more gender & parenting, plus other parenting angst

1. Q is pretty universally assumed to be a girl because of his hair (sometimes even when explicitly corrected). I don't feel like this is a big problem (although I know some people disagree) but it does get particularly awkward when adults behave towards him in ways they definitely wouldn't towards a known boy - we were at a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas last weekend, and I feel like there's this over-the-top persona that, like, Mexican restaurant staff put on for white families (or maybe for others also, I've only ever been white so it's hard to say), that includes a lot of singling out girl children for attention, calling them "little princess" and shit like that, and the maitre d' was definitely directing it at both kids at first, but then maybe picked up at some point that Q was a boy and stopped towards him? I couldn't entirely tell, but it felt awkward and, I don't know, a little scary, maybe, like was my family about to get some sort of gay-panic weirdness directed at us. We did not, but my cis privilege usually insulates me way the fuck away from that sort of thing.

The whole thing is made more complicated by the fact that I hate gendered behavior towards children in general, and I hate that sort of aggressive flirting/chivalry stuff towards *me* in general, like, I wish there was some way to easily say that I am not at this restaurant to be a cultural tourist to your performance of some exaggerated cliche of Latino machismo that you think I might expect, I just want some fucking carnitas, please turn down the act or treat me like a guy for the purpose of this customer-service interaction. I'm *so* bad at confrontation, the guy was doing the "you have to SMILE, little girl" thing at J and I was just sort of quietly "she's fine" while he was there and waited until he was gone to be vehemently like "you never have to smile just because someone tells you to, it's fine to just ignore that". Blargh, I don't know. I know some people find this sort of thing charming - my parents seem to relish various stories about mariachis flirting with me when I was a small child - but I just wish it didn't exist so I didn't have to figure out how to navigate it for my kids.

2. We set up the kids' summer activities schedule to include some weeks where I would have one-on-one time with one kid while the other one was busy for most of the day, and this is one of my weeks with J and we've done some neat stuff, which is great except that I'm clicking with her and simultaneously having a really hard time with Q lately, and, ack, imbalance. I know, intellectually, that that's a thing that can happen with parenting and it's a passage and over time things will change, but I feel guilty right now about it, that I keep being like "you're so into reading now! that's delightful!" to the one kid and "OH MY GOD NO DO NOT SCOOP UP WATER FROM THE SINK WITH SOAP AND TOOTHPASTE SPIT IN IT WITH THE BATHROOM CUP THAT'S DISGUSTING AND NO DON'T THROW THAT NO HITTING STOP IT" to the other kid. Bah.