Learning Gender Roles

While I was getting ready for the day this morning, John asked me out of the blue, "Does God want us to hit boys?"

Amazingly, I knew exactly where he was going with such an odd question, but I still asked him to explain what he meant. It turns out he has been cogitating on what Daddy and I mean when we tell him that God does not want him to hit girls. We're long past the really bad phase of John hitting his little sister all day long (when she was about six to 15 months old), but he does still sometimes lose control when he gets frustrated. We've always told him not to hit, but lately we've been adding that it is particularly bad to hit girls.

Thus, he wondered if he is supposed to hit boys.

Following was a really interesting, difficult conversation trying to explain that God doesn't exactly want him to hit boys, but that it is worse for a boy to hit a girl. I reminded him about how he and Daddy wrestle roughly but are having fun, and that that is very good behavior for boys to do, but not so good to do with girls, that we should treat girls gently. That led him to say that he wants to learn how to play football so he can hit boys, and I explained that football isn't exactly hitting boys (like in anger), but is a rough sport, which is okay. So then he asked, "Would you please play football with me?" So cute! I took the opportunity to say that a really great person to play football with him would be Daddy since he is a boy too, but John corrected me that Daddy is not a boy, he is a man. So I tried to explain maleness, that Daddy used to be a boy, but John really would have none of it.

And as I write this, I am overhearing the children playing Mass in the other room. Mary rang the bell and John corrected her, "No, that is what altar boys do."