We spent last Sunday with good friends of ours. They have four girls aging from nine to three. Whenever we’re together the children all play and get along, but my son, the only male, is sometimes the odd one out. He enjoys and looks forward to playing with them, but his idea of playing isn’t always what the other girls want to do.
When we were over at their house in the afternoon he found a tool box filled with all sorts of children versions of power tools. He was so excited. He tried to get the other girls to play with him, but they were more interested in other pursuits. I was told by the twins, who are now nine, last summer that, “we are really girly girls and we like girly things.” They told me this when I offered up our car movie collection to see if there were any they might like. We had a lot of movies and they weren’t particularly male-oriented, they were mostly Disney and Pixar hits, but they weren’t “girly enough.”
Back to the power tools, I had found out later my neighbor’s husband had bought them to try and diversify the children’s interests, but it hadn’t been that successful so far. My son was bitterly disappointed he couldn’t take them home (even though three of the girls wanted him to keep them.)
My son also seems to have a need to be physical more than my daughter does. He wants to make contact with other bodies in an aggressive way. He’s got a lot of, “Gaaarrr!” action in him (I don’t know what that word means, but I can see my son saying it and running at someone in excitement so I’m going with the word for now.)
While we were all out earlier in the day we went to a school supply store for tax free weekend. All six of our children were having a very exciting time looking at the toys, educational items, books, art projects and other merchandise at the store. There were indoor things and outdoor things and lots of demonstration models were out to try. The older children knew this was an opportunity to select one or twelve things and explain how they just couldn’t live without the item being bought for them. My children haven’t gotten to that age yet so they just played with all the toys that were out.
And that’s when my so found the punching bag. There were boxing gloves he could easily slide on and then a punching bag on a stick that bounced back and forth on a weighted base as you hit it. We showed him the gloves and he was hooked. My friend’s husband who bought the power tools for his girls came over and started punching with him. They were killing this punching bag. My son was getting out all sorts of physical energy and he was happy.
I looked at my husband and we decided to check out the price. It wasn’t expensive, it was actually quite reasonable so we bought it. We have the punching bag in our living room right now and it gets punched every day on a relatively regular basis.
I have the same expectations for my children, but sometimes I realize gender plays a role that shapes them differently and I’m working on embracing that and helping them be successfully and if that means a punching bag in our living room, then that works for me.
The Big Boy Update: My son loves to punch the new punching bag. He likes to hit it with his hands, the gloves, his feet and even other objects in the room. He rarely walks by it without taking a swat at it.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We were eating lunch today while on the road. Everything was quiet and calm, but we had had some difficulties and strong feelings before the food arrived due to hunger issues. Food was served and everyone was quietly eating when my daughter suddenly said, “Mom, could you not be mean?” I guess I’d been having some strong feelings too.
No comments:
Post a Comment