One Son, One Daughter: When I Realized I Was Raising Them Differently (And What Small Changes I’m Making)
It was 7 p.m. at Target, the week before school started, and my feet ached. I’d already grabbed notebooks, glue sticks, and two pairs of sneakers, and I was ready to check out. My 11-year-old son Leo flipped over the pair I’d set in the cart—plain black, thick sole, good for climbing trees and getting scuffed on the playground—and frowned. “I told you I wanted the blue light-up ones,” he said. I opened my mouth to say they were too childish, before I realized: I’d picked black for him without asking, just like I’d picked pink glitter for my 8-year-old daughter Mia. Then Mia leaned over, picked up the other plain black pair, and said, “Can I swap mine for this? Pink gives me a headache anyway.” That’s when it hit me: I was raising them differently, without even meaning to.
After that, I started noticing all the other tiny, automatic moments I’d missed before. At the playground two weeks later, Leo headed for the 10-foot rock wall that most kids his age won’t try. I leaned against the fence, checked my phone, and waited for him to reach the top. When Mia turned toward the 4-foot beginner wall right next to it, I was already pushing off the fence, ready to run over and spot her, before I stopped mid-step. Why? She climbs that wall every single time we come. I’d never thought twice about Leo going higher alone, but I assumed Mia needed help before she even asked.
Another example stuck with me: when Leo fell off his bike a month after that Target trip, he scraped his knee pretty bad. I said “Shake it off, you’re okay” before I even leaned down to look at it. When Mia tripped over the curb the next day, I was down on my knees dabbing at her elbow before she even shed a tear. Both of them just looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Leo said, “Mom, my knee’s bleeding, can I get a band-aid?” Mia said, “I’m fine, I just dropped my popsicle.”
I’d always prided myself on not being that parent. I bought both of them trucks and dolls, I turned down the “pink for girls blue for boys” birthday decorations, I thought I was doing everything right. But the thing no one talks about is that the real differences aren’t in the toys or the clothes. They’re in the tiny, split-second reactions you don’t even think about. I didn’t set out to teach Leo that he can’t be soft, or Mia that she can’t be tough. I just absorbed all those unspoken rules growing up, and they came out of me without me noticing.
I started with one small habit to catch myself, something that takes five seconds tops before I react. It’s a three-part check I do in my head: First, would I do or say this exact thing if the kid standing in front of me was my other child? Second, what does this kid actually need right now, not what I think a boy or girl their age should need? Third, am I stepping in because they asked for help, or because I assume they can’t do it alone? Most of the time, the answer is that I’m acting on an old assumption, not what’s actually in front of me.
That small check led to other concrete changes. I redid our chore chart, for example. I used to automatically ask Mia to help me fold laundry and set the table, and Leo to take out the trash and carry the heavy grocery bags in. Now all the chores are written on slips of paper in a jar, and everyone draws a new turn every week, no exceptions. Turns out Leo hates taking out the stinky garbage, but he’s actually really good at folding fitted sheets, and he likes helping me sort socks by pattern. Mia always volunteers to carry the biggest grocery bags in because she says it makes her feel stronger than Dad. I never would have known that if I’d kept assigning them the “right” chores for their gender.
I also stopped leaning on lazy gendered labels when I talk about their good traits. I used to say all the time “Leo’s my tough boy” and “Mia’s my sweet girl.” Now I just name what I actually see. If Leo sits for an hour helping his little cousin build a wobbly block tower, I say that was patient and kind of him. If Mia climbs all the way to the top of the rock wall and yells down to me, I say that was really brave. No generic boxes, just specific observations.
I still mess up, all the time. Last week, Leo came home from school and said his best friend moved across the country, and his voice cracked. Before I could stop myself, I said “Want to go shoot some hoops to get your mind off it?” That’s what I always default to when he’s upset. If Mia had said the same thing, I would have sat down on the couch with her and made hot cocoa and talked about it for 20 minutes. I caught myself mid-sentence, and backtracked: “Actually, do you want to talk about it first, or shoot hoops?” He sat down on the couch and cried for 10 minutes about missing his friend, and I would have never let him do that if I hadn’t caught myself.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop catching myself. We all carry around these unspoken ideas about what boys and girls should be, and they don’t just disappear because you decide they should. But these small five-second checks, these tiny changes to how I react and what I ask of them, that’s doable. Last week, Leo wore his blue light-up sneakers to the first day of school, and Mia wore her plain black ones. They both walked in holding their new backpacks, grinning, and no one commented except me, standing in the pickup line later, thinking about how much difference one small moment of noticing can make. I’m still learning, and that’s okay.
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