Teacher asked who chose the pink bottle....

[Caszekey]

Ok, so it's more aibu to allow / encourage this behaviour.
Fairly identifiable so here goes.
5 year olds twin boys, both have long hair like their Dad which I put up for school. Ones favourite colour is pink. Both adore Frozen so wanted the dress up dresses (Kristoff is a minor character). Last WBD they dressed as Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood (bear, wolves are minor characters). School have jokingly passed comment previously about pink bobbles etc but today I was asked, incidentally, if I chose the pink bottles or them, do I pick costumes etc.
I don't know if she's curious or implying I'm doing something wrong but it's got me second guessing

The choices are child led and I reckon they'll age out of them but I don't want to pull the "boys don't do that" line when girls have so much fun.

So aibu to allow them to pick so freely ? We've not yet encountered a request for a dress for general living, just they like to be Princesses!

You're NBU to allow them to choose, I think I'd say you would be U if you were encouraging it but your later posts have clarified that you aren't.

I'd probably want to find out why the teacher was asking - has she noticed any teasing or is she pre-empting any?

At 3/4 my DS would happily dress up as a princess. By 5/6 it was all superheroes. I probably would have started discouraging princess dresses beyond reception to avoid potential bullying.

Your kids sound balanced and know their own minds. And there are 2 of them. So that may be less of a concern for you!

Bloody hell transphobic much!

Oh yes,y 5 year old in a yellow frock and a bowl of porridge is oppressing the girls in his class!!

What about the girls in Spiderman costumes, jack Skellington costumes, beeetlejuice costumes. Geez, can't lads have their shit to themselves??

And no one NEEDS to wear a Red Riding Hood costume. But she's pretty popular for 4 year olds so some of them WANT to.

Thank you. Yes. Exactly. DS spent some of his childhood in pink fairy dresses with wings clutching his dolls and requesting nail varnish and some of his youth smeared in mud in army fatigues. He was also a spy, a doctor, a wizard. Now he is an adult and has never doubted he is a man.

So here lies the issue. You are the parent, you make the decisions. My granddaughter wanted to go to a soft play party dressed in an outfit like Lizzo would wear on stage. Her mum vetoed it as it was unsuitable. Cue absolute meltdown tears for half an hour, then a quick change into more appropriate party gear.
There’s a time and a place for kids to make their own decisions.

That is another debate. But it really serves no purpose on what we are discussing.

Red Hiding Hood is a girl. This kid wants to dress up like a character who is a girl. The attire that the character is wearing is easily recognisable because of her popularity, so it does not really matter if it is a dress, a cloak, or jacket. The fact is that this boy is going to be dressing like a girl character.

That for me is a no-no.

As a parent you have a duty to discourage your young children from committing social suicide. You wouldn't come to someone's wedding in a white ballgown with a veil would you?

Jesus, this thread is basically a case study of why children, having been raised so rigidly that if they are a girl, they should like this and if they are a boy, they should like that and they DEFINITELY MUST NOT LIKE THE GIRL THINGS EW, sometimes go: "well, I like the girl things, and boys don't like girl things, so ergo..."

I'm all for steering kids, saying no, guiding them and helping to shape their characters on things that matter. The idea that boys must not be allowed to enjoy things that society has decided are typically for girls is not one of those things that matter. Quite the opposite - I am trying really hard not to raise sexist twats.

Biological reality has nothing to do with colours/costumes/toys. The premise that it does is literally the sexism that underpins gender ideology.

Colour just shouldn't be a factor at all. Why are you linking colour with sex? I just don't get it. I have an older dd and a younger ds. Ds has inherited a lot of things from dd from toys to clothes. Some are stereotypically associated with girls. Should I have thrown away all of those? Isn't that a waste both in terms of money and the environment? As long as ds doesn't object how does it matter?

I remember the midwife coming to visit when he was a few days old. It was in the middle of a heatwave and the only clean bodysuit I had was a pink one with spaghetti straps so I put that on him. The midwife kept referring to him as she which didn't bother me and I kept referring to him as he. I didnt correct her because i didnt want to look fussy and I was more worried about his jaundice and lack of weight gain. Finally she asked me angrily whether he js a boy or girl. I dont blame her for being confused but I still dont get why she was angry with me. I mean he was a newborn. How does it matter?

