything pink/purple etc but I'm buying neutral so DS can have it too! (to be fair though, DS 11 months seems to like things pink and sparkly too!)
Her birthday scooter is red and I know she'll love it because she's desperate for a scooter.

Will be doing the same with clothes. DD has lovely long strawberry blonde curls so I figure she can wear 'boys' clothes too. The colours boys have are nicer IMO anyway!

YANBU. My parents kindly bought DD a bike for her 4th birthday and were happy to spend a lot to get a decent one. SO relieved (and actually quite surprised) that DD chose a very rough-tough blue one!

Children want alot of things eg sweets before dinner TV with dinner chocolate on demand to be able to stay up past t heir bed time but we know best.
A barbie bike will be a shite I tell you regardless of colour you will just be paying for the sticker rather than a good bike.
Buy her some tassles and a few stickers so she can personalise it.

Why not compromise with her? Could you get her some sparkly tassels for the handlebars, or a seat for her doll maybe? Or something else that is removeable, so she can personalise it a bit more.

YANBU to buy things in unisex colours and reuse them, not at all.

I didn't have this issue as only have one DD. So, she tended to get the one she liked in the shop, within reason. But if I had had another child then I would have considered reuseability more - infact sometimes did with things I knew I would be passing on to others.

Just as an aside: Barbie and anything too princessy is banned in my house! Had to put a stop to too much 'hello kitty' bloody everything from relatives just because she liked one thing once too!

We got DD a little toy buggy when she was younger, and I chose a blue one (back then it was possible to actually control the amount of Pink in the house). About a year later we decided to get one for DS as they were fighting over it. Only managed to get a pink one, so technically the blue one is DS's but of course he prefers the pink! He takes it on the school run :)

I have a dd (2) and i always feel like i 'should' buy the pink version of everything for her but sometimes i just dont bother with that!
i have bought her a car garage toy before and she has a few blue toys as she seems to really like blue+yellow anyway so for example when the pink 'girls' lullaby glow worm was sold out at xmas i just picked up the blue one instead. i dont think its a big deal, like you said otherwise everything ends up being pink/purple! i know people who would never buy the blue 'boys' version and i think its silly.
at the end of the day, like you said, she has some pink girly things so i dont thinks its unreasonable to save some money if you already have a perfectly good red bike/coat etc

And yes without exception the character bikes we looked at were complete shite.

So does anyone do this with older children? My dd was fine with quite a lot of her brother's stuff until she was 4 but now she is objecting. I am waiting for her to start asking for girly school uniform shirts rather than the bog standard unisex polo shirts.

My two dds have spent much of their toddler years in unisex stuff, as I when I was getting stuff for dd1 we where planning a second dc but obviously did not know which sex they would be.

I have bought a Barbie seat cover and some ridiculous tassells for the handlebars. She still doesn't really like it though and I can kind of see her point cos every other girl who goes out to play has what is very clearly a girl's bike.

Ah you could be me! DS' car seat, buggy, pram, carrier, everything is red in preparation for another baby hopefully! It never did me any harm when I was little, but I do remember being totally over the moon when I was allowed to get some of those spoke clip thingies for my brother's bike which I had, and also a big shiny bell! There is so much 'stuff' around nowadays that kids think they can't live without. I can't stand it! When we were little my dad out the seat and the handle bars up on our bikes until the last possible moment, then we got a second/third/eighth hand one from a friends to use! As soemone above said, Barbie stuff is usually shite. You're paying for the brand :)

my dd (3) needed cycle helmet, refused the pretty pink one and the mini mouse one (thank god) and chose the red one with racing cars on it! She regularly picks out boys toys and clothes and shoes and we do not have a problem. Red is fine and I like the idea of the barbie sticker. why not add barbie bell/horn/ etc? easily removable when finished with.

I did hate being mistaken for a boy when I was little - I had short curly hair as my mum wouldn't let me grow it long (she said it would be too knotty and take too long to comb), and I once got called 'sonny jim' when wearing a pair of green dungarees...the shame still lingers :(

I didn't get put in pink very often, although I had a lot of flowery girly dresses made by my mum (Clothkits generation!) and I remember having one pink dress I particularly loved.

But I'd draw the line at a pink bike. Bikes can be accessorised with all sorts of stickers and those beads you put on the spokes....tell her it can be a multicoloured rainbow bike...and the more stuff she puts on it, the more unique it will be.

YANBU, I've always passed ds's things on to dd. Actally, now that she is 7 she is much more willing to wear ds's trousers or jumpers than when she was 2.
At 2 she onluy wanted "girly" clothes, now she is fine with pretty much everything.

YANBU
Even though my dd(4) does have pink or princessy girls things ds2 (22m) still plays with them. I sometimes push him about in her old pink pushchair while he's wearing her princess dress and shoes. She also plays with his "boys" toys and she has her own toys that are unisex.
If you can't or won't buy her the barbie bike then I agree, let her put things like tassles and stickers on.

what about going yellow or green? I would just carry on as you are really

Why shouldn't your DD have a pink or purple bike and then your son(s) use it when she's grown out of it? Are you more worried about how your sons might feel about riding a "girls bike" than your daughter currently feels?

Absolutely not unreasonable to have a gender-neutral bike. I have an older DS, younger DD, and she uses lots of his old stuff. She did go through a pink phase until she was about 5, and didn't want to wear really boyish clothes, but she is now 9, hates pink, hasn't willingly worn a skirt for years, and spent this evening playing with DS's old Lego. I think indulging the pink phase to a limited extent is fine, but buying pink duplicates of perfectly good, expensive items you already have is ridiculous - just giving in to marketing pressure.

How is red identifiably a boys colour complexnumber?

YANBU but...

I note that everyone is talking about how blue, red etc. bikes are fine for girls and she can just add stickers and tassels. But why can't one or two of the things you buy that you expect DS to use be pink and he can just personalize?

This is rhetorical - I know the answer is that in general as a society we think it's worse for boys to have to put up with "girls'" stuff than vice-versa. That despite all the advances for women over that last century, we still see the female gender as "other" and the male gender as the "norm". And while most people think it's amusing and a litle cute for a two year old boy to play with sparkly pink things, by the time they are ready for school the vast majority of parents are less sanguine about their boys publicly exhibiting tastes considered female. I just want to point out that gender neutral as we are talking about it here is something that requires your daughter to compromise in a way your son will not have to.

Complex, that's kind of what I was thinking all the way through this thread. Such a shame that although girls can wear/play with boys' stuff, it never works the other way round.