so what's the thought about young kids who wants to run with a pack of kids of the opposite gender.

say, a girl who wants to always hang around a group of boys ... or a boy who wants to always hang around a group of girls

and otherwise the kid in question seems to be totally mainstream orientation, but just happens to be one of the few kids in their class who wants to associate with a group composed of the other gender?

I'm *not* thinking it might be some early expression of homosexuality. what i wonder is if it might socially impair their ability to form meaningful same-sex friendships later in life.

10/18/2010 4:07:12 PM

haters gon' hate

10/18/2010 4:10:35 PM

In pre-school there was a kid who hung out with all the girls and would play dolls and make up with them while the other gentlemen and myself would run around with stick guns and throw rock grenades.

By 6th he was making centerpieces and lip synching to ace of base in the hallway and by 11th grade he was fully out. sure its is entirely anecdotal, but, i wouldn't necessarily discount it either.

10/18/2010 4:11:27 PM

Girls who hang around boys tend to grow up to be hot.

Boys who hang around girls tend to grow up to be faggots.

This holds true like 90% of the time.

10/18/2010 4:32:18 PM

I think it all comes with how they are brought up by their parents. Keeping a strong father influence in the male's life, and a strong mother influence in the female's life usually keeps things at it should be. Although with the divorce rates these days, its typically hard to do so.

10/18/2010 4:34:45 PM

Quote :

" Keeping a strong father influence in the male's life, and a strong mother influence in the female's life usually keeps things at it should be."

How should it be, exactly?

10/18/2010 5:05:34 PM

i'm just going to let my kids hang out with whoever they want, boy or girl. i don't think it's that big of a deal.

10/18/2010 5:12:13 PM

Quote :

"lip synching to ace of base in the hallway"

Lip syncing is gay... I sang the hell out of ace of base at that age

10/18/2010 5:40:27 PM

Quote :

"How should it be, exactly?"

I think it's generally accepted that nature intends for people/animals to be heterosexual. Otherwise no species would ever survive. I am not saying homosexuality is wrong, I am simply stating that if everyone was homosexual then we would not be able to reproduce.

I am also 100% sure you are trolling here and trying to start an argument, which is pretty much what you do in every thread I see you post in.

Good day, sir.

10/18/2010 5:43:38 PM

Quote :

"i'm just going to let my kids hang out with whoever they want, boy or girl. i don't think it's that big of a deal."

yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

let me make clear that the issue is not being worried that the kid is going to turn out gay. I think homosexuality is something innate to a minority of people, and it's not something that can be helped or changed.

But I do wonder if an otherwise hetero-appearing kid, if always buddying around with a pack opposite-sex kids will impact their ability to form and maintain meaningful same-sex friendships. and if so, would it make a difference between really young kids like 1st grade or older kids like 5th grade.

I'm asking because we have some friends whose 6 yo is friends with my son, and they've become aware their son always hangs out with a group of girls at his school.

The kid is otherwise an average, athletic and non-effeminate boy, but his dad thinks hanging with a pack of girls will hurt him socially. His mom says its no big deal and to let him sort it out on his own and that 6 years old is too young to get worried about it.

I'm sort of inclined to agree with the mom, but i can also see why the dad is worried. If it were my kid, i might think the same thing.





[Edited on October 18, 2010 at 5:58 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2010 5:50:04 PM

I am going to side with the mother. He's only six years old and he IS going to sort it out on his own. It's not an issue that I would worry about. And at that age, you never know what the motivation is behind friendships and they change over night. More likely than not, he'll soon figure out that girls are icky and migrate to playing with the boys. The key thing is that the child CAN and IS friends with boys. You just mentioned that he's friends with your kid. If he avoided boys and wouldn't play with boys, I might be inclined to worry, but that is not the case. Right now, he's just popular with the girls.

Since you mentioned the child was athletic, I'd tell the father to enroll the child in sports. If he's really concerned that his kid is going to be hampered socially, athletic teams are a great way to help a child make friends.

