I Let My Boys Raid My Jewellery Box...

And guess what?

They were happy.

End of story.

Jewels are fun.  Mummy's things are interesting - even nicer when Mummy shares and lets them keep some 'treasure' for themselves.

Tom came home today from the school jumble sale wearing two very spangly women's bracelets.

He also happened to bring back a rather cool and gorgeous re patent handbag and a floral purse.

I asked him if they were for me?

No.  They were for him.

What is he going to do with these items?

'Ah, just keep them and use them.  They're really nice to look at.'

I was really proud of my boy.  Very proud that my boy chose things he liked, not based on gender, not based on the fact that they might be 'girl' or 'boy' things, but just that they were things that he happened to like (he has good taste too!)

Ethan was also sporting a rather gorgeous bracelet with a heart on it.

Now, Ethan is a bit more into what other people think of him, so I was surprised when he was also wearing a very shiny and very pretty thing around his wrist.

Hey, Ethan, why did you choose that one?

Oh, he says, he just likes it.  It reminds him of the necklace I wear and he wanted one too.  He doesn't have any jewellery and he would love some more.

I don't even think twice.  Without hesitation I say, hey, I have a ton of crap up there I never wear or even like any more - would you like to have some?

They are both excited, both eager - yes please is the strong reply.

I gather up my jewels, my treasure, and I go through it.  I've been meaning to for ages anyway.  I was going to chuck some stuff away and keep what I loved, after all, it's a waste to have it all just sitting there doing nothing.

I divvied up the spoils.  The boys were chuffed.

Tom was adorned in bracelets, Ethan was wearing five necklaces.

It was really cute.  They were happy, I was happy that they were happy, it was a winning situation all round.

Later on, when we were sitting down to eat, the boys both sitting beside their pile of 'treasure' (read: old junk), Tom sidles up to me.

'People were laughing at me because of the things I bought today.  It made me sad, so I ran inside'

'Do you like the things you bought?'

'Yes, I really do'

'Then that's all that matters. Screw them! As long as you like what you got, what is it to them?'

He smiles and, well, that's kind of the end of it.

He still likes his things. The masses haven't won today.
I guess I'm waiting tentatively for this stuff to matter to him.  He's getting older and it's getting harder to mitigate against the huge tide of 'boy vs girl', especially when it comes from caregivers, school, other kids who have been taught about 'boy things' and 'girl things'.

The boys doing 'boy shit', or actually, what every kid wants to do (me and my sis were there too, dying to have a shot!)

Me and my boy!

But right now, it doesn't.  Right now, it's about him just doing his 'kid' thing for as long as possible.

Right now it's about him doing what makes him happy.

It should always be as simple as that.

And if anyone wants to tell my boy, this guy, raised by me, a woman, that a 'girl' thing is in any way, shape or form weaker or inferior or wrong, let's dance.

Likewise, if one day he comes home and tells me that 'girls suck' or 'girls are stupid'  then I will take him to town too.

It's a nicely balanced deal.

Today, my boys are enjoying their jewels.

They look damn fine in them too.

5 Great Days Out For Boisterous Boys

Today we are sharing this featured post on 5 Great Days Out With Boisterous Boys.  Although, I have to say, as the representative female of this household, they're pretty great for Gregarious Girls too!

© Galina Barskaya | Dreamstime Stock Photos

With the summer holidays fast approaching, parents of boisterous boys across the country will hastily be making lists of things to do, days out and local attractions to keep the kids occupied while schools out.

However, as boys seem to have boundless energy, finding the right sorts of excursions is essential if you want to ensure that they stay happy, entertained and, most importantly, out of trouble. 

Theme parks

If your boys love a bit of excitement, a trip to a theme park is the perfect way to get their adrenaline pumping and hearts pounding.

With lots of fantastic theme parks across the country, it should be fairly easy to find a location within easy reach of your house, but remember to get there early to take full advantage of the exhilarating rides and theme park nibbles.

Go Ape

With locations across the country, this gravity-defying day out is the perfect choice for any little monkeys with a lot of energy.

Visitors to Go Ape have to negotiate their way around an obstacle course suspended in the forest canopy. Perfect for those who love a bit of aerial acrobatics, though perhaps not suitable if anyone in your family lacks a head for heights. 

Castle Howard

Located in the heart of beautiful North Yorkshire, Castle Howard will make a great day out for your little princes (and occasional tyrants).

The ornate Georgian doors open out onto a palace of grand proportions with the vast gardens offering extra opportunities for exploration and discovery.

© Nicholas Rjabow | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Sherwood Forest

If your boisterous boys have always dreamt of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, a visit to Sherwood Forest will make a great day out.

To make the trip extra fun, hire some bikes and cycle deep into the heart of Robin Hood’s famous forest.

