To be annoyed the boys ‘won’t play with girls’

[Leopardpj]

DD is 4 and in reception. She tells me a lot of the boys in her class say they don’t ever want to play with her as they only want to play with boys. I don’t think she is lacking in friends but I think she is confused about it and is wondering what’s so bad about being a girl and it’s this that is bothering me. I don’t want her feeling it’s uncool or a negative thing to be a girl which I think is an impression she is starting to get. I feel as if this wouldn’t be tolerated if it was a comment being made about children from a religious or ethnic group etc and am wondering about asking the teacher whether she could keep an ear out for this sort of talk and try and nip it in the bud? Or perhaps that’s OTT and I am being unreasonable to think you can stop boys from saying/ feeling like this (I only have DDs so no experience with boys!) thanks in advance !

It’s completely normal for the same sexes to play with each other when young, there’s been many studies done, all over the world. It’s not sexism, how ignorant to suggest that. And no, teachers should not be policing children’s play to that extent. How odd.

Quite a few of the posts here paint a bleak picture of the prejudice my sons are likely to face from some people and the way some normal behaviors are going to be judged and stigmatised.

The one a couple up from here that as good as said that having a group if male friends is like being in the KKK was one of the worst, but a fair few others made it clear that a very little child should be judged, and their parents too, for daring to mainly be friends with other boys.

I'm not sure why I need to "get over myself" for thinking sexism should be discouraged.

I'm surprised this is a controversial view.

Come on, it is ridiculous to suggest that men and boys are the gender being discriminated against.

You know it's not mutually exclusive, right? Both can be discriminated against at the same time for different reasons.

You are being disingenuous; it’s not sexism to have a single-sex group of friends. Calling things like this sexism is idiotic, and does harm by trivialusing genuine cases of discrimination.

My wife has a group of female friends that she goes out with and I have a group of male friends. To pretend that this sort of thing is sexism is ridiculous.

I'm not sure why I need to "get over myself" for thinking sexism should be discouraged.

It's not sexism to want to play/spend time with people of the same sex as you. It's would also argue that it's not racist to want to spend time with people from your own race or cultural background either.

@SleepingStandingUp

There is natural gender difference at age 4 as most parents of both know and anyone not ignoring it for the sake of their own ideology can see it clear as day.

If Eliot wants to play dolls he can certainly try to play with the girls and maybe that will be alright if he is that sort of boy, and if Lucy wants to play dinosaurs she can do the same. The problem is when people act like all the girls must now like Dinosaurs because Lucy does or all the boys must like dolls. When children are left to their own devices they usually seperate based on interests which despite all the attempts to interfere are usually pretty stereotypical - there’s nothing wrong with trying to find a place for kids that fall outside that though. But people are kidding themselves making believe that girls and boys will play together as though there’s no difference, it doesn’t happen unless big sister is standing over them forcing it.

You are being disingenuous; it’s not sexism to have a single-sex group of friends. Calling things like this sexism is idiotic, and does harm by trivialusing genuine cases of discrimination.My wife has a group of female friends that she goes out with and I have a group of male friends. To pretend that this sort of thing is sexism is ridiculous.

Skimming over for a moment the fact that I do not require a man to mansplain what sexism is to me as a woman.

The fact that you do something and want to continue to do it is not a marker of whether it is sexist or not. We all are products of a misogynistic society, we have all internalised misogynistic views.

Oh dear. You seem to be looking for offence everywhere, and have chosen to find it now in little children playing together?

It’s good that you accept your own prejudice, and so hope that you are working on it, but please don’t be so presumptuous as to assume that others share any hatred that you feel.

@PleaseYourselfandEatTheCrusts

They do it f because the school forces them too - it’s not normal. Is it sexist for boys and girls to self segregate? I guess so but then nature is sexist I guess. It doesn’t mean one is worse than the other. If it’s sexist then who cares?

But to act like it’s the same as racism is just wrong. Race is skin deep and only ignorant people believe the races are different - but boys and girls and men and women truly are different. We have different hormones that affect or thinking, moods and other things - some differences in our brains have already been conclusively proven. We need to just accept that it’s alright that we’re different instead of living in la la land because for some reason we don’t want it to be true.

I wonder if posters like the one you’re responding to think it’s sexism if someone is only attracted to one sex, and if they feel that that’s as bad as racism too.

What an exceptionally rude and arrogant response.

If it is natural for boys and girls (and men and women) to segregate, why are their posters who have different experiences? If it was natural, it would presumably be universal.

What an odd comment.

Lots of things are natural but not universal. Having children, for example.

I would mention it to the teacher. Maybe the topic could be talked about during circle time.

@SlightlyGeordieJohn I just knew from reading your posts that firstly you would be male and second you would have boys.

