This weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking and talking with Steve about what my next move will be. 2011 was a disaster for work. Disaster. Selling the house and minding the kids was an 80 hour per week job. I did make some headway on a book, but the writing happened in bits and pieces and as a result, the writing is choppy with lots of half finished thoughts. I want to keep working on it, but I need immediate gratification projects, too. Preferably projects that also bring in a little casheroo.
A blog is fabulous for people who only have bits and pieces of time. 20 minutes and there's a blog post. In another 20 minutes, fun comments appear. It's magical and wonderful.
I also continue to do this blog, because sometimes you feel like you make a difference. I'm not a hundred percent sure that it makes a difference, but sometimes… maybe… perhaps.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a small article in Business Week on Lego for girls. I threw out a very quick link to it, tweeted it, put it on Facebook, and threw a note over to my buddy who specializes in writing on these topics. Erin wrote a series of excellent posts on the topic. Her posts were noticed by bigger fish. Pretty soon, the Today Show was debating whether or not Lego for girls was a good thing.
Did my blog post and tweets directly lead to Matt Lauer and Star Jones fighting about Lego? No. But I was one part of a larger group of people that did make that happen. I am part of a network of people that can take a topic from page 14 and make it page 1. This is very, very rewarding.
While this blog (or any blog) should not be a career goal or a long term life plan, it is an extremely fun hobby.
Apt. 11d 
In our school, for January and February, the school does a “noontime enrichment” program that sort of replaces “recess” because there’s a really good chance it’ll be too cold to have outdoor recess for weeks at a time. These are minimal oversight semi-organized activities like “Board Games” or “Drawing” that the kids can do for 45 minutes.
So, we got a call last week. “I see that Eldest Raggirl signed up for ‘Legos’ as her first choice.” “that’s right.” “Well, we wanted to let you know that she is the only girl who signed up, so in case she wanted to back out, she has that chance now.” We checked. She still wanted Legos. We passed that along.
Yesterday, I took all three Raggirls to see “Adventures of Tintin.” Highly recommended. All three girls loved it. The line that stuck with us afterwards was when Tintin was being strafed by an airplane gunner. He pulls out his pistol and checks the cartridge. “The bad news is I only have one bullet left.” “What’s the good news?” “The good news is, I still have one bullet left.” He takes the shot and takes down the plane.
It is now 24 hours into being the family catch phrase. So, the bad news is that there’s only one girl in the Lego class. But, the good news is, there’s still one girl in the Lego class.
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Yay Raggirl! Are you annoyed that the school called you? Was it done in a nice, FYI sort of way? Or was it because they were worried about her? So what if there is one only gender doing anything? Do they think that kids can only be happy if there is more of their gender doing an activity?
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“So, the bad news is that there’s only one girl in the Lego class. But, the good news is, there’s still one girl in the Lego class.”
Go Raggirl!
I know a boy who really likes to sew, but I don’t think he’s been willing to stick with the sewing class at the grand age of 11, when the peers start rigidly enforcing the gender norms. But I have a dream that some day he will.
My own boy has been enjoying knitting. I think a real norm-widener has been the dad of a friend of his sister’s, who knits hats for the friend. The dad is a gruff, cigar-smoking, scruffy, sailor, so he makes knitting macho enough for my son.
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How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is now 60 years old and featured a knitting executive. I saw a touring group with Ralph Macchio in the lead.
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I don’t think “annoyed” is the right word. Maybe, disappointed? In context, we were also told that the participants in her second choice were all at least two years younger, so we could also pick the third choice if the fifth grader didn’t want to do a program where everyone else was in second or third grade. So, it didn’t come across as “just” sexist.
I also wondered if “all boys” was actually code for “those really annoying boys who won’t interact with girls and make cootie jokes,” so I did ask who the boys were. Then, we could back out if it was all bullies and jerks (which we would have done if we had a choice to get away from the bully and jerk girls, too). But some of Eldest Raggirls’ male friends were in the class, so that turned out to not be an issue, either.
So, no, I wasn’t angry at the school for asking. I do know some girls in fifth grade only play with other girls, and maybe for them, it might have been an issue. Who I was angry at were unidentified other families that probably complained about situations like this in the past, so that the school correctly identified that this would probably be an issue for a fair number of girls.
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In our school, it would be an issue for a fair number of the girls (for my own, I think it would depend on the activity and, as you point out, the other boys). I do think it’s interesting that your 5th grader has male friends — in my daughter’s school it seems like there has been almost complete gender separation.
My own daughter has never really connected with any of the boys, but other girls did have friends who are boys. We saw those friendships break up in the 3-4th grade so that now all the interaction is of the boys and girls chase each other variety (i.e. incipient flirting/mating dance activities).
Some of this might depend on the specific mix of boys and girls, but I have noted that the separation weighs most heavily on the “gentle” boys (i.e. the ones who aren’t the cootie jokes, burping, run into each other type). There are girls that they would like to be friends with, but the girls can find what they want in the girl crowd and reject the boys down the line.
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In contrast, the wild girls (i.e. physically active, anti-authoritarian, sports-oriented) girls can find other girls and don’t feel left out of the boys games.