© Robert Lerich | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Ghost walks

Whether you live in Edinburgh, London, Nottingham, Brighton or Cardiff, there’s guaranteed to be a ghost walk somewhere near you.

Educational, exciting and loads of fun, ghost walks may involve staying up a little past bedtime, but the experience, and the memories, are well worth it.

With plenty going on across the country throughout the holidays, there should be more than enough fun days out for even the most boisterous of boys, allowing you to keep your kids entertained and out of trouble for the entire summer.

Bursting the Pink Bubble; why pink is dangerous

Photo Credit  Gender division in the toy aisle has become more apparent in recent years 

Has anyone else noticed how gendered everything has become in the last five years or so?

I know there's always been 'girls' and 'boys' stuff, but lately, or I reckon just around the time Thomas was born in 2008, the girls stuff has become a lot pinker, and the boys stuff has become a lot less colourful overall.

It's something I have particularly noticed because I am a mother who was raised  in a female-only household and has therefore been brought up in a space where there were no 'boys jobs' or 'girls jobs'.  Everything was everyone's job - and if the girls didn't paint the room, fit the carpet, take out the bins, mow the lawn or take the dog out in the pissing rain, it didn't get done.

Having said that, I feel like I have been fighting for my gender my whole life.  From the well-meaning family members who insisted on buying me 'girls' magazines like Mizz when I really wanted to read The Beano and told me things like 'a lady doesn't behave like that' when they caught me digging in the mud, to being told at school that I should 'just settle for being a nurse, honey' when I really wanted to be a Veterinary Surgeon because 'girls make better nurses', I've been confronted at all points in the road with the fact that I am a girl and therefore should be doing 'girly' things.

 Anything else made me 'a tom-boy' apparently. Grr!

My gender never felt more apparent than when I first fell pregnant with Thomas though.

'Do you want a boy or a girl?'

It's the question every woman who falls pregnant is asked.
An odd question - only the extremely rich and scientifically minded can choose the gender of their child.  Yet everyone is asked in hushed tones almost; what would you prefer?

I was huge! That was all baby!

With Tom it was fine; I couldn't even conceive in my mind what it would be like to hold an actual baby that had come out of my body - that there was going to be something small that had my genetic traits - never mind care what kind it was.  To me, a baby was a baby.  I would just be relieved to get it out of me in one piece. When we eventually found out that he was a boy, I was just happy that I could begin to visualise a bit better what was growing inside me.

Everyone else was suddenly very concerned about buying lots of things in blue.

And , for the first time in my 'tom-boy'ish life, I was being treated like a fragile piece of china, and I did not like it one bit.

Worse - I felt like a fragile piece of china.

I found that being pregnant and having a new baby was the only time I felt completely vulnerable because of my biology.

Pregnancy is the ultimate female act, and it suddenly divided me from a lot of my guy mates, who didn't want to hear about Trimesters and Breastfeeding and Prams.

Breastfeeding info here

I became invisible to them because I had become female in their eyes, whereas previously I was 'funtime Genna' who could be silly and get drunk and have a good laugh down the pub, matching the guys capacity for pints of beer.

Once I became a mother, it also became my weakness.

I felt very lonely.

I was also quite young, and a lot of my female friends hadn't even formed long-term relationships,never mind broached the idea of having a baby.

Their experience of babies were very much that you could buy 'stuff' for them, and so began a series of well-meant shopping trips with different friends for various pieces of baby equipment.

Everyone on those trips, myself included, cooed over the newborn stuff, all lamenting the fact that we couldn't buy the tiny, oh-so-pretty dresses.  Some even said to me 'pity you aren't having a girl, Gen!  Girls' stuff is so much nicer.'

Photo Credit  A beautiful dress from Mothercare

I don't think I'd ever noticed until now; I'd spent my whole life turning my nose up at girly pink and frilly dresses.   And here I was admiring a tiny little headband for hairless babies and tiny little mary-jane shoes to accesorise with their tiny little taffeta skirts.

I blamed it on the hormones.

But the truth is, it starts before birth, all of this pink shit.

What's so wrong with it?

Well, I think the real question should be, what's right with it?

Sure, I have no problem with girls who pick pink as their colour of choice amidst all of those colours in the rainbow.  A lot of girls do it and enjoy it, and as a colour it can be all sorts of things; powerful, pale and gentle, happy and free.  And that's good.  I'm a huge advocate of letting your kids choose what makes them happy.

My real problem with the colour pink is that it has become a label for what society is telling young girls that they should be.

And that is so. not. cool.

Infact, I am going to go all out and say that pink is DANGEROUS.

