Be aware girls: our house is full of boys

One of the interesting quirks of having a singe-sex brood of children is when you have adult friends who have children of the opposite sex. It seems that a number of my good friends have only girls. This is all very fine when we are chatting while they are all playing in the playground at school or church, but as soon as you bring friends like this into your house you have challenges!

Two 6 y.o.s play together. Girl and boy.

Yesterday we took care of a friend's daughter for a couple of hours. She is a classmate of our 8 y.o. middle son. They are both doing a day tennis school in the mornings this week at school. Our son bravely accompanied his classmate home (I daren't call her his friend). Then it got a little bit awkward. Usually when a boy enters our house, unless he is exceptionally shy, he immediately gets snapped up by the overwhelming boy-ness of our house and will be playing cars or Lego or shooting or some other very boy-like game. A girl, I'm discovering, is a different kettle of fish.

I guess she was probably expecting me to ask her about her morning, but I've learned not to do that with my boys. They cope much better if I ask them later or wait for it to come out later, but not immediately upon entering the house. She drifted in and around and no one knew what to do with . . . a girl!?! Eventually I asked my middle son to give her a tour of the house seeing as she'd never been here before. For the boys, that inevitably leads straight to the play centre of the house – their bedroom. After that I didn't see them for a while, so I presume they found something to do upstairs.

Then came lunch. The silence was awkward. So I slipped into my default mode – conversation stimulator. I asked our guest what she likes to do when she's on holidays (US=vacation). She gave us a lovely description of her and her sister's dolls and the three cars that she owns (stipulating that the Barbies have to lie down in the bus). This recitation predictably received no response from the boys. So I asked our middle son what he likes to do on holidays. He said "Toshimaen", which is a somewhat ancient amusement and water park that we've bought season tickets for this year. He also stated, "Lego" . . . still we had no interaction going on. The atmosphere was as stilted as a formal dinner party!

Eventually our guest mentioned that she'd seen the movie "Despicable Me" recently. Well, that was the key that opened the door. The rest of the meal consisted of everyone sharing memorable scenes and quotes. 

Phew!!! 

By contrast, the daughter of our visitors a couple of weeks ago had no hesitation in interacting. She has a brother. But she also has quite a dominant personality. A born leader – she talked, whether or not anyone was listening, she organised and planned. That's not to say she didn't have challenges in interacting with our overwhelmingly boy-household. Our six-year-old sometimes was happy to comply with her plans and enjoyed her company. At other times he withdrew and complained that she was "bossy". He also had periodic doubts about whether boys should be playing with girls at all.

It is an interesting experience watching these kids interact. As a friend has said, "Your boys are such Boy boys, Wendy." Yes, it is true. Nothing much subtle about them at all. It must be a bit intimidating for a girl to enter into their "lair", the place where they are most comfortable.

I grew up in a girl-household. Three girls, Mum and Dad. Poor Dad was quite out-numbered and certainly out-talked. I remember the odd occasion when a boy turned up. It WAS awkward. But then I wasn't a very girly-girl; so we'd ride bikes, dig in the sandpit or jump on the trampoline. At least that is my memory of it, so it is probably faulty.

What are your experiences of single-sex-children families encountering the opposite sex?