Girls - Let's Play. House?

[Barbigirl]

The Opie/Cowboys/Hero thread made me wonder....are younger girls as a rule into video games as much as boys? If no, what do they play?

When I was young we played a lot more pretend imagination for entertainment than anything else. The top of our list was house, school, shopping, beauty parlor and playing dressup. I lived in a neighborhood that had many more girls than boys, the "husband" character was always at work.

We did have plenty of toys. A lot of them were props for the pretend stuff, dolls, grocery cart with food/kitchen accessories until getting a little older and moving onto legos/board games etc. For the record, I didn't really have many Barbies, but my sisters who are quite a bit younger did. Not much TV for us, we only got 3 channels out in the desert for years.

We ran about the neighborhood and had to be home by dark but for my generation I think we were required to do a lot more check ins...i.e. whenever you get to someone's house, call and tell where you are. I think we were on probably a two hour check in schedule. While parents today are protective of keeping track of their children at every moment I question how do they deal with "kid is driving, parental control is gone", how prepared is the kid and parent for that first step of empty nest?

My own daughters enjoyed lots of pretend when they were little but I think I played with them enough to help perpetuate that. They detest video games, although they love being on the web. I think imagination is precious and still use mine all the time.

Girls playing---what have you observed?

 

[Foofoogal]

I have 2 grandaughters 9 and 10 years old.
They are not allowed so much to sit in front of video games and tv for hours. We did buy them a WI for Christmas and they dance around to the games. Very nice invention.
The 9 year old is a computer whiz and I mean whiz.
The 10 year old is an artist and very creative. A tomboy like me though and she likes to hang out with the guys more on a supervised basis of course.
They both constantly are making stuff. Art work and I and other family members give them tons of art supplies. Barbies but not so much now. Babydolls etc. I still try to slip them in and the Webkins fit that bill some.
They played and still somewhat play school and grocery store for hours.
One is in a running club and one an Art club. They have been in activities like swimming, softball, riding lessons etc.
I think there are opportunities to do alot as kids still with other kids but it takes creativity and parental involvement to take them places to do it.
They are in a controlled military environment so it makes Nana a bit less paranoid. lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

My cousin and I loved to play Store. We'd take a card table out into the street and actually sell food, anything we could scrounge out of the kitchen -- dry toast, little baloney sandwiches, crackers, cookies, whatever was lying around -- for a penny a serving. Occasionally our grandfather would pick up a box of bubble gum, baseball cards, or Tootsie Rolls from the tobacco-candy wholesaler and give it to us, and we'd re-sell that. Once we asked if he could get us some cigarettes to sell, but he drew the line at that.

One year for Christmas I got a "Big Burger Grill" set. This was the same idea as an Easy-Bake Oven, only it had an open steel griddle heated by a 150-watt lightbulb. A great toy for any six year old, and I have scars on my arm to prove it. You could actually fry hamburgers on it, so we helped ourselves to a pound of ground meat and went out on the sidewalk with a long extension cord and did just that, selling them for a nickel each.

Apparently the guy who ran an actual hamburger stand up the road didn't appreciate our youthful initiative, because he sent a cop over to ask to see our food permit. Which of course, we could not produce, and that was the end of our hamburger-selling days. As far as I know, we didn't give anybody food poisoning.

There was very little segregation-by-sex in my neighborhood -- the boys and the girls pretty much mingled at will and we all played baseball and kickball in the street, some better than others, but nobody ever got turned away for not being good enough. There were no coaches, no fields you had to reserve ahead of time, no rules except the ones we made up, and no whiny type-A parents ruining everybody's fun.

However, it was very different in school. There, the boys and girls were split down the middle -- the girls played jump rope and tetherball such on the lower asphalt playground and the boys ran around beating each other up on the upper, dirt-and-mud field, with an open sewer culvert in between the two sections. Occasionally a boy would jump across and try to disrupt what we were doing, but we'd chase him back and push him in.

 

[Paisley]

In the first house I remember living in, there were about five other kids on the block. We jumped on a neighbor's trampoline and another girl taught me gymnastics and we played whatever games we made up.

When I was eight, we moved to a suburb of mostly middle-aged couples whose kids had flown the coop. I read a lot and took up painting. There was nothing else to do and nobody to do it with.

 

[just_me]

Most of the girls and boys played all the street games together (I grew up in NYC). Punchball, stickball, boxball, skellie, three feet to Germany, red light green light, spud, hide and seek, etc. We roller skated too on the metal skates that you attached to your shoes. The girls also played potsie (that's what hopscotch was called in Brooklyn ), jump rope, and bouncing ball games like "A my name is Alice."

My best friend and I were horse crazy so we set up scenarios where we had imaginary horses and lived the imaginary lives we wished we had.

My daughter is grown up now. Though computer games were just starting to get popular when she was a kid, she didn't get into them very much. When she wasn't riding an actual live horse, she was playing with Breyer horses lol , ice skating, or playing sports.

 

[DerMann]

Girls my age (18) hardly play video games. I know a few, and dated one.

Video games, at least serious ones, are still very male dominated. Although there are more and more girls getting into video games every day.

