Raising a boy

I grew up as a single child for almost 7 years and then along came a sister, so I didn’t grow up knowing what boys can be like. Then, along came our first-born, a son, and my mind is still blown.

In a nutshell: boys can be gross.

It’s a constant battle of eat-with-your-mouth-closed, are-you-wearing-underpants, please-put-socks-on-your-boots-will-stink, pick-up-your-towel-this-is-not-a-hotel, your-shirt-buttons-are-skew-yes-you-have-to-fix-it, do-not-toe-your-shoes-off-undo-the-laces, have-you-brushed-your-teeth-come-here-let-me-smell-your-breath, hands-out-the-pants-at-the-dinner-table-please.

It’s exhausting, but the look of guilt on his face gives him away and makes me smile, no matter how hard he tries. Every. Single. Time. Especially the underpants thing.

But he is a funny guy. Now that he is old enough to understand the difference between fantasy and reality he can be quite creative with games, I love to see how his mind works.

Yesterday in the car he was telling us how he is moving out of the house when he is 16. He is moving into a house he is going to build with friends (and then named them)

“Who will build the house?” we ask

“We will, duh. And then the builder can just paint the one wall yellow and paint Lego over it. And Emmet” he says

“What will you do for furniture?” we ask

“We will have an X-box, and A will bring his X-box as well”

“But you need a TV to play the X-box on, in that case 2 TV’s” we say

“silence”

And yet, he is such a softie (in a good way). Always a hug for his sisters and girl BFF, upset to the point of waking up at night when he knows his teacher won’t be there the next day ( like last night)

Yet, getting out of him what upsets him really is like pulling teeth. You walk the fine guessing line without always having all the facts and running the risk of him just agreeing to what you think is wrong and not getting to the bottom of the problem, but I guess this is what parenting is about.

I just don’t feel that I’m grown-up enough to anticipate and read them well enough, but we will get there.

Do I make any sense of was this just a mad rambling?

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