Young Children

In class on Tuesday we discussed a lot about children's play. This reminded me of some of the things I see at the daycare where I work. One play that we emphasized was dress up. Further more we discussed how dress up can allow children to explore gender roles. Many of the boys in my three year old group enjoy wearing pink puffy dresses and high heels. They like to play that they are the mommy or they like to twirl in the dresses. At work we do not discourage this at all. However, I had one parents complain about letting his boy dress up in "girl" clothes. It made me realize how socially constructed the norm for clothing is. I reassured this parent that a lot of the other boys like to play dress up too. A few days later this same parent came into the classroom and a couple of the other boys were wearing dressses and he just laughed. I think seeing this made him realize there isn't anything "wrong" with his son. Kids just like to pretend. As professionals I think that it is important to realize that children don't pick up on all the social norms immediately and letting boys play dress up and with dolls will not do any harm. When else will a boy get to put on a dress in a nonthreatening environment and not get made fun of?