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the “gentle” boys (i.e. the ones who aren’t the cootie jokes, burping, run into each other type).
They can play checkers with the unicorns.
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“My own daughter has never really connected with any of the boys, but other girls did have friends who are boys. We saw those friendships break up in the 3-4th grade so that now all the interaction is of the boys and girls chase each other variety (i.e. incipient flirting/mating dance activities).”
Too true. In the early primary years, my daughter only wanted to make friends with boys. After seeing two of these mixed friendships crash and burn, I started more actively seeking female companionship for her. These girl-girl relationships have a lot more long term potential, although I realize that the social deck gets reshuffled during the middle school years.
C has taken a bunch of sewing classes and taught herself (with some encouragement from me) embroidery. (She loves Aimee Ray’s books.) Since C is determined to teach her younger brother everything she knows (whether he is interested or not), he has learned a lot from her. A couple months ago, a friend of C’s had a girls-only birthday party that was half tea party, half sewing party, where the girls worked on American Girl sewing kits (the raccoon one). D (my 6-year-old) was disappointed that it was girls only. Why, he wondered, did tea and sewing make it girly? Anytime you have a bunch of girls doing something, that makes it girly, I told him. I think he bought that. D would have been a very well behaved member of the sewing circle, but knowing the other little brothers, I am quite sure that including them would have changed the ambiance of the event for the worse. It would have been more like a cattle stampede than a sewing circle, and all those tiny little pieces would have been hopelessly mixed up.
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There are girls that they would like to be friends with, but the girls can find what they want in the girl crowd and reject the boys down the line.
In my daughter’s case, at that age, I believe her ability to have friends of both genders made her a target for girl bullying. Girls who had been friends until mid-6th grade started talking about her as the school “change the h to an l in shut” (sorry-didn’t want to trigger filters.)
So, in some middle schools, being friends with the other gender can make you a target. It did strike me that many of the mean girls did not have brothers.
Does it come from the entertainment media, and clothing companies? I think it does. The middle school has become a place of extreme gender roles, more than I remember it was, back in my childhood. The chaperones had to keep an eye out for grinding at school dances, for example. Fashionable clothing uses as little fabric as possible. Makeup is widely used.
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No girls in middle school yet, but I’m not exactly looking forward to it next year.
Tip for elementary school girls interested in sparking friendships with elementary school boys — show up to school with your Pokemon cards. Total boy magnet.
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“It did strike me that many of the mean girls did not have brothers.”
Hmmm.
“The middle school has become a place of extreme gender roles, more than I remember it was, back in my childhood.”
Ah, but did you go to a middle school back in the day? It may be that being with 7th and 8th graders makes the 6th graders try to act “older.”
I went to a 4th-6th grade intermediate school in a small town in the 1980s, and the 4th and 5th graders were definitely little kids. By 6th grade, a number of us were definitely growing up (although at the time, the last word in girl’s fashion wash the sweatshirt with cute puffy designs) and one or two more physically developed girls had boyfriends over at the junior/senior high school.
Entering 7th grade meant moving over to the junior/senior high school. (The following year, a middle school was created, the junior/senior high school turned into a high school and the 7th and 8th graders went into the middle school, partly with the hope of curbing liaisons between junior and senior high students.) By 7th grade at the junior/senior high school, the social climate had been completely transformed by boy/girl stuff, make-up, etc. Also, the most dramatic change was that lots of kids suddenly started cussing. I don’t think anybody of any age ever wore skimpy clothing (except if you count the short skirts that were popular at the time). Of course, it was Washington State–you could get hypothermia walking between buildings.
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I, personally, dislike activities where I am the only male. Since my wife works way downtown, I used to go to the mid-day parents’ gatherings at my daughter’s school, but I was always the only man, which was one reason I stopped. (The fact that there was no point to the gatherings was also a factor.) Interestingly, when I was young, I was very prissy and didn’t like fart jokes and that sort of crude stuff. However, this didn’t mean that I would have wanted to hang out with girls–gender roles are a little more complicated than that.
My daughter similarly doesn’t like activities without other girls. She would never have signed up for an activity with just boys. Of course, now she’s 17, so the issues are a little different.
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“I, personally, dislike activities where I am the only male. ”
Ah yes, if it were possible to have survived at all if I felt that way too strongly. It took me a long time to realize that I don’t like being the only woman, either. But, there wasn’t much choice about it, unless I wanted to give up a lot of things. Unfortunately, that’s part of the reason why we have to actually encourage/support/even push the Raggirls of this world to be the only girl in the lego club, because there are too many desirable things you have to give up if you’re not willing to take that role. (Say, as opposed to giving up pointless parent — mom– gatherings).
My daughter is in 5th, and, in general doesn’t want to do anything with just boys. In some cases she would blame that on the boys (for example, they won’t pass the ball/frisbee to her, even though she’s the tallest child and the coach keeps yelling at them to pass to her). But in other cases, I have to push her, so that she doesn’t loose opportunities because the world is still male dominated.
