Boy or Girl, Truck or Doll????

Elijah is at that wonderful imagination stage in his life. All of us in the house have at one time or a hundred played cars with him or other things. I love this wonderful stage. I enjoy seeing things come to life in his mind. I try to encourage this play. He recently found one of Hannah's old Barbie's, now while it may not be cool for a boy to carry around a doll. We as parents have listened to the experts that say boys who are allowed or encouraged to play with dolls/stuffed animals develop better language skills. I think it also promotes caring and nurturing. As he cleans his "baby", tells her she is stinky and then gets a wipe and cleans her. He has her ride on the cars and sometimes even run over by the cars.

I just don't know where this label of boys with trucks and girls with dolls came from. I think it is outdated. Now I am not saying I want Elijah to run around in a dress or anything. But having been a fire fighter, EMT, and a Deputy. I guess you could say I don't believe in the stereo types. I had one guy who challenged me often when I joined the fire department and 9 times out of 10 I could out lift, run etc. against him. I thank my high school basketball coach for that. Man was he a drill instructor. But I was in good shape and had muscles. :-) Those friends from High School can think back at how much we cursed Coach Cregor at the time. But all that hard work did pay off.

Granted now I couldn't do half of what I did then. I still have some strength and got a chance to prove so when Ron and I moved and it was a wench, Him and myself loading his fully loaded tool box from hedoublehockeysticks.

My point is why? Why can we all not be free to just be who we are and do what we love. Isn't that what America is about? Freedom? This maybe freedom on the most basic level. And probably not what our Founding Fathers was thinking of. But it is still a freedom none the less.

So what do you think. Do you let your boys play with dolls? Or your girls play with trucks? Do you encourage it? Or just let them if they ask?