You know we Derby queens love DadCentric, we really do. We totally have a hard-on for those guys. But like all good relationships, there are times when we don't see eye-to-eye and have to respectfully disagree. A recent advice post was one of those occasions when we say "tomato" and the DadC's say "tomahto," and I think we all know what the correct pronounciation is here. Anyhow, a reader wrote in and asked if her son's seeming lack of empathy and frequent unprovoked head-butting was just a case of "boys will be boys." Dad Jason responded that boys are kinda like that, and, "Girls, from what I've seen of my friends' female kids, are decidedly
more genteel... boys, in my experience, like to run into walls and talk about bodily functions. This does not end at 3, or 5, or 38."
Ahem. I'm raising a girl, and I know she's a girl because she likes to talk loudly about her vagina, then she snickers. She also frequently cracks (tee hee) jokes about poop and butts. She did tell me one of her friends hit her, but when pressed for details it came out that he was standing up for his buddy after my kid kicked him for no reason, yelling a menacing "Hi-ya!" Amy K. here has a girl who tackles and sprints and makes fart jokes. And Madeline shared this tidbit about her brood: "They were chanting "penis! penis!" one day so much that I told them I didn't want to hear it again for the rest of the day. My compliant 6 year old got silent but my two year old stopped for a second and then started chanting "poonis, poonis, poonis!" Lost on a technicality! We try to keep the windows closed."
My point is that I think the girl-boy differences are perhaps a question of social conditioning, but an equally likely explanation is that when boys do this stuff it is attributed to the fact that they are boys. I also wondered if perhaps some parents train this stuff out of girls, but that maybe other moms and dads are somewhat more tolerant of poop humor and so on in their little ladies. Then I realized I had participated in a number of e-mail threads with the Derby-ers that day that centered around penis jokes and crass references. So it might just be us Strollers, cuz, you know, girls (plus two guys) will be girls.
I just don't believe it's a boy thing. And I've got the vagina jokes to prove it.
