Testosterone

In the last few days I’ve become immersed in the wonders of raising a boy. Jason says it’s just the effects of testosterone and that it’s coming from the inside as opposed to the environment that we have provided for him. I guess I imagined our little guy permanently sweet and gentle, not really feminine but still tender hearted and thoughtful.

His teachers comment regularly on how physical he is and we’ve seen it too. He greets his friends with a surprise tackle. Whenever Mommy is around he tones it down a bit by tenderly giving out hugs and kisses in thanks or to say goodbye. In the back of my mind I always knew he was aggressive at times. I just thought the masculinity, the kind that makes some men oblivious to everything, would start later than 2 years old. Isn’t he too young for this?

On a few occasions Aidan has stomped on bugs outside when the intention was to help him admire them. This prompted us to put effort into teaching him to control this aggression in the same way that we teach him not to hit or bite when he gets frustrated. It’s funny; whenever he’s taken on such behavior we immediately start to question where he’s seen it and where he’s learned it. Other parents often comment, “Well, that’s just boys.” I thought this was impossible. Why would aggressiveness be “just boys?” This didn’t make sense to me.

Last night we were watching some stupid action movie called xXx (well, only two scenes) and as we were trying to figure out what the movie was, there was a chase scene with big explosions and a guy on a motorcycle being shot at by bad guys in a helicopter. It was action-packed. Aidan watched it with wide eyes and since it didn’t show any real blood or gore, we thought it was fine. After that scene was over, Aidan looked over at me, did the sign for “more” and said, “More bad guys, Mommy!” He enjoyed it! Jason explained, “He’s a boy. Boys love this stuff. It’s in them. It’s testosterone.” As the Mommy, I just don’t get it!

Later in the night, we were all playing in his room. Aidan has a semi truck that has a car trailer on it. The purpose is for the truck to pull race cars but I had a better idea. I put all of Aidan’s Little People and farm animals on the trailer and called it a parade float. I thought he’d like that. Not only did Jason make fun of it and call it “gay” (which is such a derogatory use of the term and I was angry that he said it in front of Aidan), but Aidan picked it up and threw it. After Jason relentlessly made fun of me for my, as he called it, “quite creative use of toys but clearly a girl thing” we went back to the non-creative throwing of toys. So much for avoiding gender stereotyping.