I wish I'd had girls

[belleandbete]

I know I will get some terrible flaming for this and I probably deserve it, but I'm trying to be honest about my feelings and get past this. I have seen many threads on here recently on gender disappointment/ how great boys are and wanted to add my honest perspective.

I have three DS's, ages 8, 5 and 1. They are all much loved and I am a very involved parent- show an interest in all their activities/ spend one on one time and family time/ play with them/ read with them/ listen to them/ set boundaries/ give consequences/ follow through/ am consistent etc etc They get enough food and sleep and everything else.

But still, life is frequently incredibly tough with them. They are so so so physical and boisterous. They are constantly play fighting/ wrestling/ using anything they can find as a weapon. I find their physicality absolutely exhausting and also, if I'm honest, incredibly offputting. Someone is always always getting hurt. I find most of their interests and activities tedious (I hate sports- they love it. I hate battles and violence and star wars and spaceships and weapons etc etc etc.) . I find the way they play incredibly stressful. They have little to no interest in things like people/ relationships/ friendships etc which were and are my major interests in life. They are often violent/ physical with each other, no matter how clear the consequences. Most of my life is spent telling them to stop/ sit down/ watch out/ get off your brother etc etc. I try to get them interested in things like art/ music/ dance/ reading etc and they take a passing interest but it never really sticks. And contrary to the popular belief that boys are emotionally simple and not complex, this just doens't seem to be true at all in our case. THey have huge tantrums/ meltdowns/ upsets/ anxiety all the time. The eldest is in therapy for anxiety.

I see friends with girls and their lives seem so calm and easy in comparison. Yes there are issues of course, but their interests seem so familiar and fun to me. The energy levels seem so much calmer. the mums seem to have genuine fun and shared interests with their daughters. The girls . seem so much better at resolving conflicts and are almost never violent etc etc. No matter how much I love my boys, and I really really do, I feel life would have been so much easier and nicer if i had had girls (or at least one girl)

I never let them know any of this by the way and go out of my way to make them feel incredibly loved. Is it just me? Anyone have similar or contradictory experiences to share with no judgement?

I've got 2 girls and 1 boy. The boy is in the middle
Calm placid and plays girls games with his sisters

Omg when groups of 3 brothers come over - nightmare. 4 of them rolling around kicking etc.

I could not cope with 3 boys! I don't know what to suggest. But 100% know what you mean.

When there's a 'pack' of brothers they generally seem very difficult to manage in my view.

My little one is very calm, quietly confident and very caring, if someone is upset etc my little one will ask if they are okay, tell an adult etc.

His favourite things are colouring, dancing, playing lets go shop and pretending he is a cat. If someone rough plays with him, is overly noisy etc he will cry if he can’t get out of the situation.

A childs likes and dislikes are nothing to do with their genitals, you could have had three girls who behave in the exact same way.

My DD (11) and DS (8) fight like cat and dog and it is normally DD who starts it with barbed comments to DS under her breath. She doesn't like many girly things, very choosy with friends most of whom are boys and is ultra sporty but not dance or gymnastics! Girls can be awful to each other as girl on girl violence is not socially acceptable so they have to find more covert ways of showing aggression. DS is a bit geeky, not very sporty, quiet, he is very caring to us and his friends, he'd be caring to DD if she wasn't so prickly.

I don’t recognise this either. I have two boys. They play a lot of sport but both DH and I play sport (I play more than DH so I am assuming any child of mine would play sport). Neither is particularly wild. Both play musical instruments. One at a reasonably high level at a v young age which therefore requires hours of practice. Yes they run around the park, play football, and have arguments but I do not recognise this relentless violence at all. We are a fairly quiet family and we have lots of evenings of board games etc and the boys have always joined in. DS1 was never into colouring but went through an arty/crafty phase. DS2 loves painting.

You can't help the way you feel op, but I think that your ideas of raising girls is a bit of a fantasy.

