So obviously, with a boy and a girl in our set of twins, colors generally tend towards the gender specific around here. While I've mentioned before that we don't gender-stereotype toys (my darling little girl loves the workbench more than her brother and my sweet little boy adores taking babies for a "walk" in the pink play stroller), it's a bit harder to do the same with clothing. I personally love the variety of non-pink and non-purple clothing that Anna wears and I find that my faves of her stuff are usually not those colors. However, she does wear a lot of pink and purple and Sam does not. Sam's clothing is usually blues, browns, and reds.
Initially, Sam used a blue sippy cup and Anna had a pink sippy cup; Sam was put in our blue towel after bath while Anna was wrapped up in pink. I don't know when Sam started realizing that he rarely got the pink stuff, but it started a shift in our household. Sam now gravitates towards pink. Anna likes to give up the pink and get the blues. Now, if what we have is pink and blue, almost 100% of the time, they will want the opposite of their typical gender color. Sam now always chooses to sit in the pink booster chair drinking out of the pink sippy cup and Anna's in the blue booster with the blue cup. If we ask what towel they want, Sam will request pink, Anna asks for blue. It makes total sense to me though- don't we all kind of desire more what we don't usual get to have often? I am curious if this happens to most b/g twins at some point.
Personally, I have no issues with boys liking pink or purple- I always tell kindergartners in my classes that there are no "boy" colors or "girl" colors. One of my husband's favorite polos is lilac, and I think he looks good in it. Will I let Sam wear Anna's pink clothing if he asks? Well, Anna is still significantly smaller than Sam (weighed last week at less than 24 lbs at 27 months old), so think it's a non-issue at this point because her clothes probably won't fit him anyway. And in reverse, would I let Anna wear Sam's clothing if she asked? Probably, but I haven't come across that yet. It's interesting to ponder where to draw the gender lines when you have multiple children that are the exact same age.
2 comments:
My neighbours across the road have B/G twins who are now about 4.5. I remember when they moved in last summer; I would look out the window and there would be two little kids in dresses or skirts playing in their driveway. I quickly realized that if Ellis wanted to wear Elsie's clothes (yes, those are their names), then Ellis got to wear Elsie's clothes. They didn't make an issue about it. He also got his nails painted if he wanted them. (Now that they're 4.5 this doesn't seem to happen at all anymore... I think he grew out of it).
I see nothing wrong with this, but I have to admit, if I had a girl and Noah wanted to wear her clothes, I'm not sure how I would react. I'm guessing I would just try to redirect him back to his own clothes. Like I said, I don't see anything wrong with it, I just think that would be my first reaction. (I'm not saying that's the "right" reaction, I'm just speculating and imagining here).
The colour thing? I think it totally doesn't matter. We don't have a lot of pink and purple in our house, but we don't avoid it either, and if we were buying something and Noah had his choice of colour (which he often does), if he wanted pink I wouldn't even think twice. His favourite colour is orange though, so it's probably a non-issue.
We've seen some of that around here too. Luke and Abbey have strawberry and lion towels, and they've been requesting the others. I think, like you said, it's the desire for what we don't usually get.
Luke went through a stage where he asked for Abbey's "pretty-pretties" in his hair, but once he got his hair cut they no longer fit. I agree, we say there are no boy colors or girl colors. I even painted Luke's nails once, but it bothered Dave a bit...which surprised even him!! In my opinion, the more you make something off limits, you run the risk of making it alluring.
I probably wouldn't let Luke wear Abbey's clothes out of the house (he has yet to ask) but maybe I would. I think, at 2, it's just a non issue. At some point though, I'd just want to discuss with him the possible social aspect of it.
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