Children do pick up messages about gender from the day they were born. The society a child is born into sends messages across to the child about how boys and girls should behave, dress, speak, or act. If you don’t teach your kids about gender identity from the moment they can speak and also understand conversations, they may end up forming rigid ideas about what gender is and what it means to them. Your preschooler isn’t too young to learn about gender identity, it’ll surprise you to know that most kids begin to strongly identify with a particular gender from the age of 3. So how then can you teach preschoolers about gender identity? There are several ways to go about it but you’ll have to continue reading to discover all of them.
What is gender identity?
Gender identity is a term that is used to refer to the intimate and deep feeling a person has about themselves.
Gender identity has to do with who you know yourself to be. Before teaching your kids about gender identity, you should know that gender identity exists on a spectrum which means that a person’s gender identity could either be feminine, masculine, or other.
What do they already know about gender?
Your kids already know that their gender is assigned to them from birth but what they do mistake is the sex at birth and gender identity. To many kids, you are either a boy or a girl, so when they find other kids behaving or acting in a manner that does not conform to what they already about the behaviour of people with that sex, they may end up asking questions or bullying the person. That’s why it’s important to teach kids about gender identity so they’ll will be able to understand kids that are nonbinary, love and also respect them.
Defining nonbinary for preschoolers
Nonbinary (also known as agender) is a term used to describe gender identities that are neither feminine nor masculine (female or male) – i.e., identities that are beyond the gender binary.
Kids sometimes make the mistake of thinking that biological sex (the sex you were assigned at birth) is the same as gender. That’s not true and that’s where you come in. Let them know that gender is not only binary (it’s either your male or female), teach them that both gender and sex are fluid. When they see gender and sex as fluid, it’ll help them have a better view of what sex and gender are and not some predetermined conclusion.
People who do not identify with the gender they are assigned at birth are described as transgender. A good example would be a boy who loves wearing female clothes – the gender he was assigned at birth is male but he identifies with the female gender.
Some people do not identify as male or female and they use terms like gender fluid, genderqueer, and agender. People who identify themselves as neither male nor female fall into the nonbinary category. This set of people have personal experiences that are unique to them and as such, you shouldn’t apply labels that they haven’t permitted us to use. Additionally, nonbinary people do not use pronouns like he or she, they use pronouns like them and they.
3 ways to start teaching your kids about gender identity
Asides from talking to your kids about gender identity, there are other ways through which you can teach your preschoolers about gender identity. You can even use childcare software programs to help you, schedule classes, for them – childcare software programs are majorly used by child care professionals and childcare organizations. In this section, you’ll learn 3 simple ways to educate your kids about gender identity.
Nursery rhymes and sing-alongs
When singing nursery rhymes, you can change or swap the pronouns with nonbinary, gender-inclusive pronouns.
Through toys
When your kids are playing with toys, you can assign a nonbinary pronoun to one or several toys. Sometimes you may also make mistakes but when you correct yourself and move on, it teaches them how to deal with their own gender-labelling mistakes in the real world.
Through stories
When you tell your kids stories, you can make up nonbinary characters and include them in your stories. Ensure that those characters aren’t alien and they also do everyday kid things so that your kids will be able to relate to them. This teaches the kids that they have more in common with nonbinary kids than not in common.
