Oh how times have changed...

On exiting Bunnings Warehouse I was met by 3 extremely excited Girl Guides who bombarded me (nicely) asking if I would like to buy some biscuits – ‘how could I resist’ – and happily went away with my packet of Original Girl Guide biscuits (chocolate versus original – hard decision but original won this time).

I went home to my darling 2 ½ year old twin boys, gave them a nice big hug and proceeded to make a cup of tea and dig into my first Girl Guide Biscuit for the year – dunked in tea is my preference! On my third or possibly 10th biscuit (I wasn’t counting) I had a read of the packet which stated...

‘...By selling biscuits girls develop skills such as decision-making, customer service, marketing and money management....’ Girl Guides

I was in awe of how times have changed and how exciting times are for women. It’s great to read such a statement which is written by an organisation built on such old foundations and morals. A statement which epitomises women of today, this statement is written to show parents of these girls and all parents that men and women are in fact equal and can strive to be in control of their own lives.

I know this isn’t news to anyone (or I hope it isn’t!), men and women are equal – we all can live independently, have own education, money, jobs... What excites me though is that young girls are being taught this by Girl Guides and in a way the timing in which I came to buy my biscuits is quite ironic.

I am a strong believer that women can do anything. I happened to be in Bunnings buying Post Caps for the picket fence and gate that I had planned and built over the summer months and it happened to be here that Girl Guides are selling biscuits - in an overtly male place (statistics still show this) but with families galore wandering the isles.

When we had the Little Kickers Head Coach come over from the U.K. for initial training he was taken aback by how many girls we had in our classes versus what they have in the U.K. I was so pleased with this, that there are no pretences as to what a girl should participate in versus a boy. They understand the importance of active movement (no matter their sex). Girls enjoy our sessions just as much as the boys and we only see this increasing because sports/ hand eye coordination/ active movement is such a vital role in development of these early years with reading, writing and numerical reasoning.

NZ Football have seen a drop in female players at the age of 8 and over the last few years have put huge emphasis in developing females within the sport which is seeing an improvement already. It is exciting that we at Little Kickers have so many female coaches who are excellent role models to show both boys and girls that it’s a multi-sex sport.

I love New Zealand for being such a young country and able to cut away any pretences of ‘yee oldy’ days. Sport is sport and a child is a child!