4 yr old will not use she/her - is this normal?

[nannygoatgruff]

My nearly 4 yr old DS will not say she/her.

Everyone is him, or his, or he. I've pointed out that his sisters, nanny, teacher etc are girls, and he should use she/her - but he just won't.

Has anyone else had this problem?

He is currently being assessed by paediatrician for behavior problems - very aggressive, difficult to manage etc.

He's also waiting for speech and language therapy appointment as his language use is somewhat odd.

Any advice would be appreciated please.

It's not totally outside the normal language development to confuse gender at this age, but it is rather on the late side.

If, as you say, he has other behaviour and language problems then it might be connected to this. You are obviously concerned enough for him to be under assessment. Do you (or has anyone suggested) have any idea or suspicions about what you think it might be?

It might be worth you posting this on the special need board, there are lots of parents with dc with similar problems (I'm one of them

In answer to the particular thing about referring to everyone as 'he', there are things you can do to help him recognise differences in gender. Try looking through books/magazines and pointing out the men and women - particularly ones who are obviously male and female (eg long hair, skirts vs short hair, trousers). Maybe make a game of it - who can find the most ladies/men etc.

Hello Bialystock

Thanks for your reply, I think I will post on the SN board, I was looking there earlier and a lot of the behaviour problems that other parents describe sound very much like my DS.

I'm attending a parenting course at the moment to get ideas on managing his behaviour.

One of the things I have to do is play exclusively with him for 15 mins each day - not easy when you've more than 1 DC , so I'll do the identifying gender game tomorrow.

BTW he's my DC6, so its not like I'm new to the parenting game - just not had one quite like him before

My friend's son had issues with gender for a while. think he finally stopped confusing the two around 5? He seemed to understand the difference between male/female boy/girl but went it came to speaking the words, everyone was a he/him. He i think identified the word with himself.

He is now 7 and not a problem, apart from occasionally getting mum and dad mixed up, but only by calling mum 'dad' not the other way around. In other aspects his learning and development is within 'normal' ranges.

That sounds like my DS - everyone is he/him, but he seems to know that he is a boy and his sister is a girl.

I've wondered if it might be because my DDs are a lot older than him and left home before he was born - so we are an all male household - therefore all him/his - apart from me of course [hsmile]