 

[Lady Day]

There are more women behind the gaming world designing them and such than playing them. I too have that type of mind think.

I grew up in the 80s, so it was cartoon toys all the way. I had My Little Pony, but I LOVED by brother's Transformers, GI Joes, He Man (I had my own Skeletor) and stuff. Also, they had much better cartoons. I do remember liking the cartoon Jem, only because she had wardrobe changes.

Girls played outside more than boys in my neighborhood, especially when Nintendo came around and would rather watch someone play an entertaining video game than play it myself (I often forfeited my turn). But boys and girls both jumped rope, climbed trees, and had neighborhood adventures together.

I was an odd child, I liked sewing bags to put books I would make into. I painted with old nail polish outside on a picnic blanket where I would make the books. I wrote a lot of fairy tales and adventure stories as a child in those books. I made these giant bird sculptures out of paper. I LOVED plants, and dirt and bugs and mud pies, still do.

LD

 

[Mojito]

I loved critters (there are old family friends who are *still* bewildered at how I managed to grow up and not be a naturalist). When we were living in Oz, my summer days were spent swimming in the surf or wandering the rock pools. Barefoot, tanned and hanging around with the neighbourhood kids. We played football (soccer) on the road (!), built tree houses, were fascinated by Native American culture and tried to imitate it. I had dolls houses and loved them, but spent a lot of time playing acting the historical lives of the characters I read about. When we lived in a NY apartment building, there was a lot of that - putting on plays and performances, although my grandmother and parents tried to get us out as much as possible to Central Park (roller skating was huge at the time). In Singapore there was a lot of swimming, but not so many other outdoor activities...we played more Atari games there, in the cool of the airconditioning.

 

[BinkieBaumont]

Instead of Cops and Robbers I played cocktail parties, I had to tell everyone who they were!!!!!!
"ok so you are Hitler and its a cocktail party, this is the Duke of Windsor"
They never GOT IT

 

[imoldfashioned]

I've never played a video game. There weren't any boys in my neighborhood but there was a group of girls. We played the traditional stuff like kickball, but we made up some other stuff too. Court--one of us was the judge and another would make up some crazy case. We also played Statuemaker--one of us would take each person by the hands, spin them around and let go. Whatever position the person fell in was the statue. Then someone else would be the buyer and pick their favorite statue. Did anyone else play this or was it a product of our odd imaginations?

 

[Foofoogal]

sort of sounds like our freeze tag with a spin on it. [huh] lol

 

[Kitty_Sheridan]

Lady day,
glad I'm not the only FL tomboy!

I like action man, and played the Three musketeers, scooby doo and pilots! I did have a hobby horse, but hated dollies and playing house.

We did however make our own 'perfume' this was crushed up old petals in old pop bottles! There was one sweet old lady who always used to buy it and told us that she and her sister used to make their own rosewater. I'm startin to make proper rosewater now and I always think of her, the sort of old lady you want for a granny.

 

[miss_elise]

yes I played 'house' and 'supermarket' (we had a little trolley and cash register... and a little box of fake cigarettes as well)

my sisters and i had a 'town' in our house... I was the 'bank' (which I ruined my carpet with my colouring bank notes with crayon... crayon was everywhere), the garbage collector and the very important 'tooth paste lid cleaner'...

my most important achievement was to get the 'town council' to change the postcode to include my favourite number... we still have the minutes and the town library

but I never had a barbie... so I still feel deprived...

we also played a lot of imaginary games outside... bicycles became horses... cubbies became castles... but I don't think we every waited around to be rescued by any princes...boy were smelly

 

[maybelaughter]

the only time i remember playing house was when i want to daycare and the woman in charge's daughter (she was older than me) would invite me to come play with her and her friends and we played house.
barbies were pretty big for me - one of my friends and i made them clothing. i also like the grand champions horses. i pretty much lived outside when the weather was nice - swimming, making mud puddles in mom's garden, playing 'garden'.
i grew up in the extreme country, where everyone else lived on a farm, and nobody lived close. my mom's best friend had children around the age of me and me sister and we would get together often, and there were some kids at church, but other than that i didn't see other kids outside of school.
when i started school, i became a bit of a recluse. at recess i read a lot.... i read a lot in general. i had a few friends that i would play with, and we'd swing on the swingsets and sing children's bible songs (like father abraham...)
i never even saw a video game until i was in junior high....

 

[maybelaughter]

my niece is 5 and she has a little computer, plays dora the explorer games, and watches too many movies. she does like to color and play with her new barbies, and play in the 'hay home' when she visits her grandparents, but for a while the only thing she talked about was the latest movie she'd seen....[huh]

 

[der schneider]

the girl across the street always wanted to play cats and dogs!! woof woof
sometimes we played Mod squad a twist on cops and robbers I wonder if she remembers when the bad guys tied us to a tree?

I recall spending a lot of time outdoors unsupervised with other kids in the nieghborhood. Her parents had a bell they would ring when it was time to come home.

I knew a few girls that played house It wasnt my cup of tea.

I didnt like basketball or baseball either I would rather play soldier or catch snakes.

I lived in a fantasy world most the time