Letting Go of Labels for my Childern!

I love Avery, she is very much involved in everything we decide to do each day, she picks out the clothes she wants to wear and she loves the things she loves no matter what anyone tells her.

She loves to wear the color blue.....green comes in a close second. Blue is a requirement to be worn as much as possible.

She loves Cars more than any other movie you can imagine. Her dresser drawer is full of all her Cars and she adores her Lightening Queen Queen "boy" underwear.

When she hears her favorite song "I Love Being A Princess" she has to put on her Cinderella dress.

This morning she got three new coloring books, one that is pink and full of princesses, one that is blue and full of cars and dinosaurs and the last purple flowers and fairies. She was talking to Brian about how she had a girl and boy book and he kept telling her that they were not defined as boy and girl books just kid books. She got confused, very confused.

A reason I love my husband is he is a feminist.  I am involved in every project around the house and he doesn't make me ask him every time I want to do something.

I do not stay at home because he thinks that a women should be at home taking care of the kids. He feels that is a decision I should make and if I could go and make the money that he does, he would gladly stay home full time. (even the thought of that makes me laugh though!)

He doesn't care that most of the underwear Avery has are from the boy section of the store (and have pockets which just thrill her!), that she would rather play with trains than tutus or feels the need to wear blue every single day. While they might be labeled  boys and girls,  in our house they are just kid things.

I read a blog post over at the Crunchy Goddess about Boys and Girls Swimsuits and it really got me thinking. While I respect peoples individual beliefs, I think that sometimes we tend to be a bit too prudent and out dated when it comes to men and women or boys and girls.

While we don't have any little boys running around I cant say that we would not let him wear pink princess underwear if he wanted and really with two sisters running around I would be shocked if it didn't happen. Our cloth diapers are in every color you can imagine and if we have a boy next, he will be wearing some pink ones! 

I am not worried one bit if our child plays with something we have labeled for one gender. I want my kids to play with whatever they want, love everyone all the same and be the person they want to be. I might tend to still think girl verse boys, but I don't care if Avery or Eisley wants it to have Cars on the wall or princesses. I just want them to have the things they want and not feel like its suppose to be labeled!

So thank you to my husband for opening my eyes to "kids" stuff, and my darling Avery for being the person she wants to be! I hope that you always live for what you want!

Comments

[Kelly]

Love this post. I have a big kid who loves to watch princess movies with his sister and a little kid who loves to play pirates with her brother (where she is captain hook and he is peter pan). We decided early on to just love them without trying to shape and mold them into who society thinks they should be. Society will do its work without our help, but we'll be doing our best to counter those messages!