This week, I’m focusing on helping you make this new school year more inclusive and balanced. On Tuesday, we talked about helping all kinds of families feel welcome in a classroom. Today I’m diving deeper into the problem of rigid gender ideas at school and looking at what you can do to help make your child’s classroom more comfortable for kids with all kinds of gender identities and preferences.
Sociologists and child psychologists like Judy Chu have observed that kids start to change their behaviour from the age of 5 to fit in with the gender norms of their classmates. Even if they play with ‘cross-gender’ toys at home (by this I mean toys marketed predominantly towards boys or girls, like baby dolls or dump trucks), kids tend to shun these toys or games in school settings where they may get teased or excluded from play by more dominant, ‘rule following’ kids. Teachers may reinforce this behaviour because of unconscious, implicit ideas they have about what boys and girls are like - some of which may be formed by seeing many different children act out the same scenarios every year. Boys and girls are put into separate teams, or allowed to self-segregate during playtime, and as it becomes apparent to young children that gender is the main way we classify people, they align their play and their physical expressions with the group they are expected to be a part of.
Whether your child is a gender nonconformist or someone who fits into the ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ group quite easily, they are being affected by the constant background noise of gender stereotypes. Any interests or curiosities they have that fall outside the bounds of what’s expected for boys or girls will usually give way to interests that are more in line with society’s view of how girls and boys behave.
For kids whose sense of gender is much more fluid, the experience of having to fit themselves into narrowly drawn boxes can be alienating and embarrassing. So how can we help?
Tips for resisting gender stereotypes at school:
Speak to your child’s school about its uniform policy. Are girls allowed to wear trousers, and are boys allowed to wear skirts? If not, why not? Cite equalities legislation if necessary.
If you are able, observe the gender-normalizing pressure your child is under. Do all the boys have short hair? Do all the girls wear shoes with decorative features? How do the children group themselves together during free time? Address whatever you see directly with your child, through book-based discussion or family chats. Remind them that there are many boys and men who have long hair, many women who have short hair, many men who wear skirts and women who wear trousers.
Talk to your child’s teacher about gender pronouns and request that they use non-gendered pronouns like ‘they’ as well as gendered pronouns when they teach lessons or tell stories. You may want to recommend a book like They/He/She/Me by Maya Gonzalez as a way to start this conversation.
Speak out about every instance of gender stereotyped behaviour: games that are ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls,’ stories that reinforce gender norms, segregation of children into ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ teams which compete against one another, or create a sense of group allegiance.
Share any comments your child receives or overhears that shame, bully, or tease a child based on their gender expression with the teacher. Ask him or her to make a plan about addressing gender-based bullying in the classroom.
If your child has requested to wear a ‘cross-gender’ uniform, or use a pronoun or name that’s different from what the teacher may expect based on the register, make an appointment to discuss this before the term starts so that you can work together to make the classroom a place that is welcoming and comfortable for your child. You may request that the teacher checks in with your regularly to assure you that your child is being treated kindly and equally by the other children.
Some kids are very clearly identified with one gender and parents do not expect this to change; others are working to see where they fit into our society’s expectations of boys and girls. All children change over time. The best gift we can give children is the space to explore how they understand themselves to fit into our culture without any need to ‘stay the course’ or prove that they are who they say they are. If a child wants to use one set of pronouns for a term and then changes their mind and wants to use another, this is absolutely fine and normal. If our son wants to wear a skirt to school, we don’t need to jump to any conclusions about whether or not he really wants to be a girl (do we do this when our daughters want to wear trousers?). We can follow the child where they are at, and show them that we respect their process of getting to know how they fit into our world by listening to the requests they are making about their own body and self-expression.
I have two remaining discounted £62 mentoring spaces left - these will disappear at the end of August! I work with families on a one to one basis to help you unpick parenting challenges like resisting gender stereotypes in your child’s classroom or creating an inclusive, feminist family culture. 60-minute calls with wraparound support are usually £105. Find out more here: Work with Me.