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There is a male quilting community.
http://manquilters.ning.com/photo
In fact, there are retreats just for male quilters to get together and sew.
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Anecdata:
I don’t have brothers and I was never a mean girl, nor was any of my sisters.
A kid who was mean to my daughter in 4th grade has 2 older brothers. I often speculated that she had a bossy personality because she picked it up from being picked on by older brothers. Btw, this kid has kind of gotten over herself by now and is friends with my daughter again.
My daughter seems to be doing ok in MS.
I ran a Lego Club for a few years. Out of 20 or so kids, maximum was about 6 girls. But there was always more than 1. The biggest problem was the year I had 4th and 5th graders. The boys drove one of the 4th grade girls CRAZY. It wasn’t sexual, but I do think it was girl-boy stuff, if that makes sense. She has a brother, but he is special needs (know her mom from Sp Ed PAC).
Running off to class, didn’t want to be left out. 🙂
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Speaking of male domination, here are my kids on the subject of women’s bookstores:
http://xantippesblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/womens-bookstore.html
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Oh, one of the things I’ve noted, with 4-5 graders is that they’re older than we were when I was in those grades. My perception is that the red-shirting (especially of boys) means that the average age of boys is almost a year older than it used to be, and potentially 6 mo for girls.
So it wouldn’t surprise me if age alone would change some of the middle school environment (though I know the ages aren’t the same everywhere — my kids’ school has actually set their age at July 1st now, because they decided there was too much play in the ages).
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“My perception is that the red-shirting (especially of boys) means that the average age of boys is almost a year older than it used to be, and potentially 6 mo for girls.”
Right. It may be that they’re not just acting older–they are older.
Flunking can produce the same effect. When I was a 12-year-old 7th grader, I had a huge crush on a 15-year-old (classical profile, blue eyes, curly dark hair) who was in my class.
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“My perception is that the red-shirting (especially of boys) means that the average age of boys is almost a year older than it used to be, and potentially 6 mo for girls.”
And that is why I have a problem with red-shirting. Someone will be the youngest and someone will be the oldest and the rest will be in-between. Any academic advantage to red-shirting is lost by about age 8, but the social implications at puberty are much greater.
I can appreciate that on occasion a child would benefit from being held back. However, aren’t teachers trained to deal with a range within each age?
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Youngest Raggirl’s pre-school divided each “grade” into three classes, based on age, so that the oldest kid was only 4 months older than the youngest kid in each classroom.
I bet you could do that in most school with more than one class per grade, for K-2, for example, and both minimize the need for red-shirting by putting your immature boy in the “youngest kids” class, and minimize the advantage of red-shirting by putting your held-back boy in a class full of the oldest non-redshirted kids.
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Our school is trying to decrease age spread by setting a hard admission deadline (the school is private). If must be 5 by July 1st of the year you want to start kindergarten. They made the decision because they felt that they were advising a fair number of the summer birthdays to try again next year.
The age differential can still be more than a year, though, because of kids who join the school in first grade +, who are required to be grandfathered at their grade level.
The issue I see, looking at the kids, is that it seems like the boys are about 6 mo behind the girls, in a free floating definition of “maturity.” (including things like focus, executive skills, fine motor control, emotional skills, . . . .).
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The social issues get stronger when they’re high school freshmen and you have a 13 year old boy/girl and a 15 year old boy/girl in the same grade and social network…..
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I think the handwringing about redshirting is a problem of affluence. After all, in less affluent districts, there will be an age range, too–because students have been held back, sometimes more than once.
Most of the boys redshirted in our town were boys with summer birthdays, who would have had trouble with the longer kindergarten days. The kindergarten classroom is not as play-based as it once was, and I think many of the parents made the right choice. Our school system also encourages parents to redshirt their children when in doubt. Impulse control does improve with age, which makes it easier to teach.
In my older kids’ schools, there is a wide range in age. It does not lead to problems, or at least, no more problems than one would expect in high school. The high school freshman girl traditionally develops a junior boyfriend, if she wants one. As far as I know, most kids get a Facebook at about 13, then go on a Friending rampage. This means their social network is anyone they’ve ever met, or their friends have ever met, which includes older teens.
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I think the red-shirting issue in school should be treated like sports — that you have to enter the system according to the deadlines (which I may set at the beginning of summer). The problem with red-shirting in affluent communities the way its played now is that it becomes an arms race. I would rather deal with the real issues by having kids repeat kindergarten as needed (which in turn would mean that the issues had to be sufficiently serious, and not a jockeying for position or size).
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We’re getting some small pressure from the teacher to have our son repeat kindergarten because he is behind the rest of the class. He is also ahead of where the average kindergartener is, so we’ve ignored it.
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I’ve heard (from Jeffrey’s Cohen’s books on parenting a child on the autistic spectrum) that there is also sometimes an official extra grade between kindergarten and 1st grade for special needs children. His son was recommended for that extra grade and Cohen was unenthusiastic at first, but Cohen thinks that it was the best thing that happened to his son during his school career. (This was in NJ.)
Of course, the way kindergarten is these days, you might want to stick the extra grade between pre-K and kindergarten.
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