Gender Bending Toys

This is the toy that came with a Subway kids' meal the other day.


Just a cheap little plastic box with a chihuahua on the front.


No problem (other than it was probably made in China with the main ingredient of lead)...


Except the color.


Pink.


This was the toy Dmitri got with his Subway meal while Zoe was at her birthday party. When Daddy picked up the kids' meal, he asked the woman behind the counter when she went to put the toy in the bag, since she hadn't yet asked: "Does it matter if it's for a boy or a girl?"


She shrugged. "No."


No. Pink chihuahua boxes. That's what boys love, right?


Not so much. He traded it to his sister for a Starburst and a Fundip from her party bag. Both of them thought it a pretty good trade.


I've had four kids - two boys, two girls - and in my admittedly anecdotal experience, the whole feminist idea of gender-neutral toys sucks. We have a play kitchen (and no, it isn't pink) but it's mostly the girl who plays with it. We have Legos. But it's mostly the boy who plays with them.


Granted, Michael and I have pretty traditional roles in our marriage - I stay home, Daddy works. But Daddy also cooks. And Mommy programs the VCR and the TiVo. But the older and the younger kids have gravitated toward pretty polarized gender toys. And not because that's all they were given, either. Especially when they were young, we provided lots of neutral (wooden) toys to play with. Dmitri made weapons out of them. Zoe carried them around and rocked them and talked to them.


I wouldn't discourage a boy from playing with Barbies or a girl from playing with Hot Wheels. But on the other hand, I've never had to. It just doesn't seem to interest them. I remember trying with the older kids. Buying a doll for Blake. Cars for Autumn. They'd just switch. I still remember the year I bought Autumn an African-American Barbie. She looked at me like I had five heads.


I understand not wanting to reinforce stereotypical gender roles. But I also know that I won't go out of my way anymore to avoid natural gender inclinations, either. Ultimately, it's an exercise in futility. It would be like teaching my daughter to pee standing up. I could... but why would I?

Christmas Freedom

We have no credit card debt.

It's mostly thanks to circumstance. We have no credit cards, except one that is actually a debit/credit card. We put money on it when we need to. We use it for Internet purchases.

The fact we have no credit cards is thanks to the bankruptcy we had to declare after Michael nearly died from flesh-eating bacteria three days before our insurance kicked in... (wish we'd been in time for Michael Moore's Sicko! Bet he would have loved that story!)



But the result of our financial nightmare is a sort of freedom that, at least statistically, most Americans don't have. We have no debt. No mortgage, no credit cards. Which means, if we can't afford it, we don't buy it. There's no such thing as living beyond our means.


The littles got way too many electronic toys from Grandma this year to suit me - in spite of all the lead warnings... *sigh* They got (mostly) educational, wooden toys from mom and dad and "Santa." Already, one of the electric guitars that Grandma got them has fizzled out. I hate the thought of boxing it up and shipping it back to return it. What a pain. She also gave us a ton of batteries to go with all the noisy electronic toys that was akin to carrying a bag of anvils home.


But it's actually quite gratifying to know that everything they opened from Santa and Mom and Dad on Christmas morning is already paid for. And will probably last a lot longer than the plastic noisemakers Grandma will be paying on until next Christmas and beyond. Why didn't we live like this before? When we had credit cards, we used them. Boy, did we use them! Now that there aren't credit cards to use, we simply adjusted to our newfound poverty - which is actually just reality. We make what we make, we buy what we can afford. Period.


Doing it this way requires planning, and thinking ahead, and keeping a budget, and really considering what you're buying and why and how long it will last. It makes impulsive shopping a thing of the past. Every purchase is carefully considered and weighed before it's made. And in the end, the kids didn't feel deprived. And we're not broke. And I don't have a load of cheap Wal-Mart toys that I'll be throwing away in a month.


Now if I can just get Grandma to stop the insanity...


what do you think are the odds? :)

I'm Going In...

Today is the annual cleaning of the kids' rooms and clearing out old toys to make way for new ones at Christmas. I hate this day. Almost more than I hate going to the dentist for a root canal. Not only do I get to find all sorts of things I certainly would have enjoyed staying in denial about - like silly putty embedded into the rug, a child's name written thirty times behind the toybox, or one (yes, just one--where's the other one? "I don't know...") of my grandmother's earrings--I also have to deal with the plaintive cries of children begging, "No! Don't throw that away!"

I don't understand why toy makers insist on making toys with such small parts for children. Or why my mother-in-law insists on buying them. When they were babies, I made a rule: no plastic or noisy/electronic toys. It worked great for the first three or four years. We had wooden cars and cloth dolls and a wooden kitchen set and lots of Haba and Melissa and Doug toys. It was a Waldorf/Montessori heaven.

Then, the kids got old enough to start asking for the things they saw on TV. And while I limited TV watching, they still managed to find stuff they wanted--and told grandma all about it. She couldn't resist, of course, and suddenly I had plastic Transformers and Dora the Explorer toys coming out of my ears. Great. Just great.

I'm almost glad that this whole lead-toys thing has come about, because now I have a wonderful excuse to reinstate my rule. "No plastic or electronic/noisy toys!" Not that Melissa and Doug stuff or Haba stuff isn't made in China. It actually is, sadly enough. But the good news is they do frequent inspections of their plants and guarantee their toys. And while I'd rather invest in local toymakers if I could, I'm happy to point grandma to lead-free toys that won't clutter up the kids' rooms so much and make strange, ghost-like noises at two in the morning when the batteries start running out.

So I'm off to brave the wilds of the childrens' rooms to discover disasters no mother should ever have to face, I'm sure. I have a feeling I may find the Krazy Glue that came up missing last week. And the two packs of cherry Kool-Aid that mysteriously disappeared. Wish me luck... I'm going in!