A study conducted by Polly Curtis for The Guardian  reached the verdict that:

'There is no scientific evidence that boys prefer blue and girls prefer pink. Up until the early 20th century the trend was the opposite and baby boys were dressed in pink and girls in blue. There are also some - small - studies suggesting that adults of different cultures have different tastes in colours. It's clear that colour preference is learnt rather than innate.'

Read the rest of the report here.

Children learn by repetition.  And what we are all unaware of is just how many times a day that it is being repeated in books, in adverts on television, in children's television programmes, in supermarkets, clothing, toys, games, films; girls, you like pink.

Pink means you are pretty, popular, happy, princesses who never get dirty and don't do all that silly 'boy' stuff.  Pink is your label.  Everything you like is pink.

So stay in your pink bubble and conform to your stereotype.

If I'd had a girl, she would have been damn brilliant!

And there's where the danger lies.

By the time I was pregnant with Ethan in 2010, pink had filtered it's way down into things like prams, car seats, cots and every plastic toy now had a 'girls' version - in all hues of plasticky pink.

I now had friends who had had boys, who were now ditching their old prams and cots to buy a whole new set of pink versions for the 'pink flavour' growing in their bellies.

When I got to the time where I could find out the gender of my baby, I was inclined to decline; part of me really wanted a daughter and I was as yet undecided what my response would be when someone asked me the dreaded question, 'are you hoping it's a girl this time?'  I didn't know how to feel about it.  Some folk even commented that a girl would 'complete my family'.  What a crazy comment to make!  Oh and don't forget the classic 'if it's a boy will you keep trying until you get a girl?'

Spoiler: They gave us this pic for free because she captured his willie in the photo!

I decided to find out in the end, to satisfy my own curiosity, and was quite relieved to find out it was another boy.  I felt happy for Thomas that he would have a brother (Dave and his brothers share a remarkable bond and I'd love the same for my kids) and actually,I was quite relieved that I wasn't going to have to deal with the barrage of pink stuff which would surely have descended upon me.

Heads up folks, I would not have been grateful.  I might have been rude about it.  And given my hormonal state I probably would have struggled to be rational about it either.

I would have had a lot to say because passionately, I feel that it is so easy, far too easy in fact, to unconsciously let our daughters slip into the tight boundaries set by the patriarchy.  We all buy into it; because it's pretty and nice and fun.  We do not wholly investigate what the pink is telling us.  We are not asking what it means.

What we are not addressing, is the fact that by separating girls and boys by labeling them in this way, we are narrowing their horizons and putting them into boxes.

Children should be free to follow their own path in life.

In not having a daughter (thus far) I haven't avoided the problem.

Having two boys has not meant that I am removed from the pink issue altogether; indeed it has been an issue quite a few times.

Like, when my son wanted a doll and pram for his second birthday and people raised their eyebrows at him.

Or when I went into the toy-shop to pick a multi-coloured playhouse for the boys and the shop assistant basically overrode my choice, shouting at her colleague in the middle of the store to get me one with a blue door instead of a pink door, because "boys don't have pink"

My ideal playhouse - sadly, way out of budget! 

"You'll thank me later when their friends don't make fun of them"
I couldn't speak.  I was too shocked.  My response was definitely about three days later once I finally got my jaw off the floor.

They are being told from all angles that pink is a girls colour.  Pink is a weaker choice.  Therefore, pink is a girls thing.  Therefore, girls are weak.  Therefore boys are better than girls.

And I now have a hard and difficult task, as one tiny little woman, to counteract all of this stuff they are being exposed to on a daily basis.

When my 3 year old son points to a pink toy in the shop and says 'You like that mum, you like pink' and I say, 'No, mummy's favourite colour is green' and he gets upset and insists that it can't be because I am a girl, I don't like green, it's wrong.

Read again: Gets UPSET.  Like, emotionally upset with tears and stuff, because mummy is not conforming to what he has been told by everything, everywhere, all of the time.
That is wrong.

That's why I am backing campaigns like the one being fought in the Uk just now by Let Toys Be Toys, who have actually managed to convince some big-name retailers like Early Learning Centre to change the way they display toys in their catalogues and to change the labelling of 'girls' toys and 'boys toys.

Let Toys Be Toys is an amazing campaign - please check out their page and their blog and get yourself wise to these issues.  Too many of us are letting ourselves and our children sleepwalk into these constricting labels.

If you pay attention, it's filtered into adult stuff too.

Seriously, do we need it to be pink before we can figure out how to use it?  How condescending!
 

 Ellen sums it up quite nicely in this video.  Seriously, watch it, it'll brighten your day!

 



I promise to myself and my children that I am going to be aware and raise the issue with them all through their lives.  I have always known I'd strive to be a good, strong female role-model for my boys.  I just didn't know the fight was going to be so tough!

Come at us!  We're ready for you!