Nobody knows – except the parents of “Pop,” a 2-year-old in Sweden whose parents refuse to reveal whether their child is a boy or girl.

Pop’s mom and dad decided to keep their child’s gender a secret because they believe gender is a social construction, according to a recent story published in The Local: Sweden’s News in English.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother told the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

 By doing this, their child won’t be subject to society’s tendency to stereotype based on gender, they said. According to The Local, Pop (not the child’s real name) wears both dresses and pants. Pop’s hairstyle also changes on a regular basis.

The family has received both positive and negative feedback. The Local interviewed Kristina Henkel, a gender equality consultant in Sweden, and she said Pop’s lack of gender-identity might be a good thing.

“Girls are told they are cute in their dresses, and boys are told they are cool with their car toys. But if you give them no gender they will be seen more as a human or not a stereotype as a boy or girl,” Henkel told The Local.

The Local also interviewed Susan Pinker, a psychologist, Canadian newspaper columnist and author of the book, “The Sexual Paradox.” “Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual,” Pinker told The Local.

What are your thoughts on this family’s decision? How do you think this experiment will affect Pop as he or she grows up? How long can a child remain “gender-free”?

A growing number of families have hit a crisis point, according to this recent USA Today story, “As economic fears rise, families on verge of unraveling.”

Parents are suffering from stress and sometimes can’t cope with economic uncertainty, experts say. The worst-case scenario happened in Los Angeles late last month, when Ervin Lupoe became so depressed about losing his job that he killed his wife and five children before taking his own life, according to CNN and other news reports.

In the last few months, more Americans have turned to therapists, according to the USA Today story. Domestic violence and suicide hotlines also have reported increased calls.

It’s not just the parents who have lost their jobs, therapists say. People who are still working also experience anxiety because they don’t know if they’ll be able to hang on to what they have. Inevitably, children begin to share their parents’ worries and burdens.

Around Christmas time, we had a discussion about the need for transparency – how families can benefit when parents can discuss problems with money and talk to kids about the economy and their fears. But even then, some parents have a hard time reassuring their children – simply because they themselves don’t know if things will be OK.

Besides just talking about it and perhaps coming up with a savings plan, what else can families do to keep it together during these tough economic times?

Sometimes, it is easier to measure how much a child has learned through scores, a grade or something equally tangible.

But as many of us have discovered, the numbers or grades don’t tell the whole story. They’re a snapshot of a moment, perhaps, but they’re certainly not a reflection of the whole child – his or her knowledge, talents and awareness of others and the world.

Since I’m relatively new to parenting, I sometimes worry that my 5-year-old isn’t ready for school, that he hasn’t learned how to read and write like other kids, that he might already be behind everyone else even before starting kindergarten.

I’m grateful for my son’s preschool teachers, who continue to teach me that there are other ways of knowing, other indicators that my son is on a healthy path to becoming a lifelong learner besides the traditional methods of paper and pencil exercises and keeping score.

One of the teachers recently loaned me this pamphlet, “A Parent’s Guide to Early Childhood Education,” by Diane Trister Dodge and Joanna Phinney. (It’s available through a website called www.TeachingStrategies.com.) “Our goal is to help children become independent, self-confident, inquisitive learners. We’re teaching them how to learn, not just in preschool and kindergarten, but all through their lives,” they wrote.

One section also addresses how and when a child should be learning reading, writing and mathematics:

“We could give your children workbooks. We could make them memorize the alphabet. We could drill them. We could test them. But if we do, your children may lose something very important. …

“Children who are rushed into reading and writing too soon miss important steps in learning and may suffer later on because they lack the foundation they need for using language. Children who are taught to read before they are ready may be able to sound out and recognize words, but they may also have little understanding of what they are reading. If they haven’t been given time to play, they won’t have explored objects enough to know what words mean. …

“Because math involves more than memorizing facts, because it involves logical thinking… children need many opportunities to count objects, sort them into piles and add some to a pile and take some away. It is by playing games like these that they will learn to truly understand addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Without these concrete experiences, children may give correct answers but probably won’t understand what they are doing and why.”

What do you think? When and how did your child start learning how to read, write and do math? How do you teach your children to become lifelong learners?

I have a friend who told his kids from the time they were little that there was no such thing as Santa. He’s not one of those people who think Santa is the anti-Christ. He’s also not one to protest the commercialization of the holidays. He and his wife simply didn’t want to lie to their kids, he said.

In this San Jose Mercury News story,

<a href=”http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_11220771“>Does the Santa Claus story need a makeover?</a> reporter Lisa Fernandez interviewed parents about their Santa practices at home. She also poses the question: “Is Santa an elaborate lie that is the ultimate symbol of the holiday’s commercialization? Or does he represent the imagination and innocence of childhood that should be preserved until puberty?”

About 96 percent of children younger than 5 think Santa is real, according to a poll conducted by a parenting group called Family Education. By the time they’re ages 8 to 10, more than half no longer believe.

As a child, did you write letters to Santa? How about your own kids? Do they believe? When did you spill the beans about Santa Claus?