Boys Will Be Boys

The man and I have had a budgetary reassessment this week, and in our discussions we have discovered that we have fundamentally differing attitudes to money. He flies fly by the seat of his pants, I need to be more organised (shocking I know). I can save very successfully as long as any money is instantly removed from my grasp and put somewhere I don’t have access to. The man on the other hand would rather just save whatever is left over at the end of the month. This is totally beyond my comprehension. What left over money? If I can get money, I will spend it.  

Are differing attitudes to money a result of gender differences?

With the man, two small boys and a boy and girl cat, I am outnumbered by four boys to two girls. Having two boys has been far more exhausting than I could ever have imagined and I have finally come to the conclusion that I may never go on to have a daughter who can be on my side. Therefore I really need to start to understand the male psyche, so I have been reading a book called Growing Great Boys by Ian Grant.

The trouble with parenting books is they make you feel solely responsible for the turn out of your offspring, as if what you do in childhood has a direct impact on how they turn out. This may be true if you are neglectful or abusive but for the rest of us (semi) normal parents it’s a frightening concept, especially to a mother of boys (or father of girls I presume). Understanding boys is a whole new world for me, and I need to get up to speed quick, because, as Grant says, “growing boys is easier than fixing men”.

After all these years of bra burning, equality and women trying to be the same as men, I, somewhat naively, thought that boys and girls were meant to be the same, and be brought up in the same way. I have gone to great lengths to encourage neutral gender roles in my sons toys. They have a kitchen and toy Dyson, as well as a workshop and tools. They have a till and play trolley and a train set. They play without bias, and sometimes I find my eldest (now 4) trying on my jewellery and “being mummy”. When the man caught him spraying perfume (in his eyes “because that’s what mummy does” – I don’t, honestly, my eyes are no more fragrant than anyone else’s) he showed him his aftershave and said “at least if you’re going to do it, do it the manly way”. All very normal, healthy boy behaviour, and I have been smugly congratulating myself on how well I have avoided gender stereotyping in bringing them up. But now I start reading this book and I learn something shocking. Newsflash: boys and girls are different.

Not just physically, but mentally, chemically, emotionally and in pretty much every area, and need to be treated as such. Reading this book has completely changed my attitude to parenting, now I’m not just bringing up boys, I’m creating MEN. That scares me. I don’t know anything about being a man. Apart from The Rules (not really an appropriate aid in bringing up boys) and the fact that boys are usually meanest to the girls they most like, I am clueless. So I am now responsible for bringing men into the world; big, scary men with horrid feet (ever met a man with nice feet?) who will eventually go on to date women (or men, I don’t mind) and my input will affect how they treat women (or men) in the future. I thought it was enough to be gentle, encouraging and caring, but apparently boys mums also have to be tough, like sport and encourage rough and tumble play. I’m not a particularly girly girl, but I’m no tomboy. I feel like I wandered into what I thought was a sewing class only to discover I’ve signed up for eighteen years of martial arts training instead.

Apparently wrestling, climbing and running around like lunatics are normal and healthy for boys and to an extent should be encouraged. And there’s a reason why my youngest won’t sit quietly and do craft for hours on end, because there’s a perfectly good bookshelf over there that he could be climbing instead. Boys explore their world by touching, tasting and feeling things, so that’s why son number 2 will spit out a meal I have lovingly prepared but happily munch on a fluffy month old biscuit he found languishing down the back of the sofa.

I’m genuinely shocked at all this. Apparently, when it comes to gender differences, nature wins over nurture every time. So it doesn’t matter how much I encourage my boys to dress up, play with dolls or talk about their feelings, they will still refuse to ask for directions or read the instruction manual. But at least they might have some money leftover at the end of the month, and I will teach them to spend it on their Mrs (or Mr).

Flap, flap, flap

After a week of bed rest, stuck in bed with flu like symptoms (according to the doctor it wasn’t flu because there is no flu going around at the moment, don’t you just hate it when doctors say that? Why is everything just a virus? Don’t they know ANYTHING? Anyway…), today is my first day fully back in the saddle and holding the household reins.

It was horrible being ill, but a week of enforced nothingness has set about a marked change in me. As I began to recover I couldn’t help but observe I seemed to be more relaxed and noticeably less flappy.

What I mean by flappy is flustered, stressed, panicking and worrying (usually with a hint of sweat at the brow), being overly meticulous and generally feeling totally overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of responsibility to get everything done and done on time. All totally unnessecary, pointless and a sheer waste of energy. You get no more done by flapping, less in fact. Many people are able to function perfectly well and with far more serenity and dignity without flapping at all.

On the scale of flappiness from level 1 (furrowed brow, deep in thought wondering how many school jumpers to order for son number one) to full on level 10 hysterics (the house is a mess, the cat has a bad foot, a loving mummy haircut for son number 2 has made him look like an escaped mental patient so a trip to the barber is in order, my tax credits renewal hasn’t been done and if we don’t get our extension plans in now we will never have it completed by Christmas), I tend to operate at about a level 7 with occasional forays into level 10.

Flappiness is not just a mannerism confined to women. There are a few flappy men out there, it is rare, but I have seen it. Sometimes I think it would be quite good to be with a flappy man, someone else to share the burden of freaking out about day to day stuff. It would make my flappiness seem less of an issue (I could even experience the joy of being the less flappy one). I often find the man’s lack of flappiness quite infuriating “Why aren’t you panicking about this? Don’t you CARE?” But in truth I am happy that I fell in love with an unflappy man, I think the reality is that two flappy people would create uncontrollably flappy kids, and I’m already flapping about passing this onto my children.

Sometimes I kid myself that my flappiness is endearing, but I suspect the man does not see it that way, and actually finds it unbearably irritating. Often, the second he wakes up he is hit full in the face with one of my flappiness attacks: “Did you check this? Can you do that? I need to do this so I need you to…” The poor bloke hasn’t even had his morning wee yet, and already he is thinking about the fact that we have friends to dinner on Saturday so did he eat all the After Eight mints at Christmas, and the MOT is due on the car but I need it on Wednesday so it’ll have to be done before then. Advice to men, if you have a flappy wife, mum or sister the best thing you can do is say, in a nice soothing voice, “Don’t worry honey, we will get it done” DO NOT shout “Stop bloody flapping woman, we’re never going to get it down now anyway, so chill out”. The latter will only exacerbate the situation.

Flappiness is born out of disorganisation, control freakery and setting goals too high. For instance if I have a lot to do in one week, I will unrealistically attempt to get everything completed on the Monday, so the rest of the week is theoretically flap free. In practice, what actually happens is that Monday is extreme flapping day, the list doesn’t get completed (usually because a lot of time is taken up being in a stage of flapping), low level flapping mid week, then another bout of extreme flappage on a Friday when I realise I haven’t completed my tasks.

So I am attempting to quell my flapping tendencies and retain this casual air I have adopted since my week of convalescence.

Easier said than done though. I have a number of things that I feel should be done today (because as the week goes on, a lot more stuff will come up), but in reality could be stretched over the week. I just need to prioritise. But finding time to prioritise is simply adding another task to the to-do list for today. I can feel the flap levels rising.