I texted Ken from swimming lessons on Tuesday: There’s a boy teacher and she’s actually in the pool. Progress?

Today, when that same boy teacher invited Nora over to the pool for the same lesson she refused, burying herself in my neck and crying like I had asked her to take a lesson from the big bad wolf.

Nora has a thing against boys. I’m pretty sure she always has preferred women – it took her a while to warm up to her uncles, the threat of my dad putting her to sleep when my parents babysit has always worked to whip her right into shape – but I think at 3 1/2 this whole “thing” she has against the male gender is at its peak (or at least I hope it is).

At the start of the summer Nora found herself in a gymnastics class with no other girls. The teacher was a girl, but the other three students were boys. She whined and complained so much (and the class was a bit close to the end of nap so not so convenient for a good mood anyway) that I called and asked if there was a later class with girls enrolled. There was. She switched. She loves her “girl class.”

But I’m not switching her swimming class. She needs to learn that boys are not evil.

I tried to reason with her on the way home. I was hot and frustrated and she is 3, so you can guess how that went. She told me she didn’t like boys because “they don’t have long hair.” I very maturely responded with a laugh and a “that’s just silly, Nora.” It is silly, but there must be, I keep telling myself, something to her dislike of boys, something about her whole figuring out who she is and what her gender is about. I tell myself that’s why we are heavy in Princess phase right now too.

I listed all the boys she likes. I listed all the boys she knows who are or who were teachers. That didn’t help. She told me, ironically, that if her friend Ian was there (a boy!) she would like the boy teacher better. I can’t follow that logic, but I’m sure there’s some there.

I went out to the grocery and Ken tried to have the “boys are cool” conversation with her. She told him that she just likes Daddies. But she ended up eventually promising us both that on Tuesday she would try the class with the boy teacher. I think she could tell her dislike of boys was really stressing us out.

Perhaps this is one more way Nora’s girly-girl self is manifesting. Perhaps it’s a normal phase of gender identification? Perhaps she’s just strange. But this whole no boys allowed thing is starting to wear me out.