I Have One Son and One Daughter: When I Realized I Was Raising Them Differently Without Meaning To
Last month I stood in the kids’ shoe department at Target, holding two pairs of sneakers. My 10-year-old son, Jax, was bouncing off the athletic wear display, begging for the pair with motion-activated LED soles that flash neon blue when you walk. My 8-year-old daughter, Mia, was hovering by the plain back wall, twisting the hem of her sweatshirt, saying she “didn’t mind” any of the neutral pairs I’d picked out. I was halfway through opening my mouth to tell Jax to quit bouncing and keep his voice down when I froze. I realized I hadn’t once told Mia to speak up and pick what she actually wanted. I’d just assumed her “I don’t care” was fine.
That small moment made me start looking for other patterns, and once I saw them, I couldn’t unsee them. A week before shoe shopping, Jax tripped over the curb on our walk to the bus stop, scraped his palm pretty badly on the gravel. I brushed the dirt off, told him he was fine, and he walked off holding my hand but never said it hurt. Three days later, Mia tripped over that exact same curb and scraped her knee. I gasped, pulled her onto my lap, kissed the scrape, and grabbed a band-aid out of my purse before she even asked for one. I didn’t think twice about my different reactions until that day at Target, when the dots started connecting.
Two weeks later, at the neighborhood park, Jax got into a shoving match with another boy over who got to go down the slide first. I leaned back against the picnic table and said to my husband, “They’ll sort it out, let them be.” A month earlier, when Mia got into a disagreement over a chalk drawing with another girl, I’d been over there in 10 seconds, helping them talk through their feelings before things even got heated. My husband nudged me and said, “You would’ve jumped in if that was Mia, wouldn’t you?” That’s when it fully hit me: I was raising them differently, not because I wanted to, but because of tiny, automatic habits I’d picked up without even noticing.
I went into parenting two kids determined that gender wouldn’t change how I treated them. Same chores, same allowances, same expectations for grades and kindness. But these tiny, split-second responses add up faster than you realize. I started seeing the small impacts already: Jax never comes to me when he’s upset. He’d rather hide in his room than tell me he had a bad day at school, or that another kid was mean to him. Mia never tells me what she wants. She’ll go to the movie Jax wants, eat the ice cream flavor Jax likes, even if I can tell she’d rather have something else. It’s not that either of them is unhappy, it’s just that these little habits I had pushed them into those spots without me ever meaning to.
Changing it didn’t take big, expensive overhauls or complicated therapy work. It just took small, specific changes I try to remember every day. First, when either kid says “I don’t care”, I make them pick anyway. I use the same line every time: “What’s the first thing you liked when you saw it? That’s usually what you actually want.” It takes 10 extra seconds, and it’s gotten Mia to speak up more in the past couple of months. Second, when someone gets hurt or upset, I ask them what they need, instead of assuming based on gender. I don’t automatically tell my son to shake it off, or automatically hug my daughter. I just say, “Do you want a minute alone, a hug, or help fixing this?” That gives them control, and it’s changed things – Jax has asked me for hugs three times in the past month when he was upset, which he almost never did before.
Third, when they have a conflict with another kid, I wait 30 seconds before stepping in, no matter who it is. If they’re working it out, I stay back. If someone gets hurt or they’re stuck, I step in. Same rule for both. I also started paying attention to what I praise them for. I used to praise Jax mostly for winning and trying hard at sports, and Mia for being nice and sharing. Now I make a point to praise Jax when he’s patient helping his sister build her Lego set, and praise Mia when she hits a home run at t-ball. It’s a small shift, but I’ve noticed Mia raising her hand to lead games at play dates now, which she never did before.
I still mess up. Last week, Jax cried after he lost his favorite baseball card, and my first thought was “it’s okay, we can get another one, don’t cry” before I caught myself. I sat down on the floor with him and let him cry, and it was fine, but I still have those automatic responses. It’s not something I’ll ever fix completely, I think. It’s just the stuff we pick up from growing up, that seeps into how you parent before you notice. But just noticing those little differences, and making small changes, has made both kids more comfortable saying what they need. I don’t need to raise them “the same” – I just need to raise them as they are, not who I think a boy or a girl should be. That’s the part I’m still working on, one shoe purchase and one scraped knee at a time.
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