What to read with children. Boys’ and girls’ activities.

There’s a teacher in the USA who has lost his job because he read a book to a class of 6 to 7 year olds. The book in question is called “I need a new butt”, apparently the story of a little boy who decides his bottom is broken because he spots it has a crack in it. The head teacher of the school, when she heard what had gone on, deemed the book inappropriate and first suspended and then fired the teacher. His justification was that his class has reluctant readers and he was prepared to use any book that would catch their interest to spark a love of reading. Maybe he should have been a bit more careful but it sounds fairly harmless to me and I bet the kids loved the book. At that age, anything that sounds slightly rude makes them howl with laughter. 

Here’s another child-related matter. According to this article a frighteningly high percentage of girls lose interest in sports when they hit puberty. It’s partly peer pressure; girls can be very critical of those who do not conform to the stereotype imposed by the group. And that stereotype still often involves looking fashionably thin and wearing lots of make-up. I wonder if the rot doesn’t set in much sooner though. When our teenage grandson was a small boy, maybe aged 6 or 7, he used to go to football training. Lots of other little boys did the same. In his group there were perhaps 2 little girls, one of whom was by far the best little footballer there. What were all the other little girls doing? I wonder. 

Little boys get to see lots of footballing role models but women’s football doesn’t have anything like the same high profile. Maybe women footballers need more publicity. But maybe things are changing, according to this article. 

The former England and Arsenal forward Kelly Smith expressed her delight at the number of girls taking part in the biggest football session in schools across the country recentLy. Some 90,000 girls took part. Kelly Smith said, “I’ve seen an appetite and a hunger from these girls to want to play football. That is really, really pleasing for me because when I first started playing I was the only one in the whole school. Now, you see a whole team coming out, prepared and ready, wanting to learn and want to have fun with it. It’s great to see the numbers going up in every school that I go into.”

Let’s see if it continues.

I don’t think I knew of any girls who played football in my youth. Football was for boys and netball was for girls. Cricket was for both but quite often girls played rounders instead. Girls also played hockey, which always struck me as a ridiculously violent game, played with an extremely hard ball and involving waving sticks around. And back then the boots you wore weighed a ton. Mind you so did football boots. And In remember my younger brother having a “proper” football, one made of leather. No wonder girls didn’t play football at that time.

Modern sports equipment is so much more user friendly. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!