10/18/2010 6:16:22 PM

yeah, they take him to soccer and he's always kicking balls around and stuff like that with my kid.

i'm almost persuaded by your argument. it does seem too young to worry about kids getting fixed social patterns down at this young age.

but on the other hand, patterns start forming, and I've seen cliques already forming at my kid's school, and then behaviors get reinforced ... and so on.

10/18/2010 6:26:07 PM

I never avoided girls as a child. I always got stuck with them because i was actually civil.

Am I ~....well I dont think so. Hahahah

10/18/2010 6:27:20 PM

Yeah, but for all we know the kid is hanging out with the girls because he likes "playing doctor." Or he hangs out with the girls because all of the girls want him as their "husband" when they play house. You really don't know what's going on with kids when they're in early elementary because they haven't quite formed He-Man Woman Hater's Clubz or anything like that yet.

10/18/2010 6:41:04 PM

lol, ok, well played.

eff it, it's not my kid anyhow. i just had to sit through an hour of back and forth on it this weekend we went over to their house for Game Night

i just had to side with the dude because all the wimmins were against him and other dudes were afraid of their own wimmin to say much.

10/18/2010 6:49:24 PM

If you're friends with just chicks in elementary school, it's probably not going to suddenly change in middle school and high school. It seems like the guys that just hang out with girls end up seeming very effeminate. Personally, I can only take hanging out with a group of girls for so long. And by "so long," I mean around 30 seconds. It will scramble your brain.

10/18/2010 6:58:04 PM

Well, from my experience, it can go just about any way.

I had a very good friend who ended up coming out to me once we were in college. He was not effeminate and played soccer. He palled around with the guys right up until late middle school and then he made the switch to girls.

In school, I knew two guys who hung out with girls in elementary school. They didn't really have guy friends and were always with the girls. They ended up being the first guys to get silly elementary school kisses and later girlfriends once they were old enough to start dating. They never played sports or were particularly macho. However, now one is married and the other is a serial dater. They didn't end up girlie because they hung out with girls. They ended up as ladies men.

10/18/2010 7:06:20 PM

^^guess why they preferred the company of girls

ITT FeebleMinded lives up to his username...anyway

Quote :

"In pre-school there was a kid who hung out with all the girls and would play dolls and make up with them while the other gentlemen and myself would run around with stick guns and throw rock grenades. By 6th he was making centerpieces and lip synching to ace of base in the hallway and by 11th grade he was fully out. sure its is entirely anecdotal, but, i wouldn't necessarily discount it either."

I never wore makeup (shit's nasty) but I did enjoy playing with dolls on occasion, preferred to hang out with the girls because they weren't so mean, and was afraid of being athletic or violent; I actually sang along to Aqua, out loud, in the 7th grade, and one of the other guys who did ended up coming out by the 12th.

Just don't beat or berate your kid if he or she fails to meet society's standard of manliness or womanliness, respectively, to try to make your kid act more "like a man" or "like a woman"; it can leave emotional scarring and social dysfunction persisting into adulthood

[Edited on October 18, 2010 at 7:41 PM. Reason : it hurts...it hurts inside...

10/18/2010 7:39:42 PM

Quote :

"preferred to hang out with the girls because they weren't so mean"

this made me lol.

i hung out with mostly boys for a very long time for this very reason. (they werent as mean)

10/18/2010 8:07:29 PM

It's also important for the kid to grow up being able to form healthy and meaningful friendships with the opposite sex. If he can get good socialization with boys from sports and other activities, then I would say hanging with girls in his free time is great, too.

10/18/2010 8:10:01 PM

6 is a really young age to be worried about these kinds of things. he's able to form meaningful relationships with the girls and i'm sure that will expand to the same sex eventually. maybe the parents could ask him why he likes particular children he is friends with. the boys in his class may be missing those characteristics he is drawn to in a playmate

10/18/2010 8:20:11 PM

^^^then again you were a girl

part of the code of honor among boys is to never hit a girl

10/18/2010 8:51:37 PM

Quote :

"ITT FeebleMinded lives up to his username...anyway"

Please elaborate.

