Friday, February 08, 2013

If girls can wear pants, why can't boys wear dresses?

I have been instructed by our nursery school teacher that my 3.5 year-old child, who has boy parts, should wear boy clothes and not come in dresses. I am pretty sure one teacher told me that it would cause "problems" for him later in life. (Perhaps I didn't understand the Hungarian. I could swear that she said it might even cause dyslexia!!??) The other teacher said it would cause confusion in the classroom for the other boys. Thoughts? I have LOTS of thoughts about this issue, but don't want to color your responses. I would love to hear your responses, experiences, etc.

3 comments:

DJ said...

did you end up following these instructions, or did you continue to allow leo to pick his own clothes?

Janet Kelley said...

They have the habit here of changing into your "inside or play" clothes upon arrival to the school. So he wore his dress to school and then he changed into his play clothes (you know, so as not to spoil his dress) to go into the classroom.

DJ said...

did they bug you about it again, or was his changing into his play clothes enough to keep them from being too nervous?

it's amazing how afraid we all are of venturing outside of our strictly proscribed gender roles. it terrifies us. but in the end the roles assigned are SO arbitrary.