Violent behaviour in little boys- how to cope after having a girl?

[titferbrains]

Pg and due in sep. I have one strong willed, stubborn bu mostly pleaSant and sociable dd.

I am pretty horrified generally by the behaviour of little boys around me, more wh iny, clingy, and more violent, endlessly waving stick shaped things about and shouting aggressively etc.

Don't know what I'm having but am trying understand boys behaviour a bit better. What do you have to tolerate and what do you say is unacceptable?

I have friends with boys who seem to be much less strict than I am about all the kinds of behaviour I mention. In particular I struggle with violence, even watching brothers playfightng with sticks looks like too much to me - I just feel it's so important to teach kids that violence isn't acceptable but perhaps when you've had a boy you can sigh and say boys will be boys and feel they'll grow out of it?

Just wonder how to let their hormones do what they need to do but also teach that violence has consequences and is wrong?

Oh and I agree with blu about not protecting your DD from nasty boys. Parents with DDs who do this do them a serious diservice. Girls and boys need to play with each other. To be fair, boys need to learn how to control their physicality around girls a bit, especially after age 11, but girls need to learn and be encoouraged to assume that they can do everything boys can do.

Blu and morebeta, DD's best friends are boys! I have no problem with her playing with boys, quite the opposite!

Good glad to hear it.

I see it a lot with other parents at DSs school. Indeed one mother with two DDs is very vocally open about doing everything she can to keep her DDs away from boys. They are aged 9 and 11 FGS!

I have two boys - one is a stereotypical boy - running, screaming, fighting, playing football - and so on, ad nauseum.

The other one hates sport and fighting and running. He is quiet and introspective and loves cuddles and chatting. His favourite activity is sitting in a cafe eating cake, nattering and watching the world go by! He's never climbed anything in his life!

They are just children - having a boy does not mean you get a ready-packaged Action Man - he will be his own person with his own ideas.

Have you seen the MN thread where the girl nicked her brother's iPod shuffle and sold it on Ebay? Believe me, girls can get up to some pretty unpleasant s---, too.

My girl is the easiest child 99% of the time but today she is driving me batty!!! I just made DH take her to riding lesson I just needed a break. Very greedy for attention, short-tempered with every mistake I make and boring the pants off me by reciting in great detail movies she's seen & books she's read. Repeats herself if I don't respond enthusiastically enough. So much easier to take the boys out to kick a ball about... Although at the moment the boys (3 of my own + one visitor) are laughing and playing nicely together.

"time and again I have seen boys clinging and whiny where DDs are mostly calm and independent, they are the insecure ones who "act out" eg lose their temper or do violent things to get mummy's attention. Is this all down to bad parenting or do boys need more nurturing so they are a bit more secure in themselves?"
no, boys don't necessarily need MORE nurturing. but if parents/caregivers have some kind of issue with demonstrating/sharing affection towards boys - if they have imbibed and then are expressing some of the cultural stereotypes about boys and are less demonstrative etc - then of course a boy may become clingy etc, and do whatever he can to get attention. it may be that parents feel more comfortable about nurturing girls than boys...i think boys and girls need the same level of nurturing; or, more specifically, to be treated as people from the get-go, and have their needs met accordingly.
and, yes, whenever my boys play with kids who have been brought up differently and who punch or whatever, we have conversations about violence - if i perceive that it has caused them (or me!) any kind of problem or confusion. but i would do this about any issue.

girls are the whiners ime

that is if we are going to sink to that level

Haven't read the whole thread in detail but has anyone mentioned Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine? Fascinating stuff by a cognitive neuroscientist about what differences might be 'hard-wired' and what are created by our society, starting from the very first interactions - apparently if you hand people an anonymous baby dressed in pink they are more likely to talk to them, whereas if you hand them a baby dressed in blue they will start tossing it around and do more 'rough play'! You might think you practice gender neutral parenting but in fact you can't get away from knowing their gender and it affecting every interaction - just like it does with other adults. It has really affected how I try to parent my ds - for example, I deliberately buy him pink and sparkly things because I don't want him to get the message that pink means something isn't for him, and it's always seemed strange to me that parents of girls talk about trying to persuade their children away from pink but parents of boys rarely complain about trying to encourage their boys away from 'boy's' colours, blue, sludge green, brown and grey mostly with a bit of red thrown in sometimes! I'm also quite pleased if people think he's a girl sometimes, because it means they will interact with him in a different way which I think will help him develop in a more rounded way. But maybe I'm just weird...

You must be unlucky with the little boys you mix with in my opinion as I have experienced pretty evenly split bad behaviour from both genders.

One current example is where my DS2 (1.9) keeps getting picked on by a little girl at toddler group who is slightly older, every week she pushes him in the face and goes out of her way to try to hurt him . She does it to other boys too but not girls! Her mum is mortified by this and seems to be a good parent but the little girl is going through not a very nice phase imo. It doesn't mean I think all girls do this, just as all boys aren't violent and destructive, although people like to stereotype them as being so.

Personally, with reference to the little boy who breaks toys at your house by trampling on them and tipping things out then never tidying away, if his mum is not telling him to be careful, and making him do some tidying up before they leave then I would instigate it myself! Make a game out of tidying up, or say 'no more toys out until we've put these ones away' , even tell him nicely to be careful where he is walking or he will break things. His mum should be doing that in my opinion.

If you have a little boy I'm sure you will just adore him and these worries will probably fade away. Good luck.

Sorry, meant to add that again, just in my experience I can think of more clingy girls than boys, and definitely more whinging from some of my friends' girls than their boys so I don't agree with you what you have said about boys being more clingy and insecure, but that doesn't mean I think all girls are clingy and whingy! They are all different and you cannot worry about personality traits your boy/girl may or may not have.

I have two boys now aged 10 and 8 , always been active , used their imagation in dressing uo and role play and when started school we guided them into sport both in school and outside activities.

Never really experineced the 'violence whiny clingy ' that Op has .

Violence is never accetable but children using imgation and playing out certain scenes as they ahve for yeras , cowboys,indians cops and robbers could be seen as part fo their development - boys in the most are more physical than girls espacilly at a younger age as their brains are connected and devolope differntly to girls.

As an 'outsider' to a little girls world I see the issues that my friemds have with their DD and school friends and the constant ' shes not my friend etc and falling out betweeon girls at school.' this seems to be more of a gril issue than a boys.

Boys will just have a game of football and be done with it .

Swings and roundabouts with both sexes .

Enjoy boys -they can be very affectionate .loving and sensitive .

Every child is differnt so don't make too many presumptions about your DS before he is born.

nightsdrawingin, you sound lovely, not weird. maybe we could get together to swap used pink stuff (all chosen by my boys, not me). book you mention sounds very interesting. i think that's the point i'm making - that gender bias is inevitable, including from us as parents. i guess all we can do is sort our own stuff out in order to minimise it.
something i do in order to play with the gender stereotype thing is to swap over the girl/boy dialogue when reading to my kids. it's amazing how it gets in there, in so many books, including those in which it serves absolutely no purpose for the narrative. obviously kids often have fabulous memories for stories so i am careful not to make it confusing, but i find it a simple way to undermine perceived gender roles.