Good heavens. I personally think that it is ok to give stuffed animals and more gender neutral dolls or boy dolls to boys, but barbies wouldn't have been a thought at all!

WTF?????????

she explain how the other boys ridicule him.

Well, whaddya expect? If you raise your son to be a girlyman, that's what's gonna happen.

Toy guns and little green army men. That's all I'm buying.

RE: Harvard Medical School psychobabbler who thinks it's healthy to give nail polish and Barbie dolls to 2-to-3-year-old boys.

People like this are usually aging chutney ferrets, trying to plant the seeds to increase the size of their pool of available "playmates" for the future, since so many of their current "spelunker" buddies die off early from that mysterious disease "that can strike anyone!" (assuming that the "anyone" in question practices sodomy, shoots up with prostitutes, or plays "catcher", etc etc.)

Everything changed on 9/11. I see GI Joe has gone special ops in the toy stores.

RE:Toy guns and little green army men. That's all I'm buying.

Don't forget the black cats and m-80s! :-)
Pellet guns are cool to when it gets below freezing.

That's ok. I give the boys about a year before they start using the nail polish to represent fake blood and have the barbies start shooting each other.

BTW, my grandson automatically rejects stuffed animals and dolls. All the stuffed animals he had as a baby he gave to his little sister when she was born because he had no interest in them. I think both nature and nuture have something to do with that because he was very young when he started sorting things by colors and made sure if something had pink or purple in it his sister should have it. Someone might have suggested to him that boys don't like pink, etc, but he was more than willing to accept that suggestion and loves his role as older brother and protector.

Harvard Medical School psychobabbler who thinks it's healthy to give nail polish and Barbie dolls to 2-to-3-year-old boys.

But the author William Pollack, also likes to share the social-sausage with his best buddy harry, so go figure.

Above url is about a Harvard Medical School psychobabbler who thinks it's healthy to give nail polish and Barbie dolls to 2-to-3-year-old boys.

I don't think it makes a bit of difference. Kids of differing genders may play with the same thing, but they play differently. If my boys had nail polish, they'd probably use it to paint on something. My daughter played with her brothers' toys, but she played differently. Toy cars, for example, were much more likely to be arranged into families than raced.

No matter what some silly Harvard prof thinks, boys and girls are different.

That said, why would anyone buy nail polish for their sons? Must be another of those PC things that only the ultra-liberals "get."

Someone might have suggested to him that boys don't like pink, etc, but he was more than willing to accept that suggestion and loves his role as older brother and protector.

The color choice is probably nurture. Wasn't it Elizabethan times when pink was considered a boys' color and blue a girls'?

But, you're right on the nature thing. My daughter never took anything apart just to see how it worked. My boys sure did.

And, sometimes it's even beyond that. My daughter never played with dolls. She doesn't wear dresses either and abhors lacy things. But, she loves nail polish, teddy bears, beanie babies, and ribbons for her hair. To each their own.

I worry much more about the public ed idea that boys have to sit still in chairs in order to learn. No way. Many of them have to move, move, move -- and take things apart. A little destruction isn't necessarily a bad thing for a growing boy.

Everone should read the following book, it's an eye opener and very true

"The War Against Boys" by Christine Hoff Sommers

Ah yes, and BB Guns and Star Wars Action Figures (not to be confused with dolls, which have hair). And video games (sports and shootin' and flyin').

I remember when my brother and I were little (me the girl) and I loved playing with his bag full of cowboys and indians with him (I was a cowgirl...dale evans)! And the trucks! And I always wanted my own peddle tractor, and then a sports car! BUT...I would go from that to playing with all my dolls and my brother would have nothing to do with it. Or I would go to the sand dunes and draw out rooms and pretend to have a house, and he would be over somewhere else blowing things up. Neither one of us grew up having any problems with gender identification and the fact that our interests were completely different for the most part seemed normal. I just can't imagine why these psychobabble idiots don't leave nature alone and accept the fact that there are natural differences between the sexes! No one told my brother not to help me decorate my doll buggies, etc, etc, etc, he simply didn't want to..and that is how it should be.

Well, I grew up loving to power shift my sportscar in lace! Lol. I still do!

I don't think it makes a bit of difference. Kids of differing genders may play with the same thing, but they play differently. If my boys had nail polish, they'd probably use it to paint on something. My daughter played with her brothers' toys, but she played differently. Toy cars, for example, were much more likely to be arranged into families than raced.

So right. You can't change a kid's sexual orientation just by giving them toys designated for the opposite gender. I've always said that people who believe that boys and girls are the same and are just "socialized" into acting like their gender "stereotypes" are people who obviously have never had children.

My son attends fourth grade level class in a public school in Northern California. In the school office there are only books that focus on a female gender as the central character.

His take home readings have the same focus. I'm not concerned for his being affected by this oppossite gender attention, as I am for the boys in his class. His daily life is infused with a good deal of male influence, but is this true for the other boys in his class? How can this female focus allow boys the opportunity to develop their own self-image?

'Jane' can not, by any stretch of the imagination, be a role model for 'John's' self-identity. That's how I see it.