She wants boys’ toys

I am a mother of three, two boys aged six and four and a girl aged two. I have bought my daughter all the nice dollies and girl toys but she always fights with the boys to play with their car toys.

I love my daughter and I want to raise her to be a good woman – but she fights and is aggressive when the boys refuse her their toys – which sometimes gets me worried. I wonder where she got this character from. How should I train her to be a woman? – Mai Jayden

Dear Mai Jayden

Don’t worry – your daughter is just being normal. That girls should play with dollies and boys with cars is just one of the gender stereotypes that cause no harm to a child if ignored. If your daughter loves toy cars, why not buy her one? Are cars meant to be driven by men alone? It is this from this stage that we have wrongly socialised our children that girls are meant to be soft and quiet while boys are aggressive and vocal.

Girls have been socialised to be caring playing with dolls, feeding and taking care of them while boys play with toy cars and learn to fix them at a young age, which has cascaded in the society believing a woman’s place is in the home taking care of the children while men earn money by working in the public sphere.

It is good to raise your daughter to believe she can do what the boys do and also to teach your boys to accept your daughter playing in their ‘territory’ and respect her. Your boys will grow up to respect women and believe in them, the notion that they can’t do what men can will be destroyed while they are young. – Aunty Lisa