To ask more experienced parents about girls playing with “boys’ toys” at nursery

[StupidNurseryQuestion]

DD(3) is about to start nursery. It’s attached to the school that we hope she’ll go to in the future too.

My secret midnight worry about nursery is that she is simply not interested in traditionally “girly” toys at all. She has a toy box full of cars and a ride on car; a road map and a garage; and DP’s 30 year old brio, and that’s what she plays with. Dolls gather dust and the Belle dress she swore blind she wanted from Tesco hangs in the wardrobe with the tags still on it! When she watches tv, she only wants Thomas or Blaze and the Monster Machines.

Now I don’t care what she likes/plays with, so long as she’s having fun and learning, but I DO want her to be happy at nursery. I’ve taken her for several play dates recently where the other little girls have dollhouses and fairy wings etc, and DD just looks blank and asks where their cars are. Meanwhile when they came to us, they clearly had zero interest in the cars that DD really wanted to show them One of them wanted to play “Frozen”, because she’s Elsa mad, and I realised DD had never seen it. Tried to show her - she wouldn’t even watch the opening scene before demanding Blaze again (I was quite disappointed as I’ve never seen it either!).

So my question - is this likely to cause any issues at nursery? I don’t want her not to have little friends or anyone to play with because she’s not interested in the same sort of toys/games. Am I overthinking it? She is PFB - as if you couldn’t tell ! - and I just have this image of her being left alone in the playground. Do lots of other little girls like trains and cars? Do the kids all just play together in a big group? Please say they do and that I’ve just been unlucky with the play dates so far!

As others have said a good nursery will just have toys, there will be often a 'house', but it will change depending on the topic that week/month. For example if they are learning about animals it maybe a vets surgery.

Don’t worry OP, unfortunately nursery (in my experience) has a way of turning even the most tomboyish of girls into sparkly princesses. I predict your DD will come home after a few weeks demanding to wear sparkly princess dresses.
Between them, my DDs have been to 4 nurseries and in all of them, the 3 and 4 year olds have had a very clear idea of the differences between girls and boys. My DD often came home saying things like ‘I’m wearing boys trousers’ because someone had told her that. She didn’t want to wear them again. Sad, but true.

The boys and girls in our nursery play with everything. In fact the girls have been hogging the brick corner to build pizza ovens, volcanoes and various other things, while the boys have been ruling the roost cooking and shopping in the house and the shop. As long as they are happy is what counts and lots of friends from both groups mixing well!

It's really common, I wish I had boys toys when I was young, but my mother loved dolls and so that's all we ever had.

I have a daughter who loves anything stereo typically girly but also loves her brothers toys. Her brother his Lego mad, but can happily spend hours playing with her dolls house and dressing her barbies.

She’ll be fine. My DD (primary age) is the only girl 8n her year who is friends with both boys and girls. As an adult woman I am also friends with both men and women. It’s fine.

My goddaughter was into cars, Bob the builder etc at nursery age. She hated anything girly with a passion. Yet her best friend at nursery was a sparkly princess. They both loved games, arts and crafts and playing together. Eventually Batman and the princesses became a game.

My boys frequently have close girl friends at nursery, whether because of shared interests (kitchens, cars, building blocks, sodding my little pony) or just because they have fun together

My daughter loves spider man and dinosaurs, she has grown more into princess things but always had to an extent as her 2 older sisters are reasonably girly!

With regards to nursery she is always the dirtiest child at pick up, (I know this is kit gender specific but people expect girls to be cleaner....fools!) she is often dressed as Spider-Man or iron man but just as often in a "wedding" dress. She plays equally with boys and girls. She has a Spider-Man lunchbox and no one else cares.

At that age they are who they are. The only worry you have is enforced views (either consciously or unconsciously) from the adults. This happened to an extent with my eldest.

She will probably start liking different things anyway just because her friends do, it will have nothing to do with gender stereotyping!

Oh also my brother was always wearing dresses at nursery and always played the mum in role play, he also loved tractors. Like I said at that age they are what they are!

Now he is gay but he's not a cross dresser nor does he drive a tractor 😂

I look forward to the day parents stop pigeonholing children into toy manufacturers stereotypes. We all know men and women can and do all the jobs, hobbies and parenting skills (apart from breastfeeding and pregnancy) that are required by our society.

Encourage your daughter to develop her interests and hopefully she will grow up not thinking she can’t do a particular career because she doesn’t have a penis.

You're over thinking it, my daughter is regularly sat playing with cars when I pick her up. She loves them.

It depends. DD's class all hang out together, girls and boys, DS2's class seems more self-segregated. Although DS2 told me yesterday that he's friends with 2 of the girls.

