Boys and girls study

[Ryoko]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8624999.stm

Study tested kids from 9-36 months old and found boys tend to play with cars and balls and girls tend to play with dolls, is this study not just a tiny bit floored?.

Wave a car and doll at them at birth I say, I never played with dolls I hated them (still do) first thing I played with apparently was soft toys and pencil and paper I'm inclined to think it's more a case of reaching for the familiar, by 9 months they would have plenty of toys and we still have a culture in this country of conditioning children, pink for girls, blue for boys, toys for boys and toys for girls.

yy to conditioning and culture wrt segregating child's play into boy/girl

(small rofl at floored)

article here

both my boys have always been attracted to toy prams

My son liked both gender's toys and my dd had no interest in 'wheel' toys.

My mothers friend had a son that liked playing with his sisters Barbie dolls and she kept trying to make him play with boys toys, she was convinced he would turn out gay if he didn't play with boys toys.

that was 30 odd years ago and that kind of thing still happens.

When my baby comes out (don't know what sex it is) it can play with what ever it wants, it will get a wide choice based on things that look like they will be interesting for a long time, after a while I'll be able to tell what kind of toys the kid prefers.

just hope it's not baby dolls because I still can't stand the things .

My ds favourite colour is pink.

However, I have been surprised by my dcs- I have one of each, and they themselves chosen to play with gender stereotyped toys.

My son plays with dolls (he is 3.5) although i admit he does tend to throw them around alot more than his sister did he does also pretend to feed them and bath them. My 5 year old girl is all about pink and never plays with the cars etc no idea why she has just never shown an interest even though we obviously have them in the house.

My DS always makes a beeline for the prams and dolls, I put it down to him not having any at home. He can play with them at toddlers if he wants to but I'm not going to encourage him, I never liked that kind of thing as a girl.

My DSs were attracted to prams too. For their wheels.

I think there is a difference. Why fight it?

But once they are grown up, we do actually expect dads to push prams, and mums to drive cars. So why is it unnatural for a boy to play with a pram or a girl to play with a car?

Friend of mine looked very taken aback when I presented her dd with a car mat for her birthday. She herself couldn't have survived a single day without her car. But she never seemed to make the connection.

I had an argument with DS today about this. He wouldn't let DD share his dinosaurs (even tho one was actually her's), saying that they were boys toys and girls couldn't play with them. I reminded him that there is no such thing as boys toys and girls toys and that he is just as happy to wear dd's fairy costumes and play with dolls. "I do not", he said...

alteria (sp) motive tho, he just didn't want to share... He does play with dolls and peppa pig toys and cars and dinosaurs.... I exposed both of mine to all toys... but tbh DD has gravitated towards babies (she has far too many), and mainly plays with the dinosaurs because she knows it will annoy her brother.