I Have One Boy and One Girl, and None of the Advice I Got Was Right
I was folding mismatched socks last night after the kids passed out watching Minecraft videos, when my neighbor texted me. She’s pregnant with her second, first is a 4-year-old boy, this one’s a girl. She said all her cousins and coworkers have been dumping advice on her, and she wanted the real deal from someone who’s already living it with one of each. I stared at my phone for 20 minutes with my thumb hovering over the keyboard, because I couldn’t think of a single neat, helpful thing to say that wasn’t just… garbage I picked up from other people before I had kids.
Before I had my daughter, after my son, everyone had something to say. The old cashier at the grocery store patted my belly and said, “Aren’t you excited for your little princess? Boys are just wild heathens, girls are your sweet babies.” Another mom at a playgroup said, “Just treat ’em the same! Gender doesn’t matter, don’t make a big deal out of it, everything will be fine.” Both of those were wrong, in their own ways.
Let me give you the small stuff no one talks about. I thought I’d get to buy all those frilly little dresses for my girl, the ones with the tulle and the sparkles that I stared at online when I was pregnant. Turns out she won’t wear anything that’s not my son’s old dinosaur hand-me-down leggings and stained t-shirts. She keeps three dead beetles and a dismembered Barbie head in a mason jar on her windowsill, and she once tackled my son into a bush because he ate the last strawberry pop-tart that was supposed to be hers. My son, 10 now, still cries at the end of Up every single time we rewatch it, he wants to hold my hand when we walk to the bus stop if it’s raining, and he has a secret stash of glittery hair clips my daughter got for her birthday hidden in his sock drawer. He only wears them around the house, and panics if someone knocks on the door and shoves them under his mattress before anyone can see. I pretend not to notice. That’s just how it is.
I try so hard not to buy into all the stereotypes, I really do. But I still catch myself leaning into them without thinking, and that’s the part no one tells you. Last month, my daughter climbed the big oak tree in our front yard, and I almost yelled “Be careful! You’ll fall!” before I stopped myself. When my son climbed that same tree at that exact same age, I just stood there on the porch sipping coffee and didn’t say a word. That’s not because I thought my son was a better climber. It’s just all that garbage that seeps into your head without you asking for it. I caught myself, changed my tune, and yelled “Go higher! If you fall just yell for me!” and that was that. I don’t beat myself up for it anymore, that’s the first real bit of insight I have. You don’t have to be perfect at unlearning all the dumb stuff. You just have to notice it when it happens.
Another thing: everyone acts like a boy and a girl get along better than two same-gender kids, that they’re not as competitive. That’s a lie. My two fight over everything. They fought for 40 minutes yesterday over who got the last blue Gatorade. They fought last week over who got to sit next to me on the couch. They even fought over who got to flush the toilet once, I swear. And then 10 minutes after the worst screaming match I’ve heard all month, they’re in the backyard together building a terrible lopsided fort out of old cardboard boxes, sharing stolen cookies from the pantry, and covering for each other when I ask who drew on the wall with permanent marker.
When my son turned 9, he told me he wanted a Lego birthday party and a unicorn piñata. I almost automatically said “They have Lego piñatas, let’s get one of those” before I stopped. It didn’t matter that unicorns are “for girls” and Lego is “for boys” – it mattered that my son wanted a unicorn piñata. I got the unicorn, all the kids hit it with a bat, candy went everywhere, no one cared except me, because I was the one carrying all the stupid labels around.
Last month, my son wanted to sign up for ballet, and my daughter wanted to play tackle football. We signed them both up. We got the side-eye from a couple of other parents, my son came home crying one day because a kid on the playground called him a girl for doing ballet, and that sucked. But we sat on the couch with him and ate ice cream, and we told him he can do whatever feels fun, and anyone who says different is just boring. That’s all you can do, right? You don’t have to give a big speech to the whole school, you just have to have your kid’s back when it hurts.
I used to think having one of each would mean I’d be some kind of expert on gender and kids, but it just made me realize how little any of us know. Most days I’m just flying by the seat of my pants, same as every other parent. I still bought my daughter a set of scented markers for her birthday last month and my son a remote control car without asking either of them what they wanted, and turns out she wanted the remote control car and he wanted the markers. I exchanged them, no big deal, but it just goes to show the dumb stuff still creeps in, even when you’re trying not to let it.
I finally texted my neighbor back 20 minutes later, after I finished folding all those socks. I didn’t send her a list of tips or anything. I just said none of the advice you get is going to fit, probably. They’re not opposite just because one’s a boy and one’s a girl, and they’re not interchangeable either. They’re just two little people who are going to surprise you every single day, and you’re going to mess up a lot, and that’s okay. I told her if she wants to come over next Friday after our kids go to bed, we can drink cheap wine and complain about how much laundry there is, and we don’t have to talk about parenting at all if she doesn’t want to.
She texted back and said yes. That’s good enough for me. (Word count: 1128)
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