can your kids tell boys and girls apart?
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| Sat, 07-29-2006 - 6:37pm |
Both of my kids have a really difficult time differentiating between genders. If you show Sebastian photographs of children, he has a 50% chance of labeling them correctly as boys or girls. Sometimes when I'm out with Sylvia, she'll see another little girl and she'll announce, "Look -- a little boy! I want to say hi to the boy!" (Or vice versa if she sees a boy.)
Sebastian's speech therapist says that I need to go over physical characteristics with the kids to get them to recognize the different genders -- so, girls wear dresses and have long hair, boys wear pants and have short hair, etc. But I have a couple of problems with this approach. First, in this day and age there are just too many exceptions to those kinds of rules. Most girls don't wear dresses on a regular basis, many girls have short hair and many boys have long hair. But also, being a feminist (and a former gender studies professor!) I have a real problem saying, "Girls are like this, boys are like this." I mean, Sebastian likes to play with dolls and push a little pink stroller, and Sylvia loves to play with toy cars, and I see no problem with that. So how can I say, "Look, he has short hair and is fighting with his brother -- he's definitely a boy!" or, "Look, she has a long ponytail and is having a tea party -- she's definitely a girl!"
But I really don't know any other way to get them to recognize gender. Do any of your kids have difficulties figuring out the differences between girls and boys? How did you help them with that?
Jennifer

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Jennifer,
I have a similar problem with race.
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
Ok, I have to say I had a little giggle at this whole thought but only because of what point in life we are now. I have some funny stories about gender and with my kids being near or in puberty with AS you question takes on a whole different light! Recently we have had problems with Mike going around checking out EVERY FEMALES boobs because suddenly he has noticed them and they are a curiousity. The other day I caught him putting on a bra. Same thing just curious but my poor DH didn't do well with the news, lol. It is just one of those things where he is delayed in curiousity and is just wondering. It was nothing twisted or weird. So no big deal.
I know adults who can't figure out if a baby is a girl even if she is wearing a dress! My friends baby girl is about 20 months but has no hair. She has earings and is always in pink but everyone calls her a boy! Did the same to Emily who was bald as a cue ball for years.
I am trying to remember if my kids had this problem at a younger age. I want to say they probably did but they couldn't even get "you", "I", "His" Hers" etc straight so I assume they did but didn't really notice. It is a problem now particularly for Mike if the person is rather gender neutral even if you tell him the person is a boy or girl.
Just this week at Camp I can there was a boy with very long dred locks. It upset Mike alot because he couldn't figure out if the kids was a boy or a girl. He had a boys name and wore boys clothes but girls hair. It really made him nuts on and off the whole week even though we said "Mike that is a boy" he wouldn't totally believe us because s/he had girl hair in his mind. Imagine if he ever meets a drag queen?
I think if you neutrally correct them at each instance and maybe explain why that person is a boy or a girl. Make it a teachable moment. "No dear, that is a boy. See he has ...." and give some clue they could look for. Eventually hopefully they will get enough info that they would make thier own generalizations. Temple Grandins talks about this. She says when you say to her boat that she sees pictures of all the boats she has ever seen and then categorizes them. She just doesn't see a generic boat. And it took her seeing lots of boats and having each one labelled boat for her to make that connection.
I wouldnt teach generalities like short hair, long hair, dresses, pink, etc because it doesn't hold very true. As I mentioned There are boys with long hair, girls with short hair, boys who occasionally have pink shirts and girls who dress like boys. Girls rarely wear skirts, etc.
Renee
In general David can, I think. Still, there are times when I'm not so sure.
I don't have time to go into the whole story, but DH has a friend who is transgender (born with "a bit of both", raised as male, changed to female.) She identifies herself as female, because that's what feels natural for her. Well, she visited us once, when David was about 5, and not yet dx'd. He could not, would not refer to her as "she". He said, "he" and "his". We didn't tell him about the transgender stuff, to protect our guest's privacy. The thing is, even though she was doing pretty good at being feminine, there aren't that many 6'2" 50 year old women with boyishly skinny hips and broad shoulders.