You are completely missing stompys point, there is no problem with anyone wanting to be in a single sex group of course, everyone should be free to play with who they want to, but when little children are saying they don't want to play with any children from the opposite sex, because they are (insert whatever childish name) they we as a society should be looking at where those ideas have come from, parents, teachers, society, gendered expectations and norms, it's not acceptable for my dd to say she doesn't want to play with a boy because boys are smelly, but it is fine if she doesn't want to play with him because he knocks down the Lego. It's not ok for her to be excluded from playing football with the boys at break because she is a girl and girls can't play football, despite the fact she play football at a better standard than most of the boys.(but they wouldn't know that because no girls are allowed)

Stompy wrote a very eloquent and factual post of which there is an abundance of evidence to support and your comeback rather to engage and try to understand what they were saying was to tell them to "get over themselves"
When people are unwilling to listen and take on boards other points of view even if they make you uncomfortable because you have boys, we as a society can't move forward.
I understand this all seems very minor to you, but a lot of this feeds into the way women are seen. It starts young and it should be dealt with.

Of course it wouldn’t. Natural and universal don’t mean the same thing at all, and it’s not rude to point out when someone is being infantile and argumentative.

As an example; it’s natural to be attracted to women with blue eyes, but it’s not universal. It’s natural to like chocolate cake, but it’s not universal.

May I ask; have you ever come across the character Millie Tant, in Viz comic? If not, I think you’d be amused at her japes and high-jinks based on finding offence everywhere she goes.

You assumed, rather than knew, and that assumption was based on prejudice. I know that my little boys will face prejudice like yours as they go through life, but that doesn’t mean I have to happily accept it.

@SlightlyGeordieJohn you are a man who feels they are an expert is sexism and have the right to lecture women, with lived experience. This is a misogynistic perspective. You are confident of your superiority in a subject you have no experience of because of your privilege.

Your attempts to denigrate me personally ("get over yourself", comparing me to insulting and misogynistic cartoon characters) rather than answering the actual argument is very telling.

I'm going to stop here because I suspect you are on mn solely to get a rise out of others.

@purpleboy thanks!

Why would you possibly think you know more than someone else? Has it occurred to you that any attitudes that you experience are as a result of the way that you speak to people?

Oh ffs it's not sexism it's a perfectly normal developmental process. It's how kids develop their own sense of identity and self

I’m very much with @Beamur and @Stompythedinosaur on this. No, what was specifically described in the OP isn’t sexist, and children opting to play mainly in single sex groups isn’t an issue per se. Teachers shouldn’t be in the business of policing who should be playing with whom, unless it is directly impacting on the well-being of one or more of the children.

But I think what I and some other posters are recognising is the way that this gendered play can feed into early socialisation and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes, and this is an area where teachers and early years practitioners can wield some influence. This stuff - the idea that boys taking up more space is the natural order of things; the assumption that girls shouldn’t like dinosaurs or football, or that boys can’t do art or ballet - develops via parental and societal influence from a very early age, and schools and early years settings can often end up perpetuating stereotypes unless they’re very alert to how young children are being influenced by their environment and peer interactions.

Boys shouldn’t be returning from school and describing girls en masse as ‘bossy’ or ‘chatterboxes’ (‘bossy’, in particular, is a deeply gendered term). Girls shouldn’t be describing boys are a group as ‘naughty’ or ‘yucky’. No one group should be allowed to use space at the exclusion of others (at every single school I’ve worked at football-playing boys dominated the playground unless there was a designated no-ball or girls’ football zone).

And there are value judgements attached to these ideas. Never, throughout many years of KS1 parents’ consultations, did I come across a parent who was concerned that their daughter enjoyed football or construction play. However, I did have several who asked me to discourage their sons from using the art, role play or even Lego area because (and one father did actually use these terms), they were concerned their son were ‘too effeminate’ and not engaging with ‘proper outdoor rough and tumble’ with the other boys.

It’s a tricky one for schools and nurseries to recognise and tackle, because societal influences can be subtle and insidious, and gender stereotypes are still so deeply embedded in our culture (I’d actually argue that in many ways we’re going backwards in this regard). Just the other day a friend was telling me how her 3-year-old Encanto-loving daughter now refuses to sing along to ‘Surface Pressure’ because ‘Luisa is too strong for a girl and her muscles are too big’. Schools shouldn’t try to police friendships, but they should ensure that all children have equal access to a range of play opportunities, space is shared equally between the sexes and negative gendered language, however subtle, is discouraged as much as possible.

Thanks for this really articulate post @TempsPerdu. You have said what I wanted to say much more clearly!

@MangyInseam

That’s an interesting perspective on the music class thing, and I think there may be some truth to it. I have, though, also noticed that the few boys remaining (in that class and other, more stereotypically ‘girly’ activities that we do) are almost always South or East Asian in background - could be coincidence, or could be to do with differing cultural ideas around masculinity, perhaps?

I also know a fair few preschool aged boys who have started football classes, strongly disliked them, were given a few ‘months off’ and were then restarted on the classes by their parents, who couldn’t accept that their sons just might not like football, or might prefer a different activity!

I guess it depends what kind of play they’re doing? It might not be that they don’t want to play with girls, but they don’t want to play whatever game the girls are playing and they happen to be a group of girls. Something to talk about that and make that difference. Do they play different games? As that can also be looked at.

It makes me uncomfortable for children to be forced to play with someone else. I’d suggest more variety of play types and see if that helps then integrate more. Unfortunately some of these kids will be overtly told very sexist things about what games to play and with who.