If your the mother of a boy you know what I am talking about.  If you have multiple boys you definitely know what I am talking about and if you have a boy and a girl there is just no denying the truth.

Boys are different than girls.  My first born was a boy so I didn’t know anything different until I had my daughter.  I knew my son was active but I primarily blamed that on my own disposition instead of attributing it to the nature of boys.

Most people I knew had girls not boys and I remember when my friends would delight in the fact that there daughters knew all the nursery rhymes or could already start to write or were more social than my son.  Off he went and they usually stared at me in disbelief as I desperately tried to keep up with him as he raced to climb up mountains and run through the trees.

Yes. Embarrassing.

Then I had my daughter. Wow!  She desperately tries to keep up with him and follow him into his world of discovery but her world is vastly different.

Boys will be Boys.

At the age of three, my son, like many others ventured out in front of me and randomly picked up a stick and pretended to start shooting.  I paused for a moment in disbelief.  “Where did he learn this?, I thought. And then quickly panicked and thought “OMG”, that’s just what I need; the entire population judging me because he likes guns.”

Ask any mother, how she feels when she has a child that decides to have a meltdown in the middle of a crowded store and you will understand the judgmental thoughts that begin to fill her brain.

When I told my husband, he shrugged it off.  He was more concerned that my son’s obsession with Thomas the Train was abnormal or possibly borderline OCD.  Just FYI Diagnosis: Normal – Turns out that the Thomas The Train brand knows what they are doing. ($$$)

In conversation, my husband reflected on when he was little and said that he loved cowboy movies and was always running around and pretending to shoot guns.  And, actually to me he seemed a little excited that my son was showing interest in something that interested him.

In fact, he soon after delighted in playing video games and buying nerf guns. And, for awhile my Life revolved around ZOMBIES!

Me, thinking, that I was being the “progressive”, modern mother that I wanted to be believed whole heartedly that there was something wrong with this and I was intent on proving my point with research from the internet.

I searched frantically to make sure that this type of interest wasn’t potentially damaging. And I searched for proof to present to my husband about how violence is the problem to today’s many issues.  I found a lot of articles pointing fingers.

But, then I came across this article. It shifted my thinking.

The twig is bent, so the tree is inclined.

I don’t think that men and women respond to stimulus in the same way; in fact, I am still learning this watching how me and my husband respond differently to stressful situations.  And, I definitely don’t think we learn the same way.

This probably seems like an elementary observation for most mothers and is pretty simple to understand until you factor in that our entire school system is developed around the way girls learn.

huh? Yep – that’s right.  Perhaps that’s the reason why ADD is 3x more likely in boys than girls!!

Don’t get me wrong I hope my son grows up to be in touch with his feminine side but I have come to understand that that needs to come after fully learning what it means to be a boy.

Live and Learn. We all Do.

Thanks for Reading.  Please pass this on to someone who means something to you.