A simple shopping trip with her little boy turned into a serious lesson for mum Erin Farrias recently.
Having outgrown his dark blue glasses, her three-year-old son Hendrick decided he wanted his replacement to be a bit different. So he asked for ones with purple frames.
Mum Erin was a bit taken aback about this atypical colour choice for a boy and bought him green ones instead.
But it wasn’t long before her conscience was eating away at her.
“I didn’t want him to be teased,” she wrote on Facebook. “And I kept pointing to the green ones asking, ‘Don’t you like the green ones?’ Here I was, the mom who passionately wants her sons to be who they are – telling my son which glasses he should love.”
So when the green-framed glasses ended up getting scratched a few months down the track, Erin went out by herself to buy him a new pair. And this time she made the right choice: the purple ones.
“When his new purple glasses arrived and I presented them to my sweet boy…he squealed with purest joy. His smile radiated confidence.”
Delighted to see him so happy, Erin realised just how important it is to allow your child to be themselves, and she took to Facebook to spread the word to other mums.
“Perhaps if we all let our children choose to love what they love, pink or purple would just be other beautiful colours not associated with a gender.”
Adorably, his little brother Andres is getting in on this gender neutral business. Check out his pink-and-purple wheels above!
