Nursery dividing group by gender

[lackingideas]

I have observed a couple of occasions where my son's nursery split the group by gender eg when performing Christmas carols the boys sung one song and the girls another. This annoyed me and I just wondered whether this is normal practice or if others would be annoyed too?

Neither gender is being treated worse but I would rather nursery didn't draw attention to the fact that boys and girls are different. DS is 3 and so far happy to like pink and play with what are stereotypically girls toys and I'd rather he stayed this way as long as possible!

I know it is probably just a easy way to split the group in two but there are a lot more boys so its not even very good from that point of view.

My son's playgroup doesn't split for anything.

I just have to grit my teeth as they make 'typical boy' comments and talk about how nice and quiet he is when he plays dolls/house with the girls vs. cars with the boys..

DS is also 3 and really has no idea about boys and girls (I think he uses hair length as a clue), it does feel artificial when I correct him because he's using the wrong pronoun - a neutral one would be so useful.

That would annoy me very much. I would even write in about how it's not a good idea - Delusions of Gender has quite a few pages devoted to why this is not a good idea (but my brain is not working at the moment on account of it being first day off work...)

It is one of my pet hates, referring to children by their sex. What's wrong with saying "children"? Or even naming them when there aren't too many of them around? Drives me up the wall.

We get the "How unusual! You don't see boys sitting still!" too. You bloody do, idiot, when you get over your confirmation bias. ()

Thanks, glad to know I'm not alone! Anyone I've mentioned this to in real life hasn't really seen why this bothers me. Even DH who usually shares my feelings on this kind of thing.

I think I will write in; just a bit worried about offending anyone as otherwise I'm very happy with the nursery and the people who work in DS's room. But I ought to have time over Christmas to come up with a good way of phrasing it!

Totally after with you op. One of the things I like about ds' nursery is I have not spotted a single moment of gender stereotyping yet. They will happily tell me that ds was playing in the kitchen or with the trains and the children are always in mixed groups doing hinges according to their interests when I drop him off or pick him up

One nursery we looked at had a few boys fighting when we went to look round. The nursery manager said," boys will be boys. Although wedo try to stop it". It was horrible.