We had to send one daughter to boarding school. We were advised if the two girls stayed together they would hurt each other. They are better now they r in their 30s but see each other less than once s year

@loops39, of course you'd 'cope' with 3 boys! Jesus Christ! If that's what you'd had that's what you'd cope with. I've got friends with 3 boys - as a mum of boys I spend most of my time with boys. Some of the posters on here portray them as out of control animals. What a load of shite. I have so much fun with my kids and with their friends, who are largely lovely, funny polite kids. They have some girl friends too, who are equally lovely. They also know boys who are bloody awful and girls who are bloody awful.

This pearl clutching from the smug mums of girls does my head in.

@stitchingmoss it's not a load of shite if that's peoples' lived experience. My kids can be lovely funny and polite. They can also be (and frequently are) out of control animals and I often find it hard to cope despite doing everything 'right' in the sense of clear expectations/ consequences/ one on one attention/ encouragement/ diet/ sleep etc etc etc. If your kids are easy to handle you are lucky.

But then your kids are hard to manage. I don’t see what that has to do with their genitals? I have two kids who are also boys and who are not particularly wild. It has to do with their personalities not their sex.

@potolbabu I think it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that this is 'just about their genitals' as if this was some random minor factor like the colour of their eyes or similar. Gender is a complex mix of nature and nurture, hormones, neurobiology and most importantly a wide and deep socialization from parents, peers, books, films, tv, toys and wider culture all of which affects their outlook, behaviour, expectations etc etc

Ah yes deep and wide socialisation. Exactly so it is possible by being careful to produce boys who are not violent or exposed to violence and who indulge in ‘girly’ activities then? So if it is about behaviour and expectations then maybe those need to change. But I strongly dispute this notion that there is something inherently feral about boys.

You can’t say ‘you are lucky your kids are easy to manage’ AND that your boys are boisterous because they are boys. There are plenty of mums of non boisterous boys on this thread and plenty of mums of boisterous girls. I don’t dispute that gender is a complex concept (I actually teach it at undergraduate level) but it was your OP that reduced it to a binary of ‘mums of girls have easier than mums of boys because boys are more boisterous.’

@potolbabu yes of course a huge amount of it is socialisation. Unfortunately parents have no control over a lot of this, as it runs so so deep in the culture and a lot of it we don't even notice.
However I think there is also a fair amount of evidence that male mammals of all species indulge in more rough and tumble play and violent behavior than females and that if you manipulate foetal testosterone in female animals you can see their behaviour change to a more male pattern. So no, it's not inevitable that boys are 'feral' of course, but they are naturally more physical, with the caveat of course that there is huge variation at an individual level.

You can’t say ‘you are lucky your kids are easy to manage’ AND that your boys are boisterous because they are boys.

I don't think those things are necessarily incompatible. At a population level there is a lot of evidence to show that boys in general engage in more boisterous behavior than girls and this is replicated in other species too. There is also a fair amount of evidence to show that in many ways boys mature later than girls. Obviously there will also be a great deal of individual variation, as with any population level phenomenon. These trends are a complex mix of nature and nurture, and the nurture part we as parents only have partial control over. If your kids, either through your own efforts, through their natures, or a mix of the two, do not conform to this pattern, you are still lucky, and this individual variation does not invalidate the fact that these trends do exist.

I have three girls aged 7, 5 and 3. They are CONSTANTLY fighting, hurting each other (with words and physically) and are bloody exhausting. It is because they are 7, 5 and 3. They are small. Their emotions are overwhelming. They are learning control and it takes time.

Keep on keeping on. Most children get calmer as they get older.

@grouchykiwi . thanks for your kind words. It's so hard. Hang in there. Don't know how to do the emojis, but flowers and wine for you too. x

OP - it reads as if you putting your energy into trying to stop the 'boyish' behaviour. It's not working and is exhausting. My strongly felt advice would be to change your mindset and go with it. I LOVED a chaotic wrestle with my boys on a mattress on the floor at that age , their lovely juicy arms and legs to squeeze and tickle. Get inside balls and throw and play catch all.the time. Just love their scrappy energy, my youngest is 12 and I miss the physical playing.

