No, boys do not get dolls. They get "action figures".

I´d rather be "narrow minded", than overbearing & interfering in people´s lives to push an agenda.

This is insane. Did the Vikings really come from Sweden?

How hard-hearted do you have to be to purposely give a child a toy they don´t want? It´s a toy and it´s supposed to be fun but that seems lost on these overbearing adults who try to run everyone else´s lives but usually can´t run their own. My son´s preschool teacher said it best when she said even if you don´t give boys guns, they´ll chew their bread into gun shapes and use that.

I observed children for five years working in a local health unit that gave WIC vouchers. I can tell you, for a fact!, that boys and girls are definitely different. We had children from newborns to five years of age. As soon as a little girl could toddle around on her own, she would go sit fascinated by newborn carriers and admire the babies. The little boy were barging into chairs, throwing their toys and yelling. They are born different and giving them the toys YOU want them to have won´t change it.

Somebody has too much time on their hands.

The one I got for Christmas as a kid (I had a perverted Uncle) didn´t last 5 minutes, I destroyed it. First to go was the head...next the arms, then legs and the torso went into the disposal...I was not a happy camper. Had the Uncle been there I would have..........

You can give a trouble maker with a chip on his shoulder an imperial presidency too, but you can´t make him think.

There is way too much imposing into the lives of others.
Boys are boys and girls are girls. Let them BE !

Here´s the solution. You can tear the heads off the dolls and pretend they are grenades. Throw them at your playmates and make the explosion sound. Sometimes a descending bomb whistle also adds to the effect. The legs of the doll can be detached(or brutally ripped off if you prefer) and used as pretend swords or pretend knives. Or even as long guns. And of course any unused body parts can be stacked up to create the walls of your fort. You can use a remaining body part with one leg still attached. Place the back flat on the ground and bend the leg upwards and it becomes a cannon to reign terror down on your playmates. And the bad guys in your pretend playtime war should always be Swedish because they are the easiest to defeat.

Reminds me of the photo yesterday of the 5 year old boy photographed in his family car. He was wearing PINK zebra print slip on shoes. His mom said that zebras are his favorite animal and he did not seem to mind that those were girls shoes. Kids are what they are, and there could be more damage done trying to change the course of their natures then by just leaving them alone. Remember when they used to try to force a lefthander to convert to righthandedness back in the day? Seems those folks grew up to be very accident prone.

#10 has the best post I´ve seen in a long time! LOL!!

Did anyone else notice that the headline didn´t read, "You Can Give a Girl a Truck, but You Can´t Make Her Play With It"? Why is the focus always on changing boys, but not girls? (No, I don´t want to change either.)

I come from a very large family so have had the chance to observe both boys and girls. Little boys have no problem playing with dolls for a time, but eventually make them into some sort of weapon. Little girls like playing with cars and toy guns, but they tend to name them and make up family relationships between them. I never much cared for dolls myself having been raised on a farm with two brothers as my primary playmates, we all liked farm equipment the best. Oh-and, yes, I´ve named every weapon I´ve ever owned.
Mrs. Cow

one of my close relatives gave my son a doll, (he was so effeminate you would get a sugar over dose shaking his hand) We took the BB gun I gave him that Christmas and used the doll for target practice his idea not mine, but still had fun just the same. We had to switch to pellets to inflict more damage to the soft plastic but eventually parts were shot off.

Kind of like pretending single mothers or parents of the same sex are ideal families. There are an awful lot of people around the world who don´t understand ´proper´ roles/behavior in life. That´s ok, nature has a way of sorting things out in the end.

My vegetarian niece dresses her kids in organic fiber clothing and feeds them weird free-range kale-type stuff. For Halloween, her 3-year old son was the enchanted frog to his sister’s princess. His everyday wardrobe is natural fiber striped leggings and soft pastels.

Every time I see her Facebook posts I want to shout at her, ‘‘For Heaven sake, buy that boy a GI Joe and feed him a burger!’’ His teenage rebellion is not going to be pretty.

Excellent, poster #10.

I was thinking, "You can deny a boy a toy gun or sword, but when he goes outside, he will find an appropriately shaped stick."

Reminds me of an article I read some time ago. The writer, a mildly hand-wringing lefty (and anti-gun) was concerned that her young son was growing up violent. He wanted a toy gun. She bought him a Barbie-type doll. He took the doll and promptly bent in in half, running around pointing it and going "Pow Pow". Eventually she realized that little boys would never be like little girls and even relented and bought him a toy gun. A pink toy gun.

My son had a doll as a toddler and is today blatantly heterosexual. It was a cheap cabbage patch doll named "Peter Pumpkin".

I did not believe in children playing with toy guns. Not so sure I do today either. But, he was at a friend´s house and saw the toy gun and asked what it was. When he was next at daycare he found "the celery" with the Tiny Tykes plastic toys and turned it into a gun going around saying, "shoot, shoot". He enjoys range shooting today and owns several weapons.