Obsessed with gender

Bea in particular is obsessed with assigning gender to everyone and everything. It's always "Loki (our cat) a boy!" me - "Yes, Loki is a boy". "Mama a girl!" "Yes, I'm a girl." "Oatmeal a girl!" "No, oatmeal is food. It's not a boy or a girl" "Table a boy!" "No, the table is a thing. Only people and animals are boys or girls." We go through this several times a day. I know she's just trying to figure out the world. Just wondering if other kids this age do this too. I know having boy and girl dolls, Little People, stuffed animals, etc kind of confuses the issue too.

 

I think that is so cute! My kids are now 26 months and they don't seem to understand the concept of boy/girl at all. They give me random responses when I ask them "Are you a boy?" and "Are you a girl?" However my DS is currently obsessed with animals that swim in the water. We have many discussion about what swims in the water. He's always telling me "Turtle swim water" or "Fish swim water."

thea

 

Our girls are always checking out the gender of ppl but we haven't gotten into whether things are male female. Tonight we had a discussion about whether "girls work". And whether or not it was "OK" -- and what they would "get" if they worked. They learned that girls can work if they want to earn a pay check, or they can marry a boy who will work for them. just wait till they learn a foreign language and try to figure out masculine feminine and neuter . !?!?!

 

How funny! Atleast she's not discussing what boys have and what girls have - kwim? Mine love to tell people how Andrew has a penis and Catherine has a vagina - NICE! :icon_eek: :laughing:

 

My girls have been doing that for years. Sometimes, it is just their obsession of the day. What is really funny is when a stranger asks about their brother and one of them volunteers, "Dax is a boy. That means he won't have a baby grow in his tummy."

 

lol - i have the "best" of both worlds - not only do mine frequently like to talk about who is a boy and who is a girl, but they also like declaring that because so and so is a boy/ girl, he/she does or does not have a penis!

the other awkward thing - we have really good friends who are a gay couple - and, completely unprompted, they declared (to us, not in front of our friends) that one was a boy and one was a girl - we just said no, they are both boys, and they were fine with that - they are really close to them and love them both - i hope that one doesn't come up again!!!

 

your post is like looking into the future for me. i'm raising the girls bilingual english and greek. so i will have to explain that indeed in Greek the table is neutral, oatmeal is feminine, toys are neutral but balls are feminine and blocks are male but in english these all don't have a gender. and there's no way to explain why because there is no why to these things
can't wait!!!!