All boy

Ever since I had my son, I find myself still saying "I don't like to gender stereotype" but now always followed by a gigantic "but..."

I'm certainly all "RAH RAH GIRL POWER!" and "Anything you can do I can do better" or at least equally well, perhaps in stilettos and pink lace, but yeah, Girls! Rock!

But boys, especially the rambunctious ones, are just different.

Well, for more than the obvious reasons.

I've seen and heard about my fair share of wild little girls - many of whom are the lovely daughters of my friends. And in many ways, they are very much like my wild little son, who responds best to the Cesar Milan method of parenting (you know, walk them into submission type thing) and requires constant supervision and activity lest you find your walls and his face covered in marker.

And that's on an easy day.

But there's just something about their DNA that makes their "wild" just different. Whether it's bolder, bigger, louder or faster, it's decidedly boyish, no matter how much it pains me to admit it.

And so, I have to say that I had all but given up my little pipe dream of my son ever occupying himself on his own with something constructive, at least for longer than a few minutes, and without the assistance of our friendly babysitter Diego, or his Jurassic playmates, the complete cast of The Dinosaur Train.

That was until, this weekend, when I took him, along with his collection of diggers and dozers to "the gravel pit" - or basically a huge driveway at a local park, an idea given to me by my mother-in-law who had done the same thing to day before.

(Go mother-in-law, which, well, I can't believe I said that).

And that's when I saw it. A little boy in his element, completely enraptured by pushing dirt and rocks around for almost 45 minutes.

He did the same thing the next day in their flower bed. (Whoops).

While it took me just as long to clean him off, I didn't mind the scrubbing of his dirty feet and and the scraping of his fingernails.

And instead of feeling guilty for not thinking of this sooner, and perhaps, parenting him the way I thought he should be rather than the way he really is (hey, I'm still learning), I just enjoyed watching my son be himself.

All alone. And happy.

And all boy.

Speaking of boys, I recently read an post by Jen Singer about boys and reading that you moms of boys (and hey, girls too) might find interesting.

Comments

[Zoey Martin]

Given that I only have a girl - I am afraid. Very afraid.

[mom, again]

my third child is my first boy. He's almost 3 & now that the weather is warmer & he can take all his vehicles into the garden & push mulch around all day, both our lives are easier.

about 3 years ago we couldn't afford landscaping, so just put down several inches of bark mulch to control weeds. we thought we might landscape this year, but I'm thinking fresh mulch is all we really need. He'll never stay confined n the sandbox we were thinking of getting, not when he's had the whole garden the last few weeks.

[Jack]

I love watching my daughter and friends try to figure out why her brother and his friends act as they do. It is so very funny to see them scrunch up their faces and ask "why did he do that?"

[Asianmommy]

Aww...how sweet to find out what he's meant to do and let him do it.

[Greg]

There may or may not be about 237 Matchbox cars and a couple of Tonka trucks buried behind my parents old house. There wasn't a mound of dirt, stand, gravel, pea rock, or snow myself and my four brothers didn't celebrate with the zest of a fly around shit.

[Julie @ The Mom Slant]

So true. I thought CJ was as close to a boy as I'd get, but Oliver is just innately different in a way that I can't attribute to anything other than sheer *boyness*.

[april]

So I have a prissy boy. He is Evel Knievel, and crazy loud and fun, but he does not like to get dirty. If his hands are a little dirty it's okay, but there will be no playing in the dirt, and if he falls in goop he's running to me to get cleaned up.

Maybe boy #2 (4 months out) will be different!

[patois]

Fossils. My wild child male (the younger) digs for fossils. Throughout the "back 40," which is what we call our hillside backyard. And he is content to dig.

[Karen (SubMommy)]

What an AWESOME post. Boys are totally different. Mine is El Destructo, too, except when he's at his little sports class at the gym, or is able to be outside kicking dirt around. It's like this strange little energy that absolutely MUST have the right venue to channel itself or it's bye bye decent paint job on the walls, bye bye brand new roll of toilet paper, bye bye....you know.