10/18/2010 8:53:09 PM

Quote :

"I think it's generally accepted that nature intends for people/animals to be heterosexual."

have you never heard of homosexual acts happening on the regular in other animal species, mostly among mammals and birds?

10/18/2010 9:24:38 PM

It sounds weird to say but girls hanging out with a bunch of boys is entirely different from boys hanging out with a group of girls. Most of the difference is based on how the same gender peers will treat them as a result of the group with which they chose to hang.

Its like dakota_man said, haters gonna hate, and in situations such as these young boys can be far more mean than girls. boys can call the other lone boy gay and pick on him severely damaging his self esteem while girls are less likely to be as openly harsh about another girl's choice.

So while the kid isn't doing anything wrong there could be some collateral damage and as a father I would take note and make efforts to intervene gradually and subtly.

10/18/2010 9:37:05 PM

it's related to the injustice that girls get to wear some kinds of clothing that boys aren't allowed to, while the reverse is rarely true

10/18/2010 10:07:35 PM

I always hung out with boys when I was younger because I loved the activities they were doing more than what the girls were doing. I liked sports and I would much rather play sonic on sega or NBA jams/Mike Tyson's punchout on NES. I was too mean and competitive to play sports or vidya games with girls.
I also grew up in the country so my closest neighbor was my grandmother and the only friends around were my brother's friends (they had to ride dirt bikes through the woods for miles to get to our house). ALSO, I thought my brother was the coolest person ever and I wanted to be like him. ALSO, I forever had a crush on one of my brother's friends.

10/18/2010 10:12:01 PM

ever get called a lez

10/18/2010 10:29:10 PM

i always hung around girls for pretty much the entirety of K-12, i love rufus wainwright and ace of base was my first cd, and i can watch rocky horror on repeat

somehow i grew up heterosexual

10/18/2010 10:54:39 PM

I remember the first time I watched that movie, or at least parts of it as I flipped through the channels as a kid

it was boring as hell and when I saw that "An RKO Radio Picture" backdrop I thought that was the end

I was sorely disappointed, and I wasn't even aware that what the people were wearing was intended to be in any way transgressive, I thought it was just generic horror attire

I watched it more recently and it clicked

10/18/2010 10:58:06 PM

As to the previous comment about having a manly father that is around and involved = hetero boy, I'm sure it helps, but one of the guys I grew up with came out, and had one of the best fathers in the world. His dad is a very spiritual/religious guy (not throw it in your face type, but a good person) and very athletic (used to play baseball semi-pro I think) and coached and did all that shit, plus still found time to start a collection program for the less fortunate kids in town and was a school board member. He was very involved in all of his kids lives and yet his youngest son was into theater and music and ended up coming out. Even though he's religious and all, he still is proud of his son, and when he was touring with one of his musicals as the lead, he would bring pictures and signed copies for some of the staff. So yea, I see what you're saying about dysfunctional families could lead to sexual dysfunctions in children, but shit like that is what makes me think that maybe some people are just born with that innate desire to be homosexual.

10/18/2010 11:31:05 PM

nurture vs. nature

chicken or the egg?

we will never know!

10/18/2010 11:37:06 PM

Quote :

"have you never heard of homosexual acts happening on the regular in other animal species, mostly among mammals and birds?"

Jesus Christ it is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with people like you.

I have no idea what the driving force is that keeps people and animals evolving. Maybe it's God. maybe it's some other divine being. Maybe it's something entirely secular. But our species continues to evolve and our population continues to increase. My only comment was that this would not be possible if not for heterosexuality. Nowhere did I say homosexuality is wrong, yadda yadda yadda...

Yes, a lot of crazy things happen in nature. Male dogs hump each other. I have had dogs hump my leg. My female dog has a pillow she likes to rub up against. This in no way advances the dog species, it simply satisfies a sexual urge. that is my only claim, so please get off your flaming liberal left-wing soap box.

