This Boy Mom Doesn't Understand Why People Keep Referring To Her Son As A "Flirt"
"It's bizarre to me."
There is something creepy about those people who are constantly saying things about kids like, “Oh, watch out! He’s going to be a heartbreaker!” or “She’s going to be gorgeous when she’s older. You’re going to have to bat the boys away with a stick.”
Why are we making sexual assumptions about kids who can barely walk? It’s truly gross and cringe.
One mom didn’t notice this kind of rhetoric until she became a boy mom, noting that her daughter never got these kinds of weird comments.
“Okay, can we just talk about the weirdest comment I get now that I have a son that I never got with my daughter?” Alysse Gilbert began.
“Anytime I'm in public and I have my son with me, if he remotely smiles at a stranger, I swear the comment I get is, ‘He's such a flirt. He's flirting with me!’ And I'm like, ‘Diane, you're nearing 65 and he's a baby. He's not flirting with you.’ It's bizarre to me. Does anyone else find that comment so weird?”
God forbid a kid just smiles and it not be turned into something weird and inappropriate.
People in the comments agreed with Gilbert’s observation, sharing other things they’ve heard about their kids and what they say back to those who make assumptions about young children.
“I always say, ‘what a strange thing to say about a child,’” one user said.
“I have literally started saying ‘no he’s not,’” another replied.
“Yes but with my daughter whenever she looks really cute they say ‘oh you’re in trouble!! You’re in trouble when she’s older!!’ That also creeps me out,” another wrote.
Others argued that the word “flirting” is nuanced and doesn’t always implicate some sort of sexual connotation.
“I use the word flirting in a ‘they’re trying to dazzle you’ kind of way. My kids are always trying to dazzle everyone with smiles. I say they’re flirting, but no one thinks I’m trying to marry them off. I feel like flirting can be used as a platonic term and doesn’t always indicate sexual attraction I know it can be weird sometimes but I don’t think it’s always meant in a weird way,” one user wrote.
Another echoed, “I think flirt can mean teasing playfully, or trying to draw attention by being cute without the sexual connotation”
However someone responded, “Flirting by definition means behaving as if attracted to or trying to attract someone else. Definitely a gross and creepy thing to say about a father and daughter.”
Another offered up the option to give those (typically older generations) who say these kinds of things the benefit of the doubt.
“I've heard this said about boys and girls. Whether you find it weird or not, I think the intentions are innocent. People are just trying to make conversation IMO! 🤷🏼♀️,” they wrote.
