“I Wanna … His Milk!”
William, our 4 year old, faced his first sex-related challenge with the birth of Isabella. For his entire life, William had been living in a male-dominated world - his best friend was Daddy, his buddies were Nick, Maxx and Brent… and of course, the center of the world, in his opinion, was a boy named William…
So he used “he” and “his” for everyone around him in his life, including me. “No big deal”, I thought, “He will learn about girls sooner or later”.
With another girl born into the household, I thought it was the right time to teach him about gender.
It turned out to be a real challenge. Eventually my husband and I decided to adopt techniques used by the dolphin trainers - associating learning with food. Every time William asked for a cookie or a drink, we would ask him to answer a couple gender related questions. Here is a typical scenario:
“Mommy Daddy I need some juice…”
“OK, is Nick a boy or girl?”
“Boy!”
“Is Maxx a he or she?”, joined my husband.
“hmm… she! No! hmm… HE!”
“Good boy! Here is the juice…”
One day, while William was watching his sister drinking from a bottle, I decided it was time for another such training.
“Look William - Isabella is a girl. She is drinking her milk.”
“Girl drinks her milk,” I stressed, “Now say it with me…”
“OK, OK, I know Mommy - Isabella is a girl. She drinks her milk.”
“I am a boy,” he proudly continued, “now I wanna drink some his milk!!”
Posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007;
filed under He Said She Said.
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