Boys and Girls

Ok...it's been months since I posted...I'll work on it!

Yesterday I hosted a Mother's Day lunch with a few of my friends and their children. When your child goes to preschool a lot of times they host a Mother's Day tea, so I thought as a homeschooler I would start a tradition. Anyway, I invited a few Moms who I love to be around and whose kids we love to play with. I also didn't want a huge amount of work for myself so it wasn't as big as it would have been if I'd invited ALL the women I love to hang out with, but it was just a lovely day of eating, visiting, and playing.

As for the title of this post....here's a bit of what evolved with the kiddies. My son's best, best, best friends E and I were there - both girls - the two friends he has adored above all since ever. And two of his good buds were there as well - who he has a ball playing with and who are very not girls. I have watched my son change over this past year from a super sensitive (sometimes ultra!) guy who cries and becomes upset a lot to being able to actually wrestle with other boys and laugh! I want to make sure I am not giving him the message "You should change to be this way or that way" because he is who he is and I want him to know I love him and accept him as he is. If he has a struggle or challenge I want to be there to help him with it but not necessarily fix it. The older he gets the more I want to take a step back and let him try and figure it out until he realizes he needs me, or I realize he doesn't have the tools or life experience to figure it out. So yesterday he was among his two favorite girl friends and his two favorite boy friends. A few times they were all tearing around being children - giggling, hollering, whispering, negotiating. At times the girls left the pack because of the yelling and chasing - could have been interpreted as the boys being insensitive and mean-spirited. Could have been interpreted as the girls tattle tailing. And each of us Moms would have given a different explanation based on how well we know each of the kids and how well we know our own. As time went on one of the boys began blocking kids from going into the basement, taking toys everyone wanted to play with, etc. If you watch him close enough, you see it is his way of drawing everyone back into connection with him as he was feeling left out by my son who he wants to claim as his best friend. He needed a little help (very little, in fact) to go in a different direction. The girls needed a little help, very little again, in understanding that some kids (in this case boys) are loud and wild and crazy.

In this day I think it is harder than every to be a parent - the gray just gets grayer. We have so many books, coaches, experts on this and that to tell us how to raise our kids. Right now I am reading Reclaiming Childhood by William Crain and Sharing Nature with Children by Joseph Cornell. I am looking to find ways of allowing my child to be who he is - a boy, sensitive, curious, insistent, persistent, and always, always in search of keeping his connection to others (right now that's me and his dad) even though it isn't always obvious that is what he is doing.