Question about childhood toys and if they really define us

[Swedishgirl96]

If you walk in to a toy store almost all of the toys are marketed towards girls or boys. And the marketing can be quite extreme.

There is a lot of young boys that want to paint their nails and there is a lot of young girls that likes trains or construction. We as a society really must understand what kind of signals we are sending to our children. Today the norms are strong. Be in this way or like this and so on. But it does not have to be like this. Everyone should be free to be themselves and feel pride and happiness. No-one should be bullied or picked on because of who they are. It's terrible.

I like this old letter from Lego:

[transspoonie]

I played with just about everything, honestly. Dolls, stuffed animals, toy cars, Legos, video games, etc. I wanted to create things, tell stories, and experience fantastical things; I don't think my gender factored into it. If I couldn't build with it, or build an interesting narrative around it, I wasn't interested.

I also grew up on a small farm, so I wasn't a stranger to dirty clothes and scraped knees. I have fond memories of catching small animals (bugs, tree frogs, lizards, etc.), rolling around with our dogs in the grass, and sprinting around like a wild child until I collapsed in the dirt. My mother didn't care what I played with, or how I played, as long as I didn't hurt myself, hurt someone else, or break something important.

I think our enjoyment of certain toys/styles of play growing up are less related to gender than they are our natural proclivities. I've always been creative, and I much prefer creative "toys," even today. There's no way to prove if being nonbinary caused it, or if being autistic caused it, or if I'd have been this way regardless; toys are toys, and I liked just about all of them.

[Linde]

We did not have very much in toys in post WWI Germany with the father a prisoner of war in Siberia, and a Jewish mother.  My sister and I played with the same toys, and whatever could be considered to be toys.  Our biggest problem is getting enough to eat and not going to bed hungry.  It got better when my dad came back in early 1950, and he could go with an old bicycle to his uncles and aunts who had farms about 50 miles away from were we lived.  He brought good quality food back for us from every trip, and hunger became a thing of the past.  I don't remember what toys we had later I just remember that my sister had a little hand cranked sewing machine, and I liked to sew stuff for the dolls of my sister on it.  She did not like anything I made for her dolls, and that made me cry each time she rejected a piece I had made with all the labor of love!

I don't know how much this formed me, but I never ever will forget how it feels to go to bed being hungry.  Still today I am not able to throw food away!  I eat it, even if I don't like it!