Forget Me Not

This weekend I took my boys to the ballet and bought them a tea set.

I also snapped a picture of them peeing on the ferns in our backyard and spent 30 minutes watching a semi-truck load his trailer.

I’m not sure what would be different if I had a daughter instead of sons other than the fact that she would squat to pee.

Gender roles are tricky.  It seems like there are more prohibitions against little boys than little girls.  Both sexes wear pants, but dresses are only for girls.  Most girls are encouraged to play sports, but there aren’t many (or often, any) dance classes for boys.  The feminist movement opened doors for girls, but the traditional roles for boys haven’t changed much.

A book I love, Brain Rules by John Medina, recounted a story from an elementary teacher who noticed that girls stopped doing well in science and math when outspoken boys answered questions first.  She also noted that the boys were reticent in language and reading lessons when the girls dominated.  All of this related to the different communication styles of each sex and how they can unwittingly alienate one another.  The teacher spoke to the girls and decided to give separate math and science lessons them which solved the problem.  EXCEPT, the boys were never mentioned again.  There was no note that the boys had separate reading lessons.  The implication was that boys are naturally slower in language development, so their poor performance was acceptable, but girls should excel at everything, so when their struggle indicated a problem.  The author never questioned what happened to the boys.  When I spoke to the parents of a girl who had recommended the book to me, they said that thought never crossed their minds.

Are we forgetting boys?

I am all for promoting advances for women and encouraging girls to live without limitations.  I am a feminist, which means I know that men and women are equally valuable.  I don’t think we need to retract anything that has been done to better the lives of girls, but it is time to look at the state of our boys.

Did you know that 80% of the referrals to special education in this country are for boys?  The normal development of boys is uneven, irregular and often misinterpreted by teachers as behavioral problems.  The structure of a school rewards verbal development over physical development, which means it favors talents that girls naturally develop earlier without acknowledging boys’ natural abilities.  Parents of boys are five times more likely to be told to medicate their child for ADHD than parents of girls.  This is wrong.

I do not portend to have the solution.  I wish I did.  What I do know is that this deserves thought and discussion.  We need to understand boys better and we need to open doors for them in the same way we have for little girls.

That’s what I did this weekend when I took my sons to see the ballet, The Tiger and the Brahman.  I wanted my boys to understand that stories can be told with bodies and music.  I wanted them to love dance the way my husband and I do.  I wanted them to see some Bollywood moves and taste the culture of India, a country I called home for a time.  For the past few days, Max and Jack have wildly danced across our living room as a tiger and a Brahman to my complete delight.

As for the tea set, we attended the Hatsume festival at the Morikami Japanese Gardens to welcome spring.  I lived in Japan for a year and want my children to grow up familiar with that culture.  We slurped sesame noodles, failed miserably at origami and were spellbound by the taiko drummers.

I searched the festival booths for something small I could get for the Montessori continent boxes I am creating for our homeschool.  I saw this tea set in pink and teal.  I admit, I would not have bought the pink.  But this tea set was so lovely and neutral.  Practicing pouring is an important skill in the preschool years.  It was a grand bargain at five dollars.

I gave the set to Max and Jack with reverence and they accepted it with deep care.  That’s the thing about children, they accept the world that we give them.  We need to be careful in our choices.  We are responsible for creating the world we give them.  Every restriction we impose limits who they will become.  Restrictions based on safety and morality make sense; we need to protect our children from injury and crime.  But those restrictions which limit identity are unconscionable.  Every human being deserves the right to be who they are, even children who are in the process of forming their identities.  This is their world and it is our role to present it to them with reverence.

All of it, to all of them.