"Boys Can't Do That."

"Did everyone love your painted nails?" I asked my son after picking him up from Pre-K.

Just the other day, he and his two sisters sat at the table, excitedly watching as I painted their nails bright red.

I then took one of my nail stamps to put the image of a cat on their thumbnails.

To preface, before I asked him about his nails, he had been upset about how he wanted it to be his birthday because one of his classmates had a birthday today.

"Can we go get a balloon right now?" He had asked.

And even after explaining why we couldn't do that right now, he was still upset and confused about why he couldn't just pick when to celebrate his birthday with cupcakes and balloons.

(If you let a 4-year-old have it their way, they'd celebrate their birthday every day, after all.)

So after multiple attempts to explain, I eventually tried to redirect the conversation to something that would make him happier.

Or, so I thought.

Instead, I almost started crying as I watched his big brown eyes fill with tears, his lower lip poke out, and his sweet, small voice say,

"No, a girl told me I couldn't have painted nails. She said boys can't. They're not allowed. And they're not allowed to wear dresses."

"And did that make you sad?" I asked, trying to hold back my own tears.

He whimpered as he nodded and I pulled him in close.

"Well, she's wrong, buddy. Boys can paint their nails if they want. Boys can wear dresses."

This seemed to help him a little as he finally climbed into his car seat.

"You want to go home and find a dress to wear?" I asked him.

"Yeah, but I want my own dress. Can you sew me one, mommy?"

"I certainly can, baby."

"With bananas on it and pancakes," he said with a grin as I buckled him in, "and cars, dirt, and bananas!"

I laughed and told him that was certainly a creative dress and he talked about that dress all the way home.

And I can make him a dress. I will.

For those who don't know, I had a sewing business for a while selling handmade children's clothing. And I made plenty for my two older girls and eventually for my son after he was born.

As he got older, he saw these pretty dresses his sisters were wearing and often asked to wear one when the girls were at school.

I still have the most precious video of him wearing Ava's fancy pink dress with the ruffled butterfly sleeves, walking as carefully as a princess might do down the stairs.

He even held a corner of the dress.

And when he reached the bottom, he twirled for me with the biggest grin on his face.

I will cherish that memory for the rest of my days.

But when we made it home, as soon as he was settled and playing while munching on a snack, I had to hide in my and my husband's bedroom to cry while I folded laundry.

To be honest, I'm still a little emotional about it and I'm not even due to have a period for several weeks.

So I can't blame it on that.

Perhaps it's because my grandfather passed away last month and I'm still grieving and recovering from that. Perhaps it's because I've been stressed out a lot over finishing the book I'll be handing over to beta readers soon.

Maybe it's because I already deal with anxiety as it is.

But what I do know is this:

Seeing my little boy so broken-hearted because someone told him he couldn't do something because he was a boy...really pissed me off.

I'm not upset with the little girl who said it to me.

She's only four years old too, after all.

I'm upset with the parents.

I'm upset with the world we've built.

I'm upset with where our society is currently. (Honestly, where is has been for centuries.)

My little boy is four.

What on Earth do you say to a sweet, innocent, four-year-old who proudly wears a unicorn backpack to school every day when someone says,

"You can't do that because you're a boy."

And I have to ask two questions to this cruel world who even came up with this idea...

Why are we allowing this to be said to CHILDREN?

And who on Earth said so?

Who has the authority to say what a boy or girl can or can't wear?

Why can't my son love pink and tractors?

Why can't my son love manicures and bugs?

Why can't my son love dresses and cool dino shirts?

Why should sacrifice my children's feelings for the fragile ones of grown adults?

And I would ask the same questions for my daughters, but I won't spell it out because we all know how hard women have it right now. That's a whole topic of its own.

Bottom line:

I want BOTH sexes of my children to grow up to feel like they can express themselves with a sense of freedom in a country that prides itself on the word.

I want them to love themselves and love others.

I want them to know that God only cares about their heart. That it doesn't matter if you wear rags, pretty dresses, dino shirts, paint your nails, or chop off all your hair.

God loves them. I love them. Their daddy loves them. And there are other people in the world who will accept and love them just the way they are too.

For the love of all that is good in this world...he's four years old.

Let him be a child.

Let him discover what he likes and dislikes.

I'm twenty-nine years old and I'm still figuring out what I like and dislike. There are things I like now that I didn't like ten years ago or even last year.

And there are things I dislike now that I used to love as a teenager, thinking I would love it forever.

There are days I want to dress up in steampunk outfits.

Other days I want to wear blues, greens, and browns.

And sometimes, I'm the messy bun mom wearing the same clothes I wore two days in a row.

But at the end of the day, we are all just humans.

We were created to create which in turn is our expression of ourselves.

So let us express ourselves.