Boys and girls

I was reading an article earlier today, and the author mentioned the belief that boys and girls are born exactly the same beyond physical differences: ie boys don't inherently prefer trucks and and toy guns and girls don't prefer dolls.  The author didn't buy it and neither do I.  If my little man is any indication, that is so not true.

When Mason was born, we got a lot of toys for him, toys of all kinds.  We got stuffed animals galore, rattles, two different blanket toys, etc.  When he was tiny, he liked the rattles and his Tigger-head blanket and Tigger stuffed animal.  As he got older, we put all the age appropriate toys on shelves that were easily accessible so he could choose his own toys.  It quickly became clear that the thing he absolutely adored was cars.

Any kind of toy car.  Toy trucks, cars, cars with the big balls in them, Hot Wheels cars, he just loves cars.  As I said, this isn't something we pushed on him, he picked it up on his own.  Up until recently cars were the only toys he really cared about.  He has recently regained an interest in stuffed animals to a point, but his favorites are the Tigger from when he was tiny, and a Buzz Lightyear that his aunties bought him a couple of weeks ago.  The main thing he does with them is sleep with them.  He carries them around a bit from time to time, but he mainly just sleeps with them.  And I've been working on getting him interested in the little toy animals he has, trying to teach him the names of the animals and the sounds they make.  But his main love is cars.

Of course he's still young, so anything with wheels counts.  When we visit his friend, he is more likely to play with her doll's stroller than the doll itself.  And I have a little Cabbage Patch doll I borrowed from my mother-in-law that I am using to try to teach him to be gentle with babies.  He finds the doll fascinating and loves to hold it, and stroke it's head, and occasionally kiss it, but his interest lasts about 2 minutes, then he gives it back to be put in the crib, and runs off to his cars again.  He doesn't care about toy guns yet though, not really, which I am fine with.  My grandma has some water guns, and he likes them because they are brightly colored, but has no idea what to do with them.  Though that may be because he is an only, so far, and we don't watch a lot of cartoons with violence in them.

Also, he could care less about his clothes.  I have to hold him down to get him dressed, whereas I have it on good authority from the moms of two little girls his same age that their daughters are clothes horses already.  They love their clothes and their shoes.  Mason only cares about shoes because he can't go outside without them, so he will run and get them when I tell him, knowing that means he gets to go outside.

So boys and girls born alike?  I don't believe it.  Equal, yes, but not liking the same things.  I am sure that there are exceptions, we've all heard of tomboys, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.