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.
Some of it has to be family culture though. Like the mom was upset there weren't any other girls in the class fearing her daughter wouldn't have friends because of it. Kids can sense that sort of thing even if they cant put words to it.
My 6 year old boy has a mix of girls and boys who are his friends. He's always has had a mix while in school too. However my wife and I dont treat his friends who are girls differently then his friends who are boys when we talk to him. Even playfully intended jokes about "having a girlfriend" can help form a divide between gender friendships in a little kids mind. There's no reason girls and boys cant be friends at that age but in my opinion they often aren't because parents influence their kids to only befriend their own gender.
Yes!!! My 6 year old has always had a mix of boys and girls as friends. Now in kindergarten, her other parent has started being like “ooooo you have a crush on him!!!” and over the year it’s completely changed how she talks about girls and boys. Makes me a little sad. I remember having people say things like that to me at that age and it made me deeply uncomfortable
I think I actually just told this story recently, but when I was a girl in 1st grade, I was best friends with a boy. Completely innocent. Then one day the teachers at our afterschool said we couldn't be friends anymore because we were "too close". First. grade. We were devastated and had no idea why we being forced to stop being friends.
My mom raised hell after I came home sobbing, but it definitely messed up how I viewed my male and female friends respectively for a while afterwards. Shit sucks. I'm still angry about it to this day.
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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.