No Monsters/Trucks/Skulls Please

My grandson loves his footsie pajamas.  They are the all in one pajama with the enclosed feet – the sort that babies wear.  During winter it is not unusual for him to spend a number of days a week in his pajamas.  Snug and comfortable they are ideal winter wear for the sub-zero temperatures that make the house feel as if we are once again living in South Africa.  It has become a tradition that each Christmas his Papa and I buy him new footsie pajamas. This last Christmas I went to the stores to buy him two pairs and found – nothing!  There must have been a mad rush by grandparents to buy their grandsons footsies because almost none of the stores had any in his size. 

If our little guy was a size 4T I could have got him a suitable pair but at 4 years old he is as tall as a 6 year old and there were no 6 year old pajamas available.   Correction - there were some but none that I wanted to purchase. The reason was simple: who wants to kiss a grandchild good night with them wearing pajamas covered in skulls and army camouflage?  Or trucks, the armed forces, car racing, football?  In the girl section there were the pretty colours and non-violent representation of life.  Why, I wonder, do we need to assume that boys need to have these things thrust in their faces from the tender age of three plus.  Is there such a reduction in testosterone in the average boy that we need to remind them that they are male and therefore long for clothing that depicts only the violent aspects of modern life?  Will their testosterone disappear if they are offered clothing that has … graphic designed flowers? Boats? Wildlife?  Colours that is not just blue and green, black and white, red?  Perhaps boys would like to be offered clothing that is not telling them that they need to ‘man-up’ at age five.  Has any considered the possibility that most boys will not become soldiers/truck drivers/footballers?  The Dad that thinks that his son needs to wear pajamas with characters that encourage what Dad thinks of as manly behaviour should take a good look at himself.  

Sons come in as great a variety as do daughters.  A little boy who loves watching a movie with fairies in it and finds a mouse detective movie to dark and frightening is also a little boy who bashes over the tower his sister just built.  The boy who enjoys sitting and watching birds at the feeder and wants to see if he can get a chickadee to sit on his hand is also the boy who looks at a pig and talks about eating pork.  Children are complex people.  They are kind one moment and screaming the next.  They require socialisation in order to be fully functioning members of society but we, the adults, need to realise that they are not ourselves in a smaller form.  They are new, excited, curious, often contrary personalities discovering who they are.  What they should be is encouraged to explore their indentity rather than being directed towards what adults have decided is the path they should take in order to fit into society as they see it.  

That does not mean that I am advocating allowing children to not be guided by parents and other adults but I do think that perhaps what we need as a society are children who are able to accept that the boy who wears the shirt with birds on it is not being odd.  He is just a boy who thinks birds are lovely creatures and wants to be able to look down at his shirt and see them in all their glory.  If the child who wears camouflage trousers can be seen as normal than the child who wears bright yellow and orange  trousers with musical notes on them should also be regarded as normal.  

Bullying has reached endemic proportions in this country.  It is believed that it has resulted in a number of the awful mass murders over the past two decades.  People want answers.  They want solutions.  I do not think that altering the clothing choices to boys and girls (after all there must be girls who love trucks/monsters/football) will suddenly prevent such atrocities but they may make children start to accept all the wonderful differences that celebrate the fact that each and every one of us arrives with amazing possibilities as babies and should be allowed to develop our personalities in ways that celebrate life.  

Clothing might seem a stupid place to start but I think that it does reflect who we expect our children to be and by default who we are.  Right now I am alarmed at the evidence that points towards a new rigidity in our definition of gender.  It does not appear that boys are given enough choice in many ways.  If we keep telling boys that they need to prove themselves as men then we are failing them.  

So my beautiful, sensitive, bouncing, funny, sometimes loud, sometimes naughty, artistic, sporting grandson will be given choices.  To deny him that is to define him before he even understands who he is.  

We all end up being defined in so many ways and placed in little boxes that we never wanted that restrict us.  I hope that my grandchildren have the wisdom and courage to construct their own definitions that celebrate themselves.