Husband and I recently received a communication from our son’s fourth-grade teacher. Recess, the email said, was temporarily suspended for some problems kids were having on the playground.
They have since rescinded their punishment of the kids and found an alternative to it, but the possibility of these no-recess days got me thinking about the expectations we hold for young children—especially boys—in our schools.
Because I’m a mom of six boys, I get to see many different personalities slide out in the course of boy play. And even while one will choose to build quietly with wooden planks for his free play time and another will reach for a book and another still will race out to the backyard shrieking like a banshee and thrusting his pirate sword into the belly of an imaginary enemy, there are some things that come pretty standard in boy play.
1. They run.
On our walk to school, my sons can’t simply walk. They can’t. They run the entire way. I always say this is why I wear workout clothes most days—I have to keep up with my sons somehow. This is only halfway true…the other half of the truth is that I didn’t get a shower today, and, also, it’s a thousand degrees in Texas; may as well sweat in actual workout clothes. It somehow makes it better.
My standard footwear is my cross training shoes, because there is absolutely no telling when I will have to break out into a sprint to save a boy from a mistimed run or a fall that happened when they were engaged in a race with themselves.
2. They shriek.
No matter what boys are doing, they’re loud. If they’re sweeping the kitchen floor, they’re singing “Thriller” at the top of their lungs. If they’re running through the backyard playing Infected (a variation on chase, as far as we can tell, where the person who’s “It” adds an army of people who are “It”), they’re shrieking at the top of their lungs.
Incidentally, when we asked what happened on the school playground, my fourth grader said, “I don’t really know. I think a couple of boys got into a fight, but I was playing Infected, so I was running for my life.”
3. They fight.
For fun, my boys play a fight game. They call it “Slap Fight From Noon ’Til Night.” Sometimes there are variations on this fight game. Sometimes they use a superhero cape to whip the legs out from under their opponent and end up with welts on their shins. Sometimes they take plastic swords out to the trampoline and whack each other with ill-aimed blows. Sometimes they just use their hands.
This is all for fun. It’s as delightful as it sounds.
4. They bounce.
Boys are bundles of energy, and if Husband and I are doling out instructions, saying something serious, or just mushily telling them we love them so so much, my sons are forever and always bouncing. They bounce on their bottoms, they bounce on their bellies, they bounce on their knees. They bounce so much it makes me sore watching them.
5. They very rarely think before doing.
The most frequent answer to “What were you thinking” after a kid has busted his face on the side of our brick house, at which he ran full speed ahead to test his stopping reflexes, is “I don’t know.” And it’s true. They don’t know.
When my sons do stupid things like try to jump from the trampoline to the top of their dad’s shed fourteen feet away, act on their insatiable curiosity about what it’s like to pee off the top of our van, or ride down the stairs on a skateboard, I already know the answer to my deepest wondering.
6. They compete.
Whatever boys are doing, it’s a fierce competition. They will simultaneously swing across the monkey bars to see who can finish first, knocking out teeth in the process. They will race to the end of the sidewalk to see who wins on the way to check the mail. They will eat their food—practically inhale it—so they can be the first one done and in line for seconds (there is no line. We don’t even dole out seconds until everyone has finished their firsts. Does it matter? Nope.).
7. They lose all sense of time and space.
When they’re little, boys don’t have much of a sense of their body, which is why they’ll barrel into their mother, nearly knocking her flat, when they decide they want to give her a hug. They also have no sense of time. “I’ll be done in two minutes,” they say, and what they really mean is twenty.
(This doesn’t change as they get older, unfortunately. Husband will often say, “I’m almost done,” and two hours later he’s finally ready for our date night at home. I’m already asleep.)
8. They’re gross.
They compare the boogers they picked from their noses, they collectively gather in the bathroom to see poop before it’s flushed, they like nothing more than to announce to the house and the entire world, “He’s bleeding!”
On a regular basis, my boys try to determine who has the smelliest farts. They will sulfurize each other out of a room before they declare a winner—and by then no one’s conscious to celebrate.
Girls have their challenges in a society like ours; I struggle with those challenges every day.
Boys have their challenges, too, and they can be seen, most often, in the early classrooms of their childhood. It’s unfortunate that all across the nation, boys are monthly, weekly, daily punished for who they are. Of course they must learn how to take control of their bodies and navigate a social world that needs softer voices and better attention—but never at the cost of their identity.
My boys drive me perpetually crazy, but I know that one day I’ll miss being jostled on my way to the bathroom, knocked sideways into a stream of crop-dust because they wanted to get there first.
Boys will be boys. And I love them for it.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by Helen Montoya Henrichs.)
