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 !

This works they other way, lots of Princess-y types have an “eeeewwww boys” attitude. It’s ok for children to want to mainly have friendships that are same-sex.

Iv boys. They tend to play football or tag or stuck in the mud at school - general physical style games. They say most of the girls won't play only 1 or 2 join in 🤷‍♀️. There was more reception age but girls seem to start to move away from physical playground games.
And yep TA and teachers spend nearly their whole time in yard negotiating who's not playing with who

I have never in my life heard a boy being described as bossy (and I am a mother and I work with children). Not saying it couldn't happen, but it is perishingly rare. Only girls get described as bossy. Just like only women get described as being "nags". They are gendered insults designed to let women and girls know to stay in their place.

Anecdotes, without doubt the best way to show how the world works.

If you some actual data (which disproves your claim, but does support a claim of gender bias) then this is a decent starting point.

It really depends on the child as my son won’t do any of that type of play!

Seems odd. Girls and boys played together at my primary school all throughout the years (30+ yrs ago in London).
My LO is too young for school yet so it will be interesting to see what’s changed.
What part of the country are you in OP?

It's interesting, I'm just starting to get the other side of this. DS's best friend is a girl (both 4), and she is starting to develop more friendships with other girls, which is leading to "all boys are smelly except DS" and then "I don't like you, I don't want to play with you" when either of two specific girls are around. It's really escalated in the past few weeks. He also has more interest in rougher games that she now won't play, so it's deteriorating all round. We've been expecting it someday, but thought we would have another year or two.

I've explained to him that it's normal at this age for there to be time where girls want to play more with girls, and for him to be enjoying more games with the boys. That they can still be friends, but need to spend a bit less time together in pre-school to allow those other friendships to grow, with just a little time for each other to keep up their own relationship. I've explained that good friends don't take out their frustration by nasty comments nor pushing, but also just to understand that she's finding the change hard too, so when she does that just walk away and talk to me later. He's talked about how it's sad, and did a full check of who was a girl and who was a boy at pre-school (he got it right!). He's got a set of boys he likes to play with, so that's the plan, but too early to say how well it's working. Being very naive, I'm hoping that talking about and encouraging a split before too many nasty comments will actually help them stay friends, just that it'll be a much lighter friendship than before.

Other way round for my Yr 1 DS. The girls won't play with the boys! Also I have definitely heard boys being described as bossy. One was described as such to me just yesterday.