Boys Will Be Boys

In my realization about boys, (and men), is that they were born with selective hearing. I can literally be standing in front of my nine year old Joe Mack and tell him,” Brush your teeth,” and even repeat it two more times and he will still “forget” to do it or say he did not hear me tell him to do it. I can tell my husband to take out the trash repeatedly before we go to bed and when I walk by the kitchen after my husband is well on his way to sleep-the trash bag is STILL sitting there untouched!

Boys are loud, hyper, love to get dirty, destructive, stubborn, selective listeners! I always know when my oldest did not have outside recess at school because when he comes home-he is bouncing off the wall, jumping off of couches, and trying to slide down the banister! My youngest boy (the two year old) will pull a chair up to the kitchen counter and climb up to “attempt” to jump off and be like “Superman” as he calls it, if he does not go outside and exert some energy. Some days both my boys will completely set me over the edge and make me want to fix an extra large vodka martini! I grew up as an only child, but my husband keeps reassuring me that this “selective hearing” and “destructive” behavior is normal from boys:

- Boys like to “pretend” they don’t know how to do lots of things that involve chores. I can show Joe Mack everything he is supposed to do to clean his room, but he will look at me like I am speaking Spanish or tell me later,” Mom you didn’t tell me to take my dirty clothes downstairs, you just said to pick them up. So I put them under my bed because I did not know where to take them.”

- Boys love to make sound effects. Battle ships, pretend guns, fart sounds, explosions, or all of the above made at once. No matter how much you tell him to stop-they will selectively NOT hear you. In their mind, they are in the middle of a very important life-saving mission and trying to save the world from an alien.

-For some reason, boys always think they are on a super secret CIA mission everywhere they go, even grocery stores. I can be strolling the aisles of H-E-B and my nine year old will be acting like he is Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. He will slide along the shelves on his tip toes and start making a machine gun out of his hands along with the noises. Apparently there are rogue spies hiding at the grocery store.

- Boys are going to do what boys WANT to do. It really does not matter how many times you say NO. Joe Mack got in trouble on the school bus for being rowdy and was forced to sit up front with Sydney and all the other 6 year olds. He decided to crawl underneath the seat once the bus had taken off to go sit with his friends. Sydney got mad that he did not want to sit with her and told on him. The bus driver warned him not to do it again, and guess what-he did it again and got sent to the principal’s office. Boys live by the motto,” It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” My husband also lives by this motto….I suppose the apple does not fall far from the tree.

-Boys like to hide things and think that moms won’t notice. For example: Anytime Joe Mack gets a bad test grade, he will hide it in his backpack underneath all of his other crap thinking I won’t find it. He has also thrown bad test papers out the bus window on the way home to hide the evidence. However, he is astonished that I always seem to know about the grades without actually seeing the papers. I tell him it’s because I have special powers with eyes in the back of my head and can see EVERYTHING! It also helps that his teachers email all the grades to me….but he doesn’t know that yet….

Boys can be sneaky and destructive-and literally drive mothers CRAZY!!! However, there is nothing like a mother’s love for her son. I know my boys are going to make silly mistakes through life-but it is my job to help set them straight and raise them to be honest, strong, loving men. In the mean time-I will help Joe Mack and Aiden lookout for spies at the grocery store and keep them believing (for as long as I can) that I’m a superhero with eyes in the back of my head…