So I'm obviously a girl. I have 2 sisters and 1 brother but my brother is 12 years younger that I am so by the time he started really getting into the whole, I'm absolutely a boy thing, I was headed to college. I also have 2 daughters. I work in church with all of the 12-18 year old girls. I know quite a bit about girls, how they work, how they think, and the whole hormone issue. It helps to have personal experience in these things to be better prepared in a crisis situation. Boys on the other hand are an entirely different story.
I do have a husband and he is a boy. Thank goodness. He has provided me with some insight into the male world, it's been interesting. But I married my husband when he was 22 years old, I stepped in mid way and didn't get to see what had brought him to legal adulthood. Our oldest child is Addy, she's a beautiful little girl who refused, for 2 years, to wear anything that was not pink. I'm not really a frilly mom, I don't wear much pink myself, I don't enjoy high heels much or doing my hair so 2 years of pink was a bit much. But she was familiar to me. I get where she's coming from. Our second child is a boy....when I went in for my 20 week sonogram and the tech said ok are you ready to find out the sex of the baby then moved the doppler my husband literally started jumping around the room yelling "I did it!! It's a boy!! I did it!!" He did it alright. I was totally shocked. Happy for sure but instantly overwhelmed. What the heck am I going to do with a boy?
Fast forward 5 1/2 years and I have the sweetest, cutest, most hilarious boy on the planet. He's a little short for his age, dark blonde (with constantly messy hair), has my build so the poor boy is just skin and bones, and laughs like a minion from Despicable Me. He loves me in a very special son/mom way and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But it took me a few years to get his number. I know without a doubt that as the years go by I'll have to adjust my footing with him but I think we have our relationship pretty well figured out. It wasn't easy getting there though....
He was my easiest and happiest baby by far. Slept pretty well, good eater, he did have ear infections from 3 months to 2 years but we were able to avoid tubes. Things started to get tricky just before he turned 3. Now I've posted before about our current 3 year old and the trials of life that are presently besetting us. You know my opinion about 3 year olds..... The problem was that a boy 3 year old is an entirely different thing than a girl 3 year old. The most marked difference was the crazy tendency to lash out physically when he got angry. My boy is sweet and loving! He doesn't hit, or kick, or push. Ha, yeah right. I couldn't figure out how all of the sudden I found myself doling out punishments daily for some kind of physical altercation. I felt like I was drowning, I was always punishing him. Always telling him to keep his hands to himself. Constantly reminding him that "hands are not for hitting" that if he had a problem to just use words and I would help him. As we were going through this I figured out 2 very important things.
He had lots and lots of physical energy. Duh Mom. He loves to run, he still loves to run. His favorite activity is for me to time him as he runs from one point to another and tell him how fast he is. He had that physical energy as a toddler. And as he was growing from babyhood to toddlerhood he was having a hard time knowing how to appropriately outlet that energy. I talked to friends of mine who had boys or brothers and the general consensus was put him in a sport. I used to judge people that would put their 3 year old's in soccer, or t-ball or whatever extracurricular activity. Why would you spend money on something like that for a kid that young? Well I no longer judge them, I am one of them. You do it because if you don't he's going to break everything in your house throwing a ball, he's going to crack his head open jumping off the kitchen table, and he's going to hit his sister. Putting him in Soccer Tots was the best decision I could have made, I think that company has since changed its name to like Youth Premier Sports or something. It was non competitive, love that. The "teams" were no more than 8 kids and he got to run, throw, kick, jump and it was all allowed! And constructive! It took his testosterone filled body and gave him an appropriate outlet.
The second thing I figured out may or may not be backed by current science. I've not researched it at all, this is just my opinion. I have noticed that when Derek starts exhibiting the signs of a growth spurt it almost always comes with his "manstration" cycle. He gets more whiney, sleeps deeper, his appetite increases and he gets very very testy. I think that a growth spurt triggers a burst of testosterone or something in boys that causes them to get irritable and more physically aggressive. I have a friend who's little boy also gets more clumsy during growth because his body can't keep up with itself. I haven't really developed any tricks to stop this from happening but it does help me deal with it knowing that every month and a half or so my happy boy will disappear for about 2 weeks and become an overly sensitive, angry, sister shover. As he gets older he's learning to control his physical aggressiveness more and more, I'm no longer afraid I'm raising a brawler (he's really too skinny for that anyway), and I'm learning that sometimes boys just need to hit something. So I'm getting better at recognizing those times and sending him to his room so he can spend some time with the Captain America punching bag he got for Christmas.
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