breaking the ice

Yesterday I had dinner at a wonderful Lebanese restaurant together with the youth forums social-inclusion working group. I tried to get to know the people a bit better and asked them for childhood myths. Things you were convinced about during childhood and were terribly disappointed when you found out is not how you explained everything to yourself.

To explain you what I mean, I will share mine with you. I was convinced that Daisy flowers are the children of Marguerites. It was quite obvious for me, that if a Daisy grows up, it would become a Marguerite.
Or I remember clearly that I was convinced, that when I drink coke, I will have brown pie. And I was watching myself pie but it did not get brown and I could not understand how and why this did not happen.
I was also convinced that cats are female and dogs are male. So if cat and dog marry and get children, their boys would be little puppies and their girls would be little kittens. I was waiting for the moment that Spike finally confesses his love to Tom and they finally live happily ever after - and maybe even adopt Jerry.

So I was sharing these stories at the Lebanese restaurant with the group and Natalia also shared a childhood myth with us. She was convinced that in your throat you have 2 tubes, one for liquid and one for solid stuff. She was really irritated how this works with soup, which is a mixture of solid and liquid stuff.

As we tried with the boys, no one had a myth to share with us. The explained, that they were basically thinking about things such as “how can I break this tool” and “how can I make this toy work” but not much more.

Now I am wondering, does gender specific socialisation have such enormous impacts already at the age of 3, so that little girls think different and question their environment much more then little boys ever start to? Please boys, share your childhood myths and tell me that you were questioning what is going on around you too!