Learning how to play with the boys

One day Allie came home from school and said that none of the boys would play with her. I brushed her off as being overly dramatic and told her to go play with the girls instead. She walked away from me looking pretty dejected and a part of me felt like I had won the “Worst Mom of the Year” award.

That night I replayed our short conversation over again in my head and thought maybe she was more interested in what the boys were doing than the girls.  Maybe she thought she could be just as good as they were at their game and wanted to give it a try.

What message was I unintentionally sending to her? Did I make her feel that she wasn’t good enough to play with the boys?  Was I completely forgetting my own childhood where I grew up with two older brothers, neighborhood boys, and a handful of girl friends?

My typical weekend as a five year old consisted of playing basketball, climbing trees, setting up He-Man’s Castle Grayscull, and watching Thunder Cats.  I had no choice, if I was going to have any fun back then, I  eventually had to figure out how to play with the boys. And I had to figure out how to be just as good as they were if not better.

Then I thought about Allie 13 years from now potentially pursuing the male dominated fields of math and science.  It brought me back to my engineering classes where all the boys would stare at me when I walked in the room because I was one of the only girls in the room. It also made me think of my days in the offshore oil industry where I was the only girl on the helicopter flying offshore. And maybe 1 of 3 females that actually stayed on the platform overnight. I had no choice. If I was going to graduate a chemical engineer and work in the competitive oil industry, I had to figure out how to “play with the boys”.

Fortunately for me sometimes life gives us a re-do and for me it happened again a few days later.  Allie recapped her day at school and said again, none of the boys would play with her. This time I had a clear response in my head.  I asked her what games the boys were playing and why she wanted to play with them.  Then I gave her this advice:

Start her own interesting game and invite them to play.

We had just read Best Friends for Francis at our local library and Francis the badger had a similar circumstance. Francis wanted so badly to play with her friend Albert but he started a no-girls baseball game.  So Francis and her sister Gloria started a no-boys game that involved food and catching frogs. Eventually, Albert caved because he was hungry and found what they were doing to be more interesting.  We can all learn a thing or two from cute badgers.

Involve food and everyone wins

On the schoolyard I enjoyed playing kickball with the boys.  I wanted so badly to be team captain and choose my own team but I was always picked last. In my mind it was because I was the only girl – not because I wasn’t any good. I kicked my fair share of ‘homeruns’.

Then my mom started putting a few Jolly Ranchers in my lunch.  That afternoon, I was elevated to kickball team captain by giving the school bully (and dominate kickball player) a few jolly ranchers at lunch time.  I’m not proud of it, but it worked. I think he even defended me a few times on a few sketchy kickball calls.

Believe it or not, this works in the adult world too.  They didn’t call me “Brownie Borgmeyer” on the offshore platform for nothing.  Baking brownies for your male dominated team can make you an invaluable team member.  And of course it shows you care. It reminded all of us of being home and working hard as a team so we could go home safely.

Do your best even if you are the only girl

Believe it or not, so often in the corporate world I just plain forgot that I was the only girl in the room.  We were just a bunch of engineers working to the same goal.

Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo and first female engineer at Google) said this when asked about being the only woman at Google, “I’m not really a woman at Google – I’m a geek at Google. . surrounded by people who love technology and love to try out the latest gadgets… we’re excited about the same things, and that’s our common ground.”

I think eventually, in life or on the schoolyard, it comes down to who is doing their personal best and building up her team to achieve great things.

So for now, I think I’ve solved this preschool dilemma.  I have no doubt it will come up again. But at least I have Francis, some brownies, and some great female role models to guide the way for Allie.