According to my three-year-old, bats and butterflies cannot occupy the same space in a human heart.

Boys like bats.
Girls like butterflies.

Simple as that.

I’m not sure if it has something to do with sugar and spice and puppy dogs tails or something, but she associates girls with the fluttery beauty of a butterfly, and boys with the flapping, scary, webbed wings of a bat.

I’ll be honest. I don’t like bats. And she doesn’t like bats (apparently). Maybe she’s on to something.

Or maybe its something else. The only real “boys” in her life (aside from her male preschool playmates at church) are her father and her two Papas. Each one of them is a strong man, both in physique and in personality, definitely strong enough to overpower a bat.

Maybe she’s just cluing in early to the differences between men and women. That its alright to like feminine things. That its alright to allow a boy to be strong and be a “man”. That there are distinctions between the genders.

Boys and girls are different. And I think its alright to allow her this, to explain this, to help her understand how a husband should treat a wife, how a wife should love her husband. My daughters won’t have to fight the battles of equal rights for women. Those have already been won. The battle they will fight is that to keep their femininity sacred and separate and beautiful. They will have to fight to just be girls.

I’m sticking with butterflies and I’ll let her daddy take care of the bats.