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happymama
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| Posted: April 10 2008 at 1:29pm | IP Logged
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Well, I'll throw this very wide topic out there and hopefully as the months go by, some of you will toss me some bits of wisdom.
In about 14 weeks I'm due to deliver our first daughter. I'm excited, of course, but also nervous. I feel like I understand "all about boys" by now, well, little ones at least.
My question is 2-fold: how do I incorporate a daughter into the world of little boys? And what's important when it comes to teaching a girl about how to be, you know, feminine and womanly in all the right ways?
I was a tomboy/feminist growing up. Never wanted to get married or have babies (until I met dh at 22!) I don't wear dresses except to things like weddings.
Do I let my daughter wrestle with her brothers? Does she get to play rough games of tag football with them some day? Can she wear a lot of their hand-me-downs? Can she share a bedroom with them?
I know all these questions sound silly... and I'll look back at them and laugh some day. But what are your bits of wisdom?
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teachingmyown
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| Posted: April 10 2008 at 4:00pm | IP Logged
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Well as the only sister of 6 brothers, and the mom of 5 girls and 3 boys, I will give this a try.
First of all, I think the whole girly vs tomboy thing is inborn. I have five girls, of couple of girly girls and one real tomboy and then two in between. So, I don't think you can do much about this.
She can wear some hand-me-downs, but you'll probably want to be buying cute girly stuff anyway.(And people will inevitably pass you all their girl clothes!) Wrestling is okay up to a point. I think they hit an age when it becomes inappropriate, 10 or so, maybe. One thing I emphasize to my boys is that they are to be protectors of girls. This requires a certain amount of gentleness and caution even when rough-housing. But boys and girls need that physical outlet. I played plenty of games of smear the... with my brothers. I was pretty tomboy-ish myself.
I have had boys and girls room together at different times. For the first decade, it really isn't a big deal. My girls are VERY into modesty, though, so even at 8 and 6 they would not want their brother in their room. My 16 yr old son thinks nothing of walking in to the bathroom when I am bathing the little girls, but they are mortified! 
Don't worry, as she grows it will become natural. I always thought that I would be a mom of boys and here I am with 5 daughters! Your daughter will be who she is and you'll do a great job guiding her. 
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In Christ,
Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
Remembering Today
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Willa
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| Posted: April 10 2008 at 8:40pm | IP Logged
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I would agree with Molly. I have 6 boys and 1 girl. The girl is the thirdborn.
I was a bit of a tomboy myself (2 younger brothers, no sisters) but my daughter was a girly-girl from Day One. My task was just to sympathize and let her develop that way!
She went through a brief tomboyish time when she was about nine. Her best friend was her slightly older brother and they wanted to be Jedi Knights so she got her hair cut short and wore boys' clothes. God provided her with some very feminine girl-friends (whose mom is on this board  and that validated her interest in feminine things.
They shared bedrooms when they were little (we lived in a 2 bedroom house until she was about six and then in a rental for another year) so I think she was about seven when she got her own room. Similar to MOlly's girls about the modesty in dressing etc.
You will get all KINDS of girl clothes I am sure! Plus, it really does seem to be more fun dressing up a girl. I used to dress my daughter in dresses or tunics and leggings when she was little, so she could move freely and still look feminine. That was just how we did it --- we lived in a cold climate (Oregon). I sewed quite a bit for her. You will have fun and it will be nice for your boys too, to have a sister -- congrats!
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Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
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LisaR
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| Posted: April 10 2008 at 9:37pm | IP Logged
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Sara, I am STILL trying to figure this girl thing out!! It was important to Tim that Maria have her own room, and it just worked out that way, as we have 2 boys each in the two other rooms. She DOES still end up running into our bedroom in the middle of the night to co-sleep about 3x per week, or she will go to Dominic's bottom bunk.
She never wore a single hand me down from the boys, but LOTS of hand me downs from girls we know in St Therese, etc. 
She wrestles and is rough and tumble with the boys, we feel like our work is more along the lines of how to teach our boys to treat a girl/lady, so that is what we focus on.
She wears dresses often, but always with capris/bike shorts/leggings/bloomers on underneath.
She just loves "her boys" and I know you will have so much fun with your little girl!
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Lisa
dh Tim '92
Joseph 17
Paul 14
Thomas 11
Dominic 8
Maria Gianna 5
Isaac Vincent 9/21/10! and...
many little saints in heaven!
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SallyT
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| Posted: April 11 2008 at 3:29pm | IP Logged
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While there are some things I think of as "girl behaviors" -- both my girls are way more dramatic in their emotions than my boys -- otherwise girls run the gamut, just as boys do. My oldest (now 14) was never girly-girly, just arty and free-spirited from the get-go. Forget what I thought was cute in the way of clothing -- she knew what SHE thought looked good and wanted to wear, so I kind of had to get over feeling that my little girl needed to look like the kids in the Hanna Anderssen catalog. She HATED tights, so we did the dresses-and-leggings thing for years, until she finally branched out into other things.
My youngest (now 4) IS a girly-girly-girl, so we have the tutus and the pink stuff . . . and all those leggings I saved from her sister? No way, we wear tights . . . I was never a girly girl, so after having had the Artiste as a first daughter, I was taken by surprise by this one, but she is her own (usually) delightful self. She's just come in with a handful of worms which she and her 5yo brother, her best friend, have been digging up, so clearly "girly" doesn't mean you don't like worms and dirt, necessarily.
All my kids have shared rooms at various times -- my oldest daughter and son shared from the time he was born until they were 9 and 5. My littles shared from the time they were 2 and 1 until about a year ago, when I moved the boys in together. Now the boys share, but the girls have their own rooms -- not exactly fair, but it does keep a certain amount of peace in our house.
I think the biggest thing for me in having daughters has been to learn to detach myself somewhat -- not to BE detached from them, but not to be overly ego-invested in them, either, in a way that it's maybe tempting to be with a child of your own "kind." Maybe I'm reacting to my own mother's over-investment in me -- she caught the feminist bug in the 1970s and wanted me to be something like an engineer (ha -- if you knew me, you would know that it is to laugh), because that kind of thing hadn't been available to her and other women of her generation, blah blah blah, and so it was like a personal betrayal when I turned out not to be good at math. So I'm probably hypersensitive to the allure of projecting all those frustrated desires and wishes about one's own life onto some unsuspecting child. But I think it can be easy for a mother to care more what her daughter looks like, or acts like in the sense of wanting the daughter to be like whatever the mother wishes she had been . . . if that makes any sense. (it's the same kind of things some fathers do with sons, wanting the son to play football because Dad didn't make the team, or did . . . )
I dunno, though, I love having my daughters. The boys are great, and in some ways our relationships are more straightforward, but it is just so NICE to have some girls around . . . they are lovely and wonderful and fun in their own way.
Congratulations, and enjoy your little girl.
Sally
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: April 11 2008 at 7:19pm | IP Logged
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Oh my.. don't worry about that.. her own personality will lead you much better than anything else..
I have 4 girls and not a match of personality amoung them.
They can be tough as boys, and still want to wear frilly things.
my girls are playing boys' lacrosse currently (no girls' team available).. and they are less physical than the boys (they're also smaller in stature) but not any less aggressive. But they want their lacrosse sticks to be "pretty" Which is purple to one, and yellows and bright colors to another and now blue to one (a few months ago to be pretty it had to be green, preferably combined with pink) 
But some of their favorite activities at home are tea parties and dress up.
And they need just as much active play as the boys do.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: how to raise a daughter?!
