Children's gender awareness is strengthened at the age of three and fully formed at the age of six. In other words, the four-and-a-half-year-old children are in the period of establishing gender awareness, and the inappropriate behavior you refer to is the performance of children's curiosity in this period, and it is also the performance of blurred boundaries before establishing a complete gender awareness. So as parents, there is no need to overreact to these behaviors.
The establishment of gender awareness does not depend entirely on the methods told by parents, but also needs the process of children's experience and exploration. For example, children will wonder why girls and boys have different clothes, different hair lengths and need to use different toilets. Children will even be curious, look at the bodies of children of the opposite sex in games, and play "having children" and "playing house". These are all opportunities for parents to carry out gender awareness education. A mother can tell her daughter which parts of her body are secrets that others can't see, how to identify the signs of men and women in different bathrooms, and let her daughter identify them when she needs to go out to the bathroom. If you want to improve the difficulty, you can also use neutral men and women to test your child's ability to distinguish between sexes.
In fact, children can grasp the essence quickly and accurately through the chaotic appearance. For example, some uncles have long hair, but the clothes are male, and children can quickly tell them accurately. Parents can also use the opportunity of swimming to teach their daughters why girls wear swimsuits different from boys, and the parts of them should not be exposed. If you are a son, you can ask your father to carry out this kind of education and demonstrate how boys should treat girls gracefully. This process can be completed naturally with games, and there are also children's picture books with corresponding themes for parents to choose to tell their children.
When conducting sex education, parents should pay attention to the fact that in the process of establishing children's gender awareness, parents should not confuse gender roles, such as dressing boys in typical girls' clothes and conducting education according to girls' gender. In this case, in serious cases, children will escape their natural gender because of educational pressure. These are all things I have encountered in my work, and I need parents' vigilance. If parents do this, it actually reflects their own problems, and it is recommended to seek professional psychological counseling.