My son has always been a real BOY. Since he was old enough to express an opinion, he’s preferred toys with wheels (cars) and he can get dirtier faster than my daughter, even if they are playing the same game. Few to none of his clothes survive him to be passed on to anyone else. Shoes? I’m lucky if they last a few months. It’s the rare pair that doesn’t fall apart from abuse before he outgrows them.
This summer he’s really been in his element. He got an early birthday present of a screened bug house. He collects grasshoppers, lady bugs, and anything else he can find – including garter snakes (that snake was not happy to be in the bug house!) His lack of fear is scaring me – I looked out of the window of the house and saw him walking up to a deer in the yard!
Some of his activities are pretty yucky though – and I’m not just saying that because I’m a girl. When we were having our extreme hike up the creek, he found a fairly well preserved dead frog. Did he fling it away in disgust? Nope, he raced it down the rapids like most kids would do with a paper boat or a stick. Not just once either – he followed it, retrieved it, and did it over and over again until the current finally swept the frog corpse under a large boulder. Even that didn’t discourage my son. At that point he attempted to build a dam so he could divert the water and reclaim the frog!
I’m glad he found a way to amuse himself so well, and maybe it is because I’m a girl, but I still can’t help thinking that the activity was more than a little gross!
There ARE genetic differences. I tried doing the ‘equality’ thing. All 3 of my kids shared a room and toys, and the girls went for the dolls, and my son went for the trucks. There was a bit of cooperative overlap, but that’s just the way they’re wired, I think.
by Terry Odell August 12th, 2009 at 4:50 pm