My son plays all sorts of things at nursery with his friends he would never touch at home. I’ve been seriously floored by some of the stories! All good, just so unexpected. I’m sure he also gets his friends to play with toys he is more interested in than they are.

I was going to post the flow chart. Toys are for children. Boys toys and girls toys are not a thing.

She will be fine. Nursery should have loads of stuff. They should just encourage play full stop.

Toys are toys - ds is currently obsessed with anything with wheels, duplo and his tea set. Nursery have dress up stuff, toy kitchens, cars galore, building stuff and a big pink castle the kids helped build. They all seem to play with all of it.

As a kid I loved lego, dinosaurs and loathed dolls. Kids just have their own likes and dislikes and there really are no such thing as girls toys or boys toys. Just toys.

What kids can have is a marked preference for are toys that fit their ‘schema’ (google it, loads of resources) which is one of the frameworks they explore the world through.

Boys at my dd's preschool frequently drive round in the cars with a baby doll under their arms. Girls often play with cars/trains/superheroes. It's like someone has already said- at this age, they are who they are. It's when they get older in my experience that they start being influenced by stereotypes, sadly.

My DD often came home saying things like ‘I’m wearing boys trousers’ because someone had told her that. She didn’t want to wear them again. Sad, but true.

Did you not bother correcting her?

StupidNurseryQuestion

i think without parents meddling you will be surprised what children will play with at Nursey my daughter plays outside a lot more than she likes to at home

Please explain what you mean by boys toys and girls toys?

The nursery my kids went to simply didn't have the sterotypical gender shite. They had a home corner with cooking things, nice kitchen, an old not plugged in phone, push chairs and dolls and stuff but none of it pink, it was just normal colours. There was a construction corner with big wooden blocks and stuff, boxes of cars, boxes of plastic animals etc etc. They'd set up tables with water and stuff in it for sensory play, get broken tech for the kids to take apart and learn to use screw drivers and stuff.

The first time my dinosaur loving dd had problems was school sadly when she encountered boys telling her dinosaurs were not for girls and blue was for boys. It was such a shock for her. She was the only one from her nursery, the others had all been to the local pre school which was very stereotypical (and which dd attended briefly before we took her out because she was miserable).

Ds2 went to the lovely nursery, one of his best friends is a girl who also went there and is crackers, she thrived in the inclusive environment too.

I read the question to be less about toys - I think the OP knows they’ll have all toys available to all kids, and more a concern about making friends if she’s not joining in with the things the girls are keen on (such as the frozen example).

I think there will be other girls like her, and boys who like things that aren’t what you described as “boys toys”. I do think as they move closer to primary (when the testosterone surge hits) that there is a more visible separation of boys and girls groups at nursery - but she’ll have found her tribe by then anyway.

Anecdotally my daughter had mainly Male friends until she was 3. A little later at nursery there were obvious gender splits in the friendship groups appearing and she raised it in discussion “the boys only like to do x” or “the boys say we can’t play y because we’re girls”. However in smaller groups or one on one I find they adapt to play whatever is going on around them and get on great

Our elder child is a DS. He had a variety of toys bought by us, friends, and relatives. Some of these included things like cars, trucks, planes, and footballs, which we might say tend to be more popular with boys. DD, our second, came along and, of course, she had her own toys, but the fact remained that many of the toys in the house were things like cars and that her main playmate and role model (DS) wanted to play with these. So DD spent many of her early years playing the secondary role in games focused around cars or football. I did exactly the same as I also have an older brother who I looked up to.

DD went to nursery at 2 and a bit and was exposed to all sorts of toys and games, a much wider variety than we could ever provide at home, and immediately became addicted to jigsaw puzzles, which we have at home and also at the PILs which she visited at least twice a week at that age, but had never shown the slightest interest in before she went to nursery.

These clumsy anecdotes are trying to say that I'm sure your DD will be fine, OP.

Have you chosen a nursery yet? When you go and have a look round, see what the children (of all ages) are playing with.

Dd2, 3.5 loves trains, cars, buses & planes and is fine at nursery. There are a full range of activities for the children to play with. She does play more with boys than girls but she's perfectly happy.
The boys are quite often wearing dresses and pushing pram when i arrive, so it works both ways.
Agree with pp about nursery seemingly highlighting boys & girls colours. I just repeat ad nauseum- there aren't boys and girls colours just colours.

She won't even notice the other kids at nursery. At her age they play along side each other usually rather than with each other.

Laughs.... op they toys. Been to a playgroup today and one little boy was in the cooker all morning and a little girl was making her mum hold the lift up in the garage as it effected her play. My dd roamed from cars, pushchairs, crafts, trains, kitchen. I saw loads of children doing the same. They toys!!

Of course I did Titty