TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS

Okay so that’s the second time in a week that another adult has had to gently pull my son away from me; this morning it was his teacher and then this past Saturday at his football game. I will state in a completely honest assessment of my parenting style that I don’t attempt to “baby” him (well not too much). But sometimes the comfort of your mother’s arms is just where you want to be. I’m 30-ish (smile) and I still feel that way sometimes. At times you have to give them a gentle nudge back out in the game. “You gotta suck it up son, football is tough,” I said. But then the next play he falls down and a couple of kids step on his hand—in cleats! That would make me cry for my mother too. I was frozen actually, not sure exactly what to do. He's screaming and holding his hand, do I rush out onto the field?  Just then he breaks free of the crowd of coaches examining the hand and comes over to me.  So as he’s sitting on my lap on the sidelines while I try to determine how much soothing is necessary, a coach, in all his mercy senses my cluelessness with just how much tenderness to show a boy, comes and takes Isaiah by the hand, tells him he’ll be okay and promptly puts him back in the game.


I was relieved of course, but there was that instinct, that voice that screams I NEED TO GO GET MY BABY! And there’s the other voice that says mishandling moments like these are how 40 year-olds end up living in their mother’s basements. As a woman raising a man it’s so hard to tell sometimes when to apply the tenderness and when to get tough. So please tell me, how do you know how much comforting is too much and when to take a hard line and send them back out into the game?

The Disconnects (Part 1)

When Isaiah was about three, I learned that there were many things that as a boy I would just NOT get about him. For instance I had to learn how to play with him. I had just gotten him a new wooden train set for Christmas and I was helping him set it up. It took forever, but we did it. I set up the little village and the complicated bridge. I sat back and admired my work, truly satisfied. That's when he took his plastic airplane and crashed it right into the bridge, leaving half the set sprawled across the floor. I was flabbergasted. Why did he just destroy the nice, perfectly set up trainset. Boys, I thought, always gotta be tearing something up.

It was about a week later that I got my answer. From the radio of all places, a local personality (Frank Ski-V103) was talking about how boys play and mentioned that the purpose of doing things like crashing the trainset or building blocks is to set it back up again. I could only laugh. As a girl of course I wanted everything to be nice and neat and pretty. As a boy he just wanted to break it all down so he could build it up again. That's just one of many examples of the gender disconnects Isaiah and I have had over the years. As I struggle to understand him (through our time together or from the insight of the other men in his life), I wonder if in doing so I understand myself better and vice versa. Much of what I've learned about little boys having come from my son, then much of what he learns about women comes from me. Which makes me wonder, how much of how men learn to connect with women emotionally comes from their relationships with their mothers?