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Today's comment comes from Katie in response to our recent article on Amy Ryken's new book about gender - Are You a Boy or a Girl?: Conversations about Gender in Elementary Classrooms.

Katie writes,

This sounds like a great book. One thought though. The fundamental way our brain works is to categorize things into same/different or bucket things alike together. My son is 4.5 yrs old and does this all the time. "Those cars are all red", "All those people over there are girls". He is just trying to understand his world better and I don't think being asked if you are a girl is bad or discriminatory. People are just trying to understand the situation better. It's the judgments and assumptions made based on those categorizations that are discriminatory and unfair. Those are the issues we need to address with our children. So when my son says "All my friends have pink skin" or "brown hair" I say "Yes, they do, that's a great observation. Does that mean they are different from you?" And the answer I am teaching him, is "no, we are all people, it's just another variation."