Anyways....

********************************************************************

As a question to the original poster, although you may not be thinking about the early expression of homosexuality, do you think the father is concerned about this?

10/18/2010 11:55:10 PM

Mother: "Is it a boy or a girl?"
Doctor: "I think it's a little early to be imposing roles on it, don't you think?!"

10/19/2010 12:10:46 AM

growing up, i'd go through phases where one year i'd realize "hmmm...all my friends are guys this year. what's the deal with that - girls don't like me or something? " then the next year i'd notice "hmmm...all my friends are girls this year. what's the deal with that - guys think i'm a pansy or something? "

10/19/2010 12:33:31 AM

Thinking back to when I was 6, I barely remember the genders (or races) of my school friends.

6 is way too young to be worried about this, IMO. Adults often forget how “innocent” it is to be a kid.

10/19/2010 12:39:55 AM

1. I'm suspicious of this dad who is supposedly worried strictly about the social impact of these relationships and not his son's sexual orientation.
2. Rule of thumb for stuff like this: Stop stressing and relax. A lot of times parents actually create problems for their kids when they're trying to fix problems that never existed.
3. If you're really concerned, consult an expert with your questions. Yes, teachers, other parents, etc...have valuable anecdotes to share, but you should get info from some psychologists and whatnot.

I'll start things off:

Quote :

"Hi Barbara, My 6-year-old son, a first grader, has a strong preference for playing with girls. When I ask who he would like to have over a for a play date from school, it is usually a girl. We have recently signed my son up for more boy-related activities in the hopes that he will develop some more friendships with boys. Our concern at this age is many of the moms of girls prefer to have their daughters just have play dates with girls. We are afraid this will leave our son feeling left out. Any other words of advice on how to foster more boy friendships with our son? From: Nikki, Boston"

Quote :

"Hi Nikki, I think you're dead-on about moms of girls preferring their daughters play with girls and, yes, at some point, that preference not only will be communicated to the girls, but also to your son. So good for you for being pro-active. I think you're barking up the wrong tree, though, by signing him up for more "boy-related" activities. Girls and boys play differently. Your son prefers to play with girls because the way girls play is more interesting to him than the way boys play. (Researcher JoAnn Deak's work shows that about 20 percent of girls have a boy-style brain and 20 percent of boys have a girl-style brain.) I chatted with psychologist Michael Thompson about your question. His work on boys' emotional development is ground-breaking and includes the best-selling book, "Raising Cain." Here's what he had to say: "Some boys find boy-play too relentlessly competitive, too rough, and not verbal enough. They prefer girl-play because it is verbal, involves creative fantasy, and it tends to be more cooperative. So when this mom says, 'We’re trying to find more boy activities,' I want to know: what ones? Pop Warner football, or a place like the Lexington Center for the Arts? That's where he'll find boys who are like him." It doesn't mean your son will never like sports, although, let's face it, that is a distinct possibility. "It takes some boys longer to ease into the rough and tumble boy world," Thompson says. Meanwhile, we've got an elephant in this Mailbag, don't we? Parents who ask a question like this almost always are also (really?) wondering if this tendency to play with girls foreshadows a sexual orientation. Thompson insists not; Deak's research comes to the same conclusion: This is about temperament, not sexuality. It's about interests and activities lining up with the interests and activities of girls. Which brings us back to the question you did ask, and here's the direct answer: Help your son to find boy playmates whose brains work as his does. And by the way, if you have time to read only one of Thompson's books, I recommend "Best Friends, Worst Enemies, Understanding the social lives of children.""

http://www.boston.com/community/moms/blogs/child_caring/2009/09/a_6yearold_boy.html

[Edited on October 19, 2010 at 12:47 AM. Reason : You're welcome.]