Boys are cool, in completely different ways than girls.

Now if I could only get him to stop yelling all the time, (does anyone deal with this? He's Little Angry Man) life would be great.

[WendyPinNJ]

Yep. I have three boys and they are just different. Very early on (mine are 11, 9 and 6) I swore there'd be no toys guns, etc., etc., etc. Then, one day, my 3-year old made a gun out of a piece of toast. Don't know where he got the idea from. We were all Sesame Street, Dora, Barney and the like. But he did it nonetheless. That's when I knew resistance was futile.

Since having found out about my second while he was still in utero, I've done extensive reading and research of my very own. I don't know nuthin' about boys! Never have.

[amanda]

I'll never know about this and so it fascinates me. Also, girls screech.

[Meredith]

I think it's fantastic that you love your son enough to admit that you are still learning how to love him for who he is, not who you wish he would be. I wish more parents learned that important skill earlier on in their children's lives!

My husband and I so badly wanted a daughter, but we got a son. When we found out we were having a boy, I was appalled at the comments I got from mothers of both boys and girls, essentially all along the lines of, "I love my daughter(s), sure. But I REALLY love my son(s)." My own MOTHER even told me that while of course she loves me, she loves my brother, well, differently. And the "differently" was said with emphasis which I inferred to mean, "more."

Now we have our boy, and he's 1 1/2, and I could not love any child more. He has a play kitchen that he loves, and a doll stroller that he is addicted to pushing around. But he's also very rambunctious and wild and this morning he ate some dirt. I *do* think it's possible to raise a boy to be a feminist without having him think that "boy stuff" is somehow "bad." My son can be wild and loud and dirty and love dinosaurs and trucks and still understand how to respect women.

I blog for the Huffington Post and wrote a piece about seeing my son within the context of a little girl's birthday party: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meredith-lopez/thank-heaven-for-little-b_b_435720.html

[Jennifer G.]

As a mom to two boys, I can relate. They are the happiest when a pile of dirt, sand or something to dig or move is around. I've embraced that the extra laundry, super dirty feet, hands and faces as well as all that dirt, sand and whatever else they drag in and onto my floors is all worth it. Their dirty chaos gives me sanity.

[Stacia]

I'm still waiting to discover what brings my son joy like this. So far, rocks are at the top of the list. Or maybe ants, but I can't be so cavalier about them. Until then, we're still watching a lot of Dinosaur Train!

[Megan]

I hate to admit it but I have a soft spot for boys. Their love for all things dirty and their constant ornery behavior. The good Lord saw fit to give me my little Q-Tip though rather than the boy I was so SURE she was. And I have never felt more blessed to have a little girl.

:-)

[Heather]

I have a boy (2.5) after two girls and I'm glad that's the order they came in. He's the one at the park whacking the trees with sticks --to the horror of every one else I'm sure. The rule now is simply---stay away from your brother when he's playing sticks. There was a mom at the park w/ twin boys around his age and she was yet on about the "ick, no! that's dirty" I really hope she learns before it's not too late. This post reminds me that I need to find the boy a digger. Two hand-me-down dump trucks are not cutting it!

[jodifur]

Ah yes, boys. I have one of of those rambunctious types myself.

Thanks for the link to that article. I learned the hard way that sometimes the school fails the child, not the other way around.

[katie]

@Mads Mom You are missing out.

[Mads Mom]

I SO know what you're talking about. Pre-baby #1, I thought I gotta have a boy, gotta have that LOUD, CRAZY kid. Now I'm glad I don't.
But I'll coo over and enjoy stories of yours!

[katie]

I have two boys. And I have a sand box. And those boys will spend all day there.

Sure, I have sand in my house. And sure they have to take a bath every night lest they have sand in their beds... but they LOVE IT.