Someone mentioned race, and that reminded me of something that kind of irks me. At David's school, they learned about Rosa Parks, and each kid drew a picture and wrote a little "essay". Nearly every paper had: I Learned--- that you should be nice to people even if they are a different color. Well, okay, that's nice. But before the lesson, the kids probably never even thought about being mean to someone because of their skin color, hair color, or whatever, any more than they'd think of being mean to someone because of the length of their toes. I can't help but wonder if the lesson itself could plant those ideas. (Then again, it's a reality of the world we live it.) At David's school, everyone is a Different Color. They did a "heritage" thing, and we discovered that nearly every kid was of some exotic mix, like half German and half Thai, or half Egyptian and half Ukranian, or half Navajo and half Japanese. David's just boring old, half English and half Euro-hybrid, but he was the exception.
Oh, sorry for going off on a tangent. Back to the boy/girl thing. I'm not even sure how to explain how they are different. If it's making a list of "people I like" and "people I hate", then it's probably a girl. If it's making armpit farts, or screeching tires sounds, then it's probably a boy.
Evelyn
Bobby for the most part does know the difference.
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I guess I should clarify that my kids definitely do know the differences physically(if they didn't by now there would be trouble). Cait has no trouble, our problem with Mike comes from those not so obvious folks.
I do think when they were younger they had some trouble and with working on pronouns and langauge, etc, they got it.
Renee
This is all very interesting! I thought of it recently because we were at the playground and another little girl came running over, who happened to have very very cropped hair. She was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, nothing pink and no jewelry or anything that would really indicate "girl." I could tell she was a girl (there was no question), but if you just looked at those obvious indicators (short hair, clothing, etc.) they fall into the "boy" stereotype, and of course Sylvia thought it was a boy. So I just couldn't really figure out how to explain how I knew it was a girl. I guess lots of practice, lots of opportunity to think about it and generalize, and lots of teachable moments as Renee said, are going to be key...
(By the way, I'm not sure at this age that I want to get into the more intimate physical difference between genders, because Sylvia is soooo literal, plus she has little impulse control, and I KNOW that she'll want to check out for herself whether someone has a penis or a vagina in order to determine their gender!!!)
Jennifer ;-)
"...and I KNOW that she'll want to check out for herself whether someone has a penis or a vagina in order to determine their gender!!!"
Now won't that just make for some memorable parenting moments! "Excuse me, I need ot see if you have a penis so I know if you are a boy. Please pull down your pants". ROFLMAO or worse yet, just pulling them down. I only laugh because I understand. You should have seen the look on my moms face one night after babysitting. Like I said with puberty Mike is REALLY starting to notice "those" differences. Poor Cait was sleeping on the couch and mike kept pacing back and forth infront of her obsessing on something. Well my mom left the room for a minute and soon Cait screamed. Seemed Mike tried to take a peek while she was sleeping.
He is not a twisted little kid, it was pure small child curiousity mixed with autistic lack of social graces. I am glad it happened at home with grandma and not some stranger on the street. OYE VEY! Autism is never boring now is it.
Renee
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This is such a great question. Billy is almost 8 and still has a hard time. He asked me a couple of times if his gym teacher was a lady...she is. He asks if our neighbors kids are boys or girls and these kids are quite obviously boys so I'm not sure why he's not picking up on that. He can't seem to articulate why. He's also been diagnosed with face blindness ( I forget the long name ) but he doesn't recognize people by their faces, only by their hair. This really only applies to people he doesn't see everyday. He used to not like when I would get my hair cut or colored and even now will stare at my hair for a long time after I come back from the hairdresser. He has trouble picking people he knows out of group if he can't see their hair and he always describes people hair first.
Jen
Jen
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