Random thoughts leads to thoughts about raising boys

Here are some random thoughts I had as I sat down to write this post:

• Today I exchanged my first real email with my 12 y.o. This morning I suggested he write to me from school to give me some important information he would find out there and he did, plus some. He's growing up.
• I have four boys after school today and for dinner. One of them is a teenager. Good thing I put a larger meal into the slow cooker.
• The meal in the slow cooker already smells good.
• Even with the internet it can take a lot of time to organise even a 15 minute praise time for a conference when no one has the same music book and we live hundreds of kilometres apart.

As so often happens after a bunch of random thoughts, I found a longer thought:

Yesterday my husband and I took the boys down to the school. Yes, on a Sunday - but it is one of the closest open areas for playing and the campus is open for students to play, supervised, out of hours. We played with them for a while and then sat and watched. Ours weren't the only ones playing. At one point on the main field there were three small groups, all playing with balls. Three different age-groups. One had a 5 and 6 y.o., one had two elementary aged children and the other had young adults (former students). 

The thing that struck me was that they were all boys. Not a girl or young lady among them. It strikes me that while we girls can be good at sport and even love it, not many of us just have to move in a way that boys do. We took our boys out there yesterday, not because we wanted too, but they were raising the roof on our house with noise and action and obviously needed some exercise (obvious only because we now have 12 years of experience in raising boys, most of those in small houses/apartments). As we talked about it we also noted that while girls will just sit and chat, guys generally don't, they have to be doing something, even if it is non-physical like playing board games.


My husband wondered about the lack of male primary (US=elementary) school teachers. He wondered particularly if boys have a harder time in school because their female teachers don't understand that need to move, particularly in those lower years. It is an interesting thought. I know (from experience) that any characteristic that interrupts a quiet classroom is a disadvantage. Be that physically restless or verbally outspoken at the wrong times.

And back to another random thought. 

Last week a friend who's pregnant with her second child, first boy, asked for some advice on raising boys. My advice was simple. The two key things about raising boys are food and exercise. If you keep those in mind you will avoid many potential problems.