Both DSiL and GS like wearing pink polo shirts among other colours and why not, all the expensive bands have this in their colour range
History
In the 19th century, baby boys often wore white and pink.Pink was seen as a masculine color, while girls often wore white and blue.

This is on you as a parent. Dress ups are for home. You are encouraging your children to be little girls at school and you absolutely know you are doing this because you posted this here.

My five year old wanted to make a pretty bracelet from a jewellery making kit. He was adamant he wanted it. He wore it around the house and to the shops. But there’s no way I would let him wear that to school.

Kids can be brutal. Today I saw a five year old boy at school ask a girl why she wasn’t dressed like everyone else.

My own child stared at his classmates who weren’t dressed like all of the other children in class. I had to tell him to stop staring.

Children notice other children who dress differently.

When my child was in kindy a teachers aid took me aside and asked why I packed my child’s lunch box in an esky bag (I did it because it was 40 degrees celcius). She told me that children notice these things and I should try to let him fit in because she didn’t want him excluded.

It seems your school is worried about setting you off which is why no one has outright told you that your behaviour is not in the best interests of your children. YOU are the one that is buying the pink bobbles. YOU are the one encouraging them to watch frozen. YOU are the one that hadn’t taken them to get their hair cut. YOU like the attention.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

But the cold DOES bother me!!

I think it's fine, but I do discuss other people's expectations with my DS whose favourite colour is rainbow and who asked for a dress for his birthday for months. I don't want to send him out into the world without the knowledge that some people think dresses are not for boys and might comment, although I also let him know that all clothes are for everyone. I'm surprised that your DC haven't had more push back from other kids, though. DD (older than DS) came home from Foundation with lots of ideas of what girls and boys could do. We had to do a lot of un-teaching and questioning.

Why did you buy him a pink body suit with spaghetti straps?

I don’t know really. I have a 3 nearly 4 year old boy and pink is his favourite colour. But he just wears what I get him for world book day (a t shirt from Sainsburys with the gruffalo on!) because he’s not really able to articulate what he wants to be. I’m not sure he’ll be different at 4 which is how old your kids were last year presumably? It does seems a little odd they both wanted to girl characters I suppose, we have plenty of books with main boy and girl characters in on our shelves. Maybe the school were just asking to find out if it was child led or not? My kids are just naturally drawn to more typically “male” things. We have equal numbers of dolls and cars and guess what they play with most despite no encouragement from me. Ditto swords!

So interesting that you don't also say "sometimes men dress up as women as make believe and win Tony and Olivier awards, and women dress up as men and do likewise, because what we pretend isn't the same as what we are, and it's great to know the difference."

YABVU to call Christoph a minor character.

This would piss me off, it’s one thing for kids who have been taught by ignorant parents or society to make comments but a teacher should not be.

i had the opposite op, my dd cut her hair very short and kept getting you look like a boy comments, even from adults, I had a few sarcastic comebacks but most of the time she handled it well with her own comebacks, she was 7yo at the time.

Next time ask her who picked her outfit, see if that shuts her up.

everyone talking about the kids getting bullied, when maybe people should stop being parents who raise children who bully other kids for this sort stuff.

Stop this small minded obsession of everyone has to be same, with the same 10 names and the same approved colour a palette and socially acceptable hair bobbles. its deranged

One thing is liking something and another thing is becoming, even temporally, something. For me and many people it is an important boundary.
I never said he should not like the tale. Heck, my favourite tale when I was a child was "The Vain Little Mouse", a tale of Spanish origin about a little female mouse who has many suitors.
Would my mom allow me to dress like a female mouse if I had asked her ? Hell no.

Well that’s fair enough ❄️

My ds used to love dressing up in princess dresses when he was younger. Now he won’t wear anything but tracksuits but he would defend any of his friends if they wanted to wear a dress!
I hate that clothes and colours are so gendered.

You're right you shouldn't go to someone else's wedding in a white gown and veil. Another rule I like to live by is not being a sexist twat. Goodness know you'd cope if you went to a same sex wedding and one of the brides was in a suit...

It's literally in her post. But for the hard of reading:

Because she had an older DD and wasn't so stupid that she felt the need to invest in an entirely new wardrobe for a newborn to ensure it was "properly" colour coded.