Out of My Mind: From girls to boys, what a difference

Nowdays my house looks more like a man cave thanks to teenaged and pre-teen sons.

Now, when I’m at an age that many women have an empty nest and are redecorating their homes to suit their own tastes, I’m redecorating for the boys.

There’s hunting and fishing equipment and sports gear everywhere. One of my sons wanted his room to look like a hunting lodge, so walls are brown, the ceiling is covered with a camouflage fabric, bedding is brown and a deer skin is on the floor. It’s not uncommon to find a knife or gun lying about, which actually provokes fear into my daughters who are mothers because little hands (the grandchildren’s) tend to find things they shouldn’t handle.

Another boy room is sporty with black, gray and orange stripes.

In my first home after being married, one room was papered with lovely yellow and pink floral wallpaper.

When there were just six girls, the bedding in the girls’ room was white eyelet and there were canopy beds.

How things change. I wonder at the transformation. My first six children were girls. And, although I’m not into frilly things, it was definitely a female environment.

Years ago, when the eldest son (now nearly 19) was about 8, I painted his bedroom to resemble a log cabin. He and his father were into “outdoorsy” themes. One day, there was a rank odor coming from his room. Upon searching, I discovered a rotting armadillo shell hidden in his closet. It was not uncommon to find bugs and other creatures in cups and jars in his room.

As my eldest son prepares for college and we transform his room into a “game room,” I consider the many times I’ve watched a child leave home.

The girls have grown and moved out, married, had children. Now, there are only two boys left at home.

Their taste in entertainment, movies, noises, recreation differs from their sisters.

Four of the five grandchildren are boys. Add the sons-in-law and the males actually outnumber the females at our family gatherings. In considering the changes, I revisited a column I wrote years ago and share it now, with a wry grin.

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Years ago (okay, actually decades) I remember in college psychology being told that boys and girls are born exactly alike that we just “culturalize” them differently. Back then, we were told that we should give toy trucks to baby daughters and dolls to little boys. We were told to develop the “gentler” side of boys and a “tougher” side of girls.

We also debated genetics versus environment with many of the college students leaning toward environmental influences being more determining than heredity.

My dad disagreed.

“It’s all in the genes,” he’d say. Even now, psychologists agree that more is determined by genetics than was previously realized.

I had daughters before I had sons. Some were more active and noisy than others, but when the boys arrived, I learned that they are definitely created differently than girls.

I love French heirloom hand sewing and English smocking. In reading some antique sewing books, I discovered that at the turn of the previous century, it was common to dress boys in pink and girls in blue. I don’t know when the change occurred, but we now associate the two colors very specific to a gender. I saw a pre-teen boy with a pink T-shirt on which had written on it: “It takes a real man to wear pink.”

If I gave a doll to my son (which I didn’t!), he used it to hit his sister. Usually if his sister tried to treat him in any way effeminately, he rebelled.

My daughters dressed and carried a kitten or puppy as a baby. The boys will wrestle or man-handle the animal. My 4-yearold threw the cat over his shoulder and carried it like a bag of feed. Amazingly the cat does not resist him.

The girls giggle and talk incessantly, the boys make noise, but it’s seldom words.

The boys have all very accurately, noisily and “wetly” managed to make the “brmmmm, brmmmm” car noise. I’ve often wondered what noise little boys made before the invention of the engine, maybe a horse trotting.

With gifts, the major fascination has been in the packaging - what can we make from this box or this Styrofoam or these screws and gadgets? What can we take apart and never quite get put all back together again?

Initially we weren’t going to allow guns, but a pencil, a doll, a finger, a stick could all become a gun in a little boy’s imagination. So, we said, no pointing a gun at a person. Then, brothers became coyotes and lions to be shot.

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Editor’s note: Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County, chosen the best small weekly newspaper in Arkansas three years in a row. A native of Louisiana, she moved to northwest Arkansas in 1980 to work for the Benton County Daily Record.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 07/17/2013