True fact: I used to babysit this little boy who loved to get dressed up in princess garb and play witches or Sailor Moon. Super cute kid and his parents just let him go for it. I've always wondered what happen to him... #lilyskids
Sigh. I wonder if I can get a copy of this magazine to prove to my (soon to be) in laws that my (soon to be) niece can play soccer and still cook and bake and clean and be pink. So far, they will only let her be a cheerleader and dance while her brothers play football, baseball AND soccer. #lilyskids
My parents couldn't afford the toy kitchen I always wanted, so going to my cousin's house was AWESOME because they had one.
My brother liked the toy kitchen too. My favorite picture of him as a child is him playing at the toy kitchen, wearing the blue apron and yellow oven mitt that came with it, with a toy pot on the stove with a BABY DOLL inside it. I like to call the picture "Cooking the Baby." #lilyskids
@thechibster63: Our toy kitchen was handed down through three kids and insanely popular with cousins and neighborhood kids of both genders.
As were our dress-up clothes. My sister and I took dance and my mom saved the prom gowns my grandma made for her, plus we had my grandma's old hats. Our collection was LEGENDARY. #lilyskids
@roxythekiller: I know, right? I hate chores but kids love that shit. I work at a children's museum and our museum store sells out of brooms and rakes like nobody's business. They're our bestselling items. Kids are weird. #lilyskids
@kate!: I worked at a pre-school, and I closed out every evening. Those lucky kids whose parents picked them up at 6:00 basically cleaned the room for me. Anything that didn't involve toxic chemicals, they did. It was awesome. Child labor is still well alive at Kindercare-Knowledge Learning Centers. #lilyskids
zomg I wanted those McDonald and kitchen sets so bad when I was little. It is funny to think that my idea of a perfect afternoon then would be to pretend to work at the drive-thru window at Mickey D's. Dream big!! #lilyskids
@MegiEr: We used to play "Sonic" for HOURS when we were little. Someone would sit in the van and be the customer, and someone else got to wear rollerskates and be the waitress. It was always a fight over who got to be waitress first #lilyskids
Confession when I was a kid I LOVED all the baking toys. I even had a fake grocery shopping cart toy. My brother played with them too. I can't believe there are cleaning toys, I don't remember those. But now as an adult I HATE cooking and cleaning and will eat out for every meal. My boyfriend cooks almost everything, and he is also a clean freak. So...good job toys? #lilyskids
@DinosaurDanceParty: Ha! The boyf and I are the same way. I like to play with tools too, and I think on some level it gets to him that I don't ask him for help with mechanical things unless absolutely necessary, though he loves that I always shoo him away when it comes time to put furniture together or what not, becuase he hates doing those things. #lilyskids
@DinosaurDanceParty: The only remotely cleaning-related toy I can remember is the vacuum cleaner/lawn mower type contraption with the balls that popped around in the dome when you pushed it. #lilyskids
did anyone else play with matchbox cars? we'd find a mound of sand (there was a ton of new construction on our block and literally tons of big sand piles) and carve roads in it for the cars, then do landscape architecture (not that we knew to call it that) by 'planting' flowers & leaves to decorate the roads. Me & my friend were into horses & digging in the dirt; her sister and my sister were into barbies and pink stuff. Ewwwwwww!
Incidentally, I now feel pretty terrible for the construction workers who had to contend with disintegrated sand piles. #lilyskids
@exwindnsea: My sister and I had little toy metal cars as kids. They had a key and a lock in the bottom which made wheels and doors lock. They were presents from a friend of my grandmother - a nun. I had some pretty good role models when I was a young thing. #lilyskids
This bullshit is why I bought my son (5 at the time) a baby doll when he wanted one and didn't give 2 shits about the dire warnings I received from the men in my family. Why can't he have a frakking baby doll? He saw that his sister got some and they were fun so he wanted one too. Big fucking deal.
I was so disappointed in the reactions from them. My son is very sweet, skinny, wears glasses, and gets sick a lot. So of course he already has problems being a "real boy" to these assholes. And then gasp! A baby doll.
I was ruining him! I was turning him gay!! He was going to grow up a pussy!
My responses -
First, it's a fucking baby doll. It's not going to remove his testicles. He named it Apollo, played with it for 2 weeks and now it's at the bottom of the toy box like everything else.
Second, ....ugh, where do I even start at the rage inducing comments that first, I could turn my son gay and second that if he grew up and was gay, there's something wrong with him.
Third, I explained that he wasn't going to grow up to BE a pussy, he was going to GET lots of pussy because he's shown that he isn't going to buy into these ridiculous gender roles when he grows up.
Oh and I paint his nails too. He has 2 sisters and to him it's a fun activity that he doesn't get to participate in. I thought about it and he's exactly right. It's fun and he was left out. So if he wants his fingers to sparkle, fine. (His father came around but still prefers I use black nail polish). If he wants to take it off before school, I let him.
I would NEVER tell my daughters that they can't play with a pretend tool set, so why on earth is it so important to the men in my family that my son not be allowed to play with "girl" toys.
Every Christmas, up until about third grade, my siblings (one brother, one sister) and I would ask for a pet. Alas, the parents thought we were enough to handle.
This resulted in us taking turns being "the dog." We would tie shoestrings to our wrists and then have the others take us on "walks."
