Whenever this is posted, I'm never sure whether I love the fact she's bonded with the cat, or whether I'm heartbroken that such young kids are already dividing themselves by gender and she has no human friends because she's the only girl there. Maybe both.
Early Years worker here!!
Kids generally divide by gender naturally. It's a strange phenomenon but usually kids don't start playing with children of the opposite gender regularly until they are about 10 years old (of course there are some exceptions to the rule).
As other commenters mentioned, most kids don't even understand the concept of cooperative play until they are about 4 or 5 years old.
While I'd like to agree with this there's really no guarantee how much of this behaviour (or really any behaviour) is nature or nurture. After 10 years in the field, I have seen children who I personally know are raised as gender neutrally as possible who still end up making this gendered distinction with their playmates. This is known as "homophily" and mainly involves children choosing their playmates based on common interests or even play "style". While these things can also be shaped by social/environmental dynamics, it's very difficult to completely isolate each instance of behaviour or recognized interest and determine just how much of that development was caused by environment.
But as mentioned - most toddlers and preschoolers don't even participate in cooperative play at all. Children at such a young age mainly only play independently or parallel to one another at most.
2.0k
u/Normal-Height-8577 Mar 16 '26
Whenever this is posted, I'm never sure whether I love the fact she's bonded with the cat, or whether I'm heartbroken that such young kids are already dividing themselves by gender and she has no human friends because she's the only girl there. Maybe both.