10/19/2010 12:43:09 AM

Quote :

"I'm asking because we have some friends whose 6 yo is friends with my son, and they've become aware their son always hangs out with a group of girls at his school. "

One of my best friends was called "one of the girls" by my mom in high school because he always hung out with a group of female friends... but he's not gay, at all. He's actually living with a girl now and is really happy. (Just an example.)


Now for some serious shit - my future SIL has a 7 (?) year old boy who thinks he is a girl in her class and he (she?) goes by Jessica now... Jessica had to be moved to a different school just so it wouldn't cause a huge ruckus when she would come to school the next year dressed like a girl instead of a boy. The teachers have to let her use a special bathroom for now.. I wonder what's going to happen in high school - hell, even middle school? (Oh and just note: the parents tried to have Jessica adjust to being a little boy and sent her to therapy, etc etc... nothing worked so they stopped pushing her)

10/19/2010 8:08:50 AM

OMG, sexuality and gender are analogs and not digital. Who'da thunk it?

Feeble, evolution just happens as a consequence of mutation and non-random selection. It's not the divine code by which all living things must adhere.

A person has as much worth as any other person whether they're gay, sterile, don't feel like having children, or can make 30 babies.

Plenty of species have gone extinct despite their ability to have offspring. It's likely that humanity won't last forever, despite brave heteros making babies ad infinitum.

10/19/2010 8:58:25 AM

i grew up with an older sister and female cousin and that's pretty much who I had in my pre-teen years to play with

we played sports and played with dolls

rode motorcycles and barbie jeeps

and i'll still bust your ass

10/19/2010 9:46:14 AM

Quote :

"I'm suspicious of this dad who is supposedly worried strictly about the social impact of these relationships and not his son's sexual orientation."

he insists he's not. says that if his kid is gay, he'd be 100% supportive. I believe him, he's a pretty liberal guy, people in Seattle are generally progressive. I think he's just worried that his kid may become marginalized and picked on by other boys. And I might feel the same way, if it were my kid. Because I have got to thinking about it and relating it to my own childhood.

I remember at a young age, for a number of years all I had was girl playmates my age in my neighborhood; the boys were always either younger or older, except for a couple boys who were best friends and I was excluded when they were together. And I don't know if it's related, but I've had some difficulty in life making/keeping meaningful friendships with other males. not entirely, but enough so that I wonder about it. I really haven't had a close male friend since I got out of the Navy at age 22.

In college my best drinking buddy was a gal (with benefits) Otherwise, I've almost always had a girlfriend at any given time and I always integrated into her circle of friends, guys and gals, who would mostly disappear when we broke up. Since college, in my workplaces I've often gravitated towards women for clowning around and conversation. Maybe it's because I find most male engineers (at work) to be boring as fuck. But friendships with women aren't really satisfying because you can't really pal around with them, you can't have real bonding, especially once you're married.

So, I don't know. I don't know if I'm just weird or what. But I guess it's got me thinking about my own life, and also thinking about how I will react if and when these sorts of issues come up with my own child.

Basically, i guess it comes down to the question: How do you raise your son to be a successful man?



[Edited on October 19, 2010 at 11:00 AM. Reason : ]

10/19/2010 10:47:51 AM

Teach them to be respectful of others (most important), that anything worth doing is worth doing right, and reward hard work and diligence.

Fucking women and being bros with other dudes isn't really a major part of being a successful man.

You're not weird. "Normal" is bullshit.

10/19/2010 11:31:18 AM

^^Did you play sports as a kid??

I found that all my best friends growing up I played sports with. I played basketball, soccer, and baseball with all the same kids throughout elementary, middle, and high school.

I would also say that the group of friends that I hung out with during my childhood had a fairly equal number of girls and boys. We were all pretty active. The girls would ride bikes, play capture the flag, and several other "guy things" along with us. Some were more feminine than others, but we all did the same things. But I grew up in a very small town...it was kind of hard to form "cliques"...everyone had to hang out with each other or you wouldn't be hanging out with anybody.

[Edited on October 19, 2010 at 11:34 AM. Reason : .]