Looking back, the situation is mildly disturbing, but--hey--at least the "dog" was gender-neutral (neutered?) #lilyskids
@jescabel: I have an older sister and 2 little brothers. My sister ALWAYS made me be the bridesmaid when we would play bride, and my older little brother had to be the dog that was the ringbearer. He started playing bride with me more because I let HIM be the bridesmaid while I was FINALLY the bride.
My parents just laughed and let me dress him up like a bridesmaid. He's none the worse for the wear. #lilyskids
@pesematology: I like to think it's because kids don't have a lot of understanding of professions. When I worked in a preschool I would ask the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up sometimes and I got answers from "farmer" (we lived in San Francisco), "hippie," "cartoon fox," "bob the builder," "robot," "nurse," (by a boy!!!!) and "psychologist." For realsies #lilyskids
@DinosaurDanceParty: When I was a camp counselor, one of my third graders told me he wanted to be a frog, and would hop down the hall to me every day. He later on decided that he wanted to be a snake. Then he wanted to be both a frog AND a snake, something he christened "a frake". #lilyskids
To be fair, if a boy wanted to be a pretty princess, he would technically be a pretty prince...unless he was pretending to be a girl. I am not against experimenting with gender identity, but I do believe the proper noun should be used with royalty. #lilyskids
@Snowbunny: Royalty, though, is one case where you can say "their" instead of "his" or "her" and still be correct. Because if there's a Royal We there must be a Royal Them, no? #lilyskids
@pesematology: Yes, so maybe all young royal should be Princes, which is either plural Prince or a lazy person writing out Princess, but a good intermediate all the same. #lilyskids
At my school's kindergarten graduation, we dressed up as what we wanted to be when we grew up. Yep, I was the geeky kid who wanted to be a paleontologist at 5. To hell with you, shitty gender roles! #lilyskids
@lizdexia: I was going to be a paleontologist too because I was obsessed with dinosaurs. I had a massive collection and played with them all the time. I was also dead set on astronaut, or perhaps astronomer, being similarly obsessed with space. Backup plan: to be a Ghostbuster. I realised young that I couldn't be President because I wasn't born in the US and have multiple citizenships, which was absolutely gutting.
OK, now I'm doing graduate work in international politics, but the theory was sound. Dolls and barbies that I got given as presents just gathered dust. Dinos FTW! #lilyskids
I am livid when I see a pageful of "science" toys marketed exclusively to boys. And we wonder why more women don't enter the sciences, especially fields perceived to be more "male" like physics. #lilyskids
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My brother liked the toy kitchen too. My favorite picture of him as a child is him playing at the toy kitchen, wearing the blue apron and yellow oven mitt that came with it, with a toy pot on the stove with a BABY DOLL inside it. I like to call the picture "Cooking the Baby." #lilyskids
11/10/09
As were our dress-up clothes. My sister and I took dance and my mom saved the prom gowns my grandma made for her, plus we had my grandma's old hats. Our collection was LEGENDARY. #lilyskids
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Reminds me of my favorite childrens books...
[www.buyolympia.com] #lilyskids
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Incidentally, I now feel pretty terrible for the construction workers who had to contend with disintegrated sand piles. #lilyskids
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I was so disappointed in the reactions from them. My son is very sweet, skinny, wears glasses, and gets sick a lot. So of course he already has problems being a "real boy" to these assholes. And then gasp! A baby doll.
I was ruining him! I was turning him gay!! He was going to grow up a pussy!
My responses -
First, it's a fucking baby doll. It's not going to remove his testicles. He named it Apollo, played with it for 2 weeks and now it's at the bottom of the toy box like everything else.
Second, ....ugh, where do I even start at the rage inducing comments that first, I could turn my son gay and second that if he grew up and was gay, there's something wrong with him.
Third, I explained that he wasn't going to grow up to BE a pussy, he was going to GET lots of pussy because he's shown that he isn't going to buy into these ridiculous gender roles when he grows up.
Oh and I paint his nails too. He has 2 sisters and to him it's a fun activity that he doesn't get to participate in. I thought about it and he's exactly right. It's fun and he was left out. So if he wants his fingers to sparkle, fine. (His father came around but still prefers I use black nail polish). If he wants to take it off before school, I let him.
I would NEVER tell my daughters that they can't play with a pretend tool set, so why on earth is it so important to the men in my family that my son not be allowed to play with "girl" toys.
Rage, rage, stabby, stabby. #lilyskids
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This resulted in us taking turns being "the dog." We would tie shoestrings to our wrists and then have the others take us on "walks."
Looking back, the situation is mildly disturbing, but--hey--at least the "dog" was gender-neutral (neutered?) #lilyskids
11/09/09
My parents just laughed and let me dress him up like a bridesmaid. He's none the worse for the wear. #lilyskids
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Better late than never, I guess.
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Word up, my bird friends. #lilyskids
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OK, now I'm doing graduate work in international politics, but the theory was sound. Dolls and barbies that I got given as presents just gathered dust. Dinos FTW! #lilyskids
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(Note: actual conversation I had today with a physicist friend-of-friend. RAAAAAGE.) #lilyskids
11/09/09
"Really? Because I'm imagining throwing you across the room, and you definitely spun around in the air a few times." #lilyskids