Jack and Jill may have gone to fetch a pail of water together, but that doesn’t mean they chose to be partners. Given the opportunity, Jill might have preferred a female BFF along for the trek. Especially if they were seven years old at the time.

Grade 3 teacher Jodie Humen of Gileichen, Alta., sits her pupils in rows now, but used to have them sit in pairs. “They’re picky about who they sit with anyway, but in most cases they do not want to sit with anyone of the opposite sex. And given the opportunity to pick a partner, they always go with someone of the same sex.”

play preferences

Kindergarten may have been one big happy coed playgroup, but at this age kids suddenly seem to realize that the world is divided into boys and girls, and begin segregating themselves in certain situations. It’s not exactly a battle of the sexes. Instead, it’s more like an armistice, even though no one was fighting to begin with.

“Children make decisions about their own gender and what that means to them,” says Alyson Schafer, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, parenting expert and author of Breaking the Good Mom Myth (John Wiley & Sons Canada). “It’s a developmentally important part of growing up.”

“On the playground,” says Humen, “they play with each other for some games, like tag, but other games seem to attract more of one gender than the other.” Kids tend to play together according to what they’re interested in; boys prefer more active activities than girls do. At the same time, girls will start to make decisions about whom to include — and unfortunately, exclude — in their play sooner than boys will.

find a common ground

“Madeleine plays with both boys and girls,” says North Hatley, Que., mom Marnie Quirk of her six-year-old daughter. “But when her “boy’ friends visit, she tries to play the same things she plays with her sisters, like dolls.”

Encouraging activity in coed groups during and after school, exposing kids to a wide range of toys and games that aren’t specifically “boyish” or “girlish,” and refraining from commenting on the fact that your son’s best friend is a girl is a good place to start. It also helps if you include both genders among your own friends, as kids often look to adults for cues about social organization.

“As much as social equality is improving,” says Schafer, “we still do a lot of gender bashing as adults.” So ideas like “men are helpless in the kitchen” or “women shop too much” will be absorbed — whether your kids hear it in adult conversation or from the latest sitcom — and translate at the playground as boys are dumb or girls just want to talk about clothes and dolls and aren’t interested in sports or active play.

separate but equal

Kids are probably going to make decisions based on gender anyway, but parents can remind their child that every person — boy or girl — deserves respect, a concept Quirk’s daughter seems to understand. “Madeleine made her own valentines this year,” says Quirk. And everyone in the class got one, even if it meant “all the girls got a heart on the front and all the boys got a truck.”

Writer Shelley Divnich Haggert knows her three teenaged daughters have gotten over thinking boys are icky.

Wondering how to get your kids to get along too? Keep reading to stop warring siblings.