10/19/2010 11:33:55 AM

Quote :

"Fucking women and being bros with other dudes isn't really a major part of being a successful man."

i agree with you, i hope what i wrote didnt sound like i thought it was. whoring around and drinking is a distraction, and does not make a man. "being bros" is not either, but it's important, i think, to have same sex relationships based on mutual interests.

Quote :

"Did you play sports as a kid"

yeah, i played sports, baseball mostly, but i wasn't especially athletic or skilled at them. It was more of a going through the motions, rather than being actively engaged. by high school i quit participating in organized sports. now as an adult i'm into individual athletics: biking, martial arts, sea kayaking, etc. but even there i'm not really integrated into a community. maybe i'm just a loner, and that's the way it is.

I don't even know what I'm asking here any more. Thinking about our friends' kid, how they're worried about him being socially marginalized, has got me thinking about how I felt marginalized myself, and now I want to make sure my own kid doesn't have the same problems I did.

I don't even think I'm expecting any answers. I guess I'm just thinking through this out loud.






[Edited on October 19, 2010 at 11:55 AM. Reason : ]

10/19/2010 11:48:14 AM

Quote :

"yeah, i played sports, baseball mostly, but i wasn't especially athletic or skilled at them. It was more of a going through the motions, rather than being actively engaged. by high school i quit participating in organized sports. now as an adult i'm into individual athletics: biking, martial arts, sea kayaking, etc. but even there i'm not really integrated into a community. maybe i'm just a loner, and that's the way it is."

I think that might explain a little bit of it.

When I look back on growing up, my group of friends were all really good at sports. So not only did we play in the rec leagues together, we made the schools teams and several of us made traveling squads. The ones that were still in our group of friends but weren't that great at sports were just very outgoing and social.

So if you're not this extremely outgoing/social person, your group of peers growing up is mainly going to be shaped by your activities. So maybe if you didn't play a sport, you were in plays or you had a group of guys you skateboarded or surfed with (yeah, those are sports, but as a kid they're most recreational activities).

I'm not going to push certain things on my kid(s), I just want them to try everything and hopefully they'll like a couple things. Most likely that's where their friends will come from. I would like for them to be diverse and do many things, but whatever makes them happy will also work!

10/19/2010 11:56:14 AM

Samwise16, you should be commended for using the correct gender pronoun to refer to Jessica, and I hope that by 2021 when she comes of age our society and government will be fully accepting of transgender individuals and she will have little trouble with the more expensive and involved facets of transition, if she feels like she should undergo that; have her parents determined whether to go through with hormone therapy etc. before puberty, when the results will turn out better, even though it is also possible that by then Jessica may have decided to return to a masculine gender expression?

Quote :

"Thinking back to when I was 6, I barely remember the genders (or races) of my school friends."

I remember one of the few boys who tried to be friendly to me back then, a black kid named Bronson Boxley who sadly had to move after first grade; I recently looked for him on Facebook but the only result was a white guy.

10/19/2010 2:13:50 PM

I guess I am the other way-being a girl that just wanted to hang out with guys.
I was really scared of boys though, since I had two sisters and only girls around.

I was too agressive/mean for the boys - I guess they didn't like getting beat up by a girl.
Later on when I became "pretty" boys started to be my friends, and my best friends were always guys. I really am terrible with girl relaitonships. I just don't think that way.

I have alot more I can ramble on about, but this did create some insight for me, into why my best friends are not around (they are guys, and are married, so can't have friends that are girls) plus alot are exes. I miss alot of them really bad.

10/20/2010 3:01:46 AM

^2 I'm not sure what her parents are going to do about hormone therapy.. but that's a good question... I'll ask Eric's sister next time I see her. Right now she's at an age where she can just grow her hair long and dress in girly clothes and get away with it.. but once middle school hits, I definitely see where you're coming from. :\ I just think it's awesome her parents finally accepted it and realized that's just who their child is, so why fight it?

10/20/2010 8:56:05 AM