Aye! Aye! Captain!
Chris Brogan tweeted this picture from his doctor’s office yesterday and it made me laugh out loud (maybe a little too loudly), and here’s why:
Last holiday season, the hubby took our three kids for their annual shopping outing to Get Mom a Christmas Present. My daughters chose lovely smelling spa stuff and beautiful Maggie B accessories. My son was most excited about his pick because he knew, without a doubt, that I would love it. Behold…
Epic Bathroom Culture Clash
We have bathroom issues in my family. I may have mentioned this before.
I start to hyperventilate in public restrooms, and with 3 children, chances are good that I’ve visited every public restroom in my travel path for the past 15 years. I have done my best to instill in my children a healthy phobia of public bathrooms in conjunction with the eternal mortification of a potty accident. So what if we are on a razor wire of anxiety anytime we leave the house for more than an hour? I’m OK with that.
I am only too happy to pass on my bathroom issues to those I love, but my husband comes from another breed: those who fail to harbor any shame about what goes on behind closed doors. He grew up with only brothers. His mother, likewise, had only brothers. I can only surmise that she was desensitized early on to the inelegance of potty talk.
My family, on the other hand, would never acknowledge until my father was on his near-death bed (I am not making this up) that any of us actually pooped. In the close quarters of 2 weeks in an ICU and the horror of nearly losing my father, we had the perverse adreaction that inspired us to not only talk about our bathroom intentions, but to be most creative in compiling our favorite euphemisms for this particular bodily funtion. (My personal favorite: dropping the kids off at the pool. Trust me you will never actually be able to drop your kids off at the pool with a straight face again.)
But I digress…Prior to this life changing event, my mother stalwartly refused, and continues to this day, to keep reading material in the bathroom. I’ve never seen my dad casusally go in or out of the bathroom with even a section of newspaper. This sort of behavior would be simply beyond the pale of social decency. My husband, though, never goes in empty handed. Whether it’s a golf score card, magazine or novel, the volume of reading material he will store in the bathroom is only limited by square footage.
I tend to side with my mother on this one, and I’ve fought this battle for years. So I guess it was just a matter of time before the boy (who had figured out how to watch TV while – erm – indisposed) would emerge from the bathroom with a Sports Illustrated tucked under his arm. (I think it is no coincidence that this was the week after he began football practice.)
What’s a selectively anal-retentive girl to do? Am I in a losing battle?
Boys Are Different
I was made to parent girls. I am infinitely patient, empathetic, encouraging. Where others find cringe-worthy whining and drama, I see an opportunity to teach a girl how to express herself appropriately, manage her feelings, protect her sense of self. I am the antidote to drama. So with my first two children being lovely girls, easy and delightful in every way, I did plenty of patting myself on the back for my superior parenting skills.
And then it happened (cue ominous music here). The boy arrived in our life.
I knew from early on that this was going to be a bumpy ride. The first two preganancies, I was glowing – Madonna-esque (that would be the mother of God, Madonna, not the material girl, Madonna) – the picture of maternal radiance. The third time around, I puked until the blood vessels in my face broke giving me two black eyes – not for just the predictable1st trimester morning sickness, but all day every day for the whole frickin’ term. But I’m over that – really.
He has proven to be all boy ever since – burlier, busier, never failing to be amused by anything to do with butts, snot or spit. He loves cars more than anything, and I am grateful that he has had little interest(so far) in guns, video games, WWF or other uber violent play. I knew, however, it would be just a matter of time before the Tueday Night Cage Match came to town.
My husband was a high school wrestler and retains a love of the sport, the real sport of wrestling. So one night he challenged the boy to a match. We all found this enormously entertaining, despite the fact (or maybe because) the match quickly devolved into a lot of rolling, kicking, punching, and hair pulling that spread to some of the sibling bystanders. I thought to myself, “What on earth are we doing here?”
This is not what we are about, and yet it felt frighteningly natural to encourage this boy behavior. I’ve discovered within myself a niggling “might makes right” mentality of which I’m not terribly proud. The big sisters have always been overly solicitous to the baby boy, but now that he is bigger and more aggressive with them, I find myself less patient with their whining and complaints.
I say very helpful things like, “Well, who’s bigger?” or “Do what you need to do, I’ll be in the other room watching Ghost Whisperer,” and quietly, I hope they will just lay him out. Why?
I really don’t want them to hurt him, but I do want him to clearly appreciate how he may and may not treat his sisters. Am I wrong to think that he will only understand that if we use physical force? I expect so.
God has a great sense of humor, and He has clearly sent this boy to teach me a few lessons.
