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From time to time I find myself in conversations about other people’s children.  Certainly there are moments when anybody would wonder what kind of upbringing the little ones are getting when they so easily run screaming through the home they are visiting playing their war games or wickedly walks through a crowded room silently, delightfully filling the air with a deadly aroma.  Boys.  Is there anyone to blame?

Well...let me tell the whole world that boys are different from girls! And in the most frustrating ways.  They are grosser.  Yes they really are.  They do things like paint pictures on the wall with poopy fingers, delight in passing silent but deadly gas, laugh 
hysterically at thunderous gaseous moments, do somersaults off of the couch, hang from curtains, literally!  They think a dinner is Top Ramen, delight in slapstick humor, play in highly physical ways, make guns out of anything regardless of gentle dis-persuasion, and communicate in grunts and yells foregoing civil conversation.  They wear clothes that are held together by the mud and put dirty clothes back into their drawers, think all visitors are personal jungle gyms and on and on and on.

All of this having absolutely nothing to do with their upbringing.  Upbringing does indeed tame the wild beast...for a few moments.  I raise my many children with identical rules, expectations, disciplines, exposure to the best things in life - chores, education, 
everything.  And there really is a difference between the basic make-up of daughters and sons.  I have a gentler son, still, there is no doubt that his perspective on life is different from mine.  I have a more physical daughter, yet it is glaring obvious that she will never be mistaken for a boy role model. 

To frown at parents because of various child behavior is a bit unfair.  Now, I'm not saying that we have little demons for sons...far from it.  I consider my husband the best example of Christ for his generation that I know and yet he, (and I can’t help but smile here,) clearly has these 'Guy Traits' that sneak into life at unexpected moments.  Such as sitting in a movie and one - ONE - bad, really bad word was said.  Very loudly, tongue-in-cheek, Neil exclaimed, "She said !!!!!!!, What is this rated?????"  I elbowed him.  Such as setting the good example all week at Scout Camp of not playing the 'gas game' with the youth until the last night and then I had to reteach etiquette to he and my oldest son for the following two weeks.   Again, it goes on and on. 

On the flip side, I and many other girls, tend to take ourselves and our presentation to the world, too seriously, the balance between overly unaware and overly aware is best reached once a good companionship is formed.

I beg the world to not judge me and my mothering skills by boy behavior.  It is a constant task to raise these incredibly different spirits and many times I shake my head and mumble "Boys are soooo weird!"  Neil managed to think girls were normal until they hit teens.  As teens and young adults the girls will gather in my room, sprawl across my bed and talk about boys.  Neil thinks this is downright weird and so I am constantly telling him to relax his little girls are quite normal, after all! 

In barely the blink of an eye children become adults.  They settle down to the more acceptable behavior their elders have exemplified.  They even forget.  No problem, their own children will remind them soon enough!