Other ideas are inside obstacle courses - can you put a swing/rope ladder up inside? loads and loads of hide and seek (especially in the dark during winter months) -cardboard tube fighting with rules, I enjoyed all these things and allowed me to go.with the flow. My 3 had a very small age gap though which perhaps made it easier.

I don't think you're describing gender disappointment. I think you're describing a clash or differing personalities between you and your DC.

I have two boys. I have a lot in common with them in terms of their personality and interests. My DH has mentioned a few times he struggles sometimes because they don't always have the same interests as him.

The boys fight constantly but I put that down to being close in age. My sisters and I argued constantly as children. My DH and his sister argued constantly as children. I don't think sibling rivalry has anything to do with gender.

Knowing how much influence an older child can have on their siblings, I think if you had a daughter now they would probably have all the same interests as their brothers. And you'd just get a girl who likes star wars and football.

This is classic "why do other kids seem less challenging than my own." It's because you see an edited snapshot. My kids seem very well behaved but out of sight of other people, I kid you not, they had a 10 minute fight over a strand of my hair that one of them found in the back of the car!

Embrace what you can. I now love avengers, go to the driving range and get rugby tackled to the actual floor. They are also delicate and beautiful and complicated.

I've two boys and a girl. The girl went to beavers/Cubs, isn't girly in a nails and make up sense and is by far the messiest of the 3. No ballet, horse riding or pink obsession...all the things people imagine having a daughter would entail. She's almost 10 years older than one brother so it's not like she just followed two boys copying them. Then again, I never wanted a girly girl, but being one myself. Obviously having both boys and girls means I don't fully understand your feelings OP, but I often (privately) wonder if 3 boys would have been easier 🤷‍♀️. Maybe I'll reconsider when she gets out of her teenage years...teenage girls are much more hassle than teenage boys in this family 🤦‍♀️

Give me exhausting boys over cliquey girls any day. I have 2 boys and have had the odd ‘it’d be nice to have a girl’ thought. Then I went to my niece’s 7th Birthday. Girls are savage, at 6/7 years old it was all about who sits next to who and underhand bullying. The boys were just interested in the activities and food. I’d much rather mop up blood and tears from being too physical than deal with the bitchyness and backstabbing that seems to prevalent amongst girls of a similar age to my son.

I think the thing that's missing when people talk about gender disappointment and say "they're all individuals" or "it's all socialised behavior" is that just because something is socialised doesn't mean it isn't real. I know that if I had a daughter she could have none of the same interests as me, and be interested in nothing girly at all (and I'm not particularly girly anyway.) . But I would still be dealing with female socialisation and raising her within a culture that I inherently prefer and find much easier to navigate

don't think you're describing gender disappointment. I think you're describing a clash or differing personalities between you and your DC

This. Imagine your children are girls, but behave exactly the same. It’s personality, not penises. My dd’s behave very much as you describe, especially the eldest who socialised with boys more as a baby and toddler.

Yes there is socialisation. You just have to make sure you don’t fall into the “boys will be boys” trap, and pull them up on behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated in girls.

My mum had “gender disappointment” in an odd way. She was fine with girls, but girls were supposed to behave like girls, nice quiet, enjoy playing with friends and wearing pretty clothes. When it became apparent I wasn’t like that, it was a huge personality clash. I think she’s have preferred me to be a boy so she could send me off to football with my dad while she went shopping with my sister.

@bluebluezoo yes agree with you on the 'boys will be boys' trap. I know from my OP it sounds as though I use this as an excuse, but I really really dont' in real life. I feel as though I am exhausting myself with the amount that I have to do to keep even a very basic level of control- I am genuinely pretty close to 100% consistent on consequences, expectations, as well as lotst of one on one attention etc, and nothing seems to make much difference. But I hope over time it will