Proud Princess

Recently my JK/SKs and I engaged in out first 'gender specification' conversation, and I've been so excited to share it with you! It came about completely organically, and it's pure coincidence that I'd spent time learning about how to address kids on such 'rainbow families' topics in a recent ECE conference. 

My class and I had crossed into our 'school age' classroom during our after school program, and we were lining up to play outside (our only direct door is in the SA room) when one of our SA student's babysitters came in to pick her up. He is gay, and in a way that is a little more obvious. The SA student has mentioned, 'yea, that's my gay babysitter', and we've never avoided the topic with the other kids, but it's also never been asked about. 

This afternoon he came in very dressed up, and one of my JKs said, 'you look like a girl!' An SK agreed, 'yea, you always look like a girl!' They weren't saying so in a mean way, they thought it was funny though. The moment caught me so off guard though, because we'd run into him at the door many times before, so blurted out something about 'sometimes boys can be even prettier then girls', joking around a little myself. I'm so thankful that he took the whole situation in stride, because I felt so guilty just being witness to my kids' behavior, even though I know it wasn't coming from a homophobic place. 

In the time it took to walk out to our designated play area outside, I had collected my thoughts and called everyone over to sit down. This is usually what we do when there has been some negative behavior that we want the whole class to learn from vs singling out one child. Before now we've had many 'tattle tailing' chats!

I started out by saying, 'so in the cubby room we started making some comments that maybe weren't the BEST choice,' and they knew exactly what I was talking about. I asked why they thought he looked like a girl. 'He had diamond earrings...he was dressed fancy...he had lip gloss!' Then I asked 'what could be have done to look more like a boy?' They suggested he not wear earrings or lip gloss, and dress in just plain jeans. So then we collectively realized that I was not wearing earrings, and I was not wearing lip gloss, and I had just plain jeans on, BUT that didn't make me look more like a boy!

They were a little shocked, like we'd stumbled across some grand revelation. Especially when I related his lip gloss, to all of our nail painting! They already knew that boys were allowed to get their nails painted with the girls, whenever Miss Jorja has time, so being able to show a parallel between nail polish and earrings etc, was great. 

We ended the conversation with a little brainstorming on what we could say the next time we see this babysitter. I think he would be more then flattered to hear, 'you look very shiny today!'