Went to visit dd's new school yesterday. Had lunch in the hall, then the children went to meet each other in a classroom whilst the parents supposedly had a tea and a chat.
Lunch ended up being a boys table and a girls table. Not pre determined but like sheep the parents sat that way with their child. The tea and chat turned into a parenting class, which we were not told beforehand, and frankly I found patronising. During the talk the teacher came around with name slips on which she was writing each child's name so that they could practice it. Quite why this was necessary is another matter altogether. These slips had pictures on them. I chose a rocket, which elicited oh that's unusual from the teacher.
The talk culminated in a suggestion to put little notes in your child's lunchbox and the woman had printed out suggested notes. She then asked each of us whether we wanted boy or girl. She remembered I had a girl, presumably because of the rocket and automatically gave me one of those. It was full of pictures of tinkerbelle and flowers and said things like 'I put some fairy dust in your lunch box today because I love you'. I asked what was on the boys sheet and was told it was mainly football related. The head was present throughout this.
I very much wanted to pick her up on this but decided against it at the time because I had a very restless 6 mo and dd needed to be collected. I don't think this should go unchallenged. Dd already says things to me along the lines of I can't do that, that's for boys.
My question is, what do you think would be the best way to go about it?