Raising boys

Parenting is tough. Something every parent will attest to. They don't come with instructions. And yet, they are the most difficult "product" you will ever need to create. Raising a tiny human to become a happy, responsible, kind, productive member of society is of paramount importance. Oy. Makes me tired just thinking about it.
But, as most parents will tell you, it is a labor of love. For me it was something I felt I HAD to do, on a biological level. Much like a religious calling. Deep in my soul, I knew I NEEDED children.

As each of my three babies was born, though, I felt less and less equipped to parent them. Not just because they outnumbered me more and more, but because they are BOYS! All three of them are people, like me. But I have never been a BOY.
Though there are some that disagree with this, I believe there are some fundamental differences between boys and girls. One being armpit farts. I am pretty sure male under arms are specifically designed to be able to make raunchy noises when coupled with a cupped hand. It's biological. As is the endless fascination with their own genetalia.
The list of things that interest my children, but that childhood-me couldn't have cared less about, is practically endless. Cars. Blood. Growling. Engines. Fire. Hitting stuff. Airplanes. Balls. Wrestling. Dinosaurs. Swords. Bathroom habits of animals and other people. Spitting. Bad guys. Sticks. Guns. Bugs. Pirates. Jail. Cannonballs. Mud. (the list goes on, but you get my drift, right??)

So learning to play "boy" has been a learning experience for me, especially since I grew up with a sister, no brothers.

Babies are babies. For the first 6 months to a year, there is little discernible difference besides the colors of their clothes and what body part you have to cover while changing diapers to avoid a big mess. Then things start to change. I will never forget Christmas when Marshall was a year and a half, we gave him some dinosaurs. Every boy should have some dinosaurs, right? So, he opens them up, looks at them unamused and moves on. Later, I try to get him excited about them. I lined them up and started sorting them by color, whether they walk on 2 legs or 4, length of their neck. I point out the spikes on their backs or the clubs on their tails. Marshall is still not amused. In swoops daddy. He picks up two of the prehistoric reptiles and they begin to fight. They snarl, they growl, they bite. Marshall is THRILLED!
Apparently I play like a girl.
And things have never been the same since.
Its not that I don't TRY to give my children a well rounded experience. I do. We have a play kitchen. We have dolls. We have countless coloring books. We have all the Disney princess movie. We have a cupboard containing every art supply imaginable. They simply prefer their swords. And pirate ship. And... Well... See list above. Even their stuffed animals "fight."
When we get together with friends whose children are girls, I admit I feel a little embarrassed. My boys actually brought a little girl to tears the other day by growling at her. They really aren't mean boys. In fact, they were SURPRISED she was crying. They couldn't imagine WHY someone WOULDN'T want to play Black Panthers who are hunting for food and fighting off "bad guy lions" and snarling. Constantly.
Ok, so that's problem number one. I just don't "get" boys. At least not naturally. It needs to be learned.
Problem number two is to teach them to be nice people. They may not INTEND to scare people and make little girls cry, but they sometimes do. And I need to teach them where "their kind of play" is acceptable. And what the line they should not cross is.
Here is what I struggle with, though. They LOVE to play rough, and loud and crazy. I really DO believe they are naturally inclined to do so. And I don't want to beat it out of them. Breaking someone's spirit might lead to obedience, but not to happiness. If my goal is to raise happy, responsible, kind men, then "breaking them" is not an option. So I must find a way to channel their energy and passion for purposes of good, not evil.
When my dad was a kid, from sun up to sun down, he and his friends rode around on their bikes. Across their handle bars, they carried either their fishing poles or their BB guns. Something that would NEVER happen today. A child with a BB gun would instantly be picked up by the policy and branded a "bad kid." While my dad and his buddies could easily have hurt each other by accident, in many ways they were safer. He tells a story about how one day they were shooting rocks in he quarry (which was frowned upon because not only could it cause a rock slide, but the BBs could easily ricochet and hurt someone. By the time he stopped by the Creamery where his father worked a few hours later, word of their "shenanigans" had already spread around town and the boys got in trouble for being so wreckless. Kids had a lot more space, but there was also a lot more accountability.
As all parents do, I want to protect my children. I do this by requiring hey wear helmets when they ride their bikes, tell me whenever they want to go anywhere, even to the neighbor's yard or to get a ball from the street. I insist they wear their seat belts, even if we are just driving across the parking lot. They have to wear sun block whenever the go outside in the summer. I don't let them jump down from heights taller than they are. Their knife usage is closely monitored, even if it is a plastic knife and they can NEVER EVER put anything on a fire.
I insist on these things because I could never forgive myself if they got hurt and permanently scarred due to my negligence.
Some of the children in purpose neighborhood do not wear helmets. I know people whose children don't wear sunblock because they have nice olive skin that doesn't burn. Their families have different rules. This does not mean they love their children any less than I love mine. They chose to pick other battles.
My concern is: by enforcing the rules that I do, are my kids going to be those wussy kids? With boys, there is so much pressure to be "tough." I have heard people say that they would be more likely to get stitches for a cut to their daughter's face, than to their son's. People have remarked at the fact that my 3 and 5 year old boys sleep with stuffed animals because it is apparently not masculine. There are so many double standards.

So what's a mommy to do?? I wish that writing this long entry would have left me with some magical answer, but I am coming up dry.

Still trying to perfect my recipe for The Perfect Boy.