Play-pretend

Nowadays Lele loves to play-pretend with our stuffs. His favourite play-pretend thing is a roller used for painting. It is kept in the storeroom (more correctly, the bomb shelter) but one day he saw it and requested (strongly) for Yeye to let him bring it out. We watched amused as he pretended to cut grass like the grass cutter, sweep floor like the road sweeper ("Sweep away the dirty things."), do fencing with it as the sword and blow our hair with it as the hair dryer. It was so funny! One day Nainai came home and just happened to see Lele play-pretending with the forbidden "toy". She commented,

"Boys will be boys. They all like playing such stuff."

I agree that boys reallie do seem to exhibit a certain kind of behaviour and preference. Before Lele came, I used to think gender behaviours are mostly cultivated through upbringing and influences from TV. I've changed my mind.

See, since Lele was a wee babe, we had not exposed him to TV as we believe that there are many things a child can learn (from daily living alone and from us adults) than from passive education on the BOX. It "helped" that he slept early as a babe. This means that at night when the telly is switched on the most (mostly watched by Nainai and Yeye), he is in dreamland. Even now when his bedtime is later (9p.m.), he doesn't show much interest to the TV and prefers us to switch it off so that we may play with him: ) This boy knows his quality time... ... haha...

But as Lele grows up, he gradually displayed certain preferences which are very boy-like.

1) Lele's changing mat has 2 sides, blue and pink. One day when I was about to lay him down on the mat, he protested,

"Don't want pink!"

At first I was puzzled. What was it about? Then I realised he was refering to the changing maty colour. I had put the pink side facing up and he wanted me to make the blue side facing up. Satisfied after I made the switch. He announced,

"Lele don't like pink. Lele like blue."

2) Some time ago I introduced a Chinese children's song to Lele, "ni wa wa (translate:clay doll)". He loved the song and requested me to sing many times throughout the day. When we got to part when ni wa wa has no papa and mama, his eyes will water.

Lele: Mama bring niwawa home. Lele play toy with ni wawa.

Mama: Yes, mama will be niwawa's mama. Mama will be niwawa's papa. Mama will bring niwawa home. Lele must take care of niwawa okay?

Lele: Yum!

Mama: Then niwawa will be happy!

Lele: Yum!

One day in GUG, the chinese teacher brought a doll to class and introduced the song "Ni wa wa". When Lele saw it, he refused to hug it. He refused to sing the song and then he declared,

"Lele don't like niwawa."

3) Lele is okay with pee-ing standing up ("...Just like papa") but ocassionally he will say he wants to sit down and pee. When he does that, I'll say,

"But only girls pee sitting down, Lele. If you pee sitting down, then I'll have to put on a pink shirt for you, just like a girl."

And he'll say,

"Don't want!"

4)Lele likes the story book "1,2,3" by Susan Boynton. He calls it the "loud loud loud" book. One page has many hippos dancing ballet. He was okay with it till one day out of the blue he declared, "Don't like this one."

5) Lele likes boy stuff like fencing, Taekwondo and Wushu.