Stereotypes

I've been thinking a lot about the stereotypes that we have regarding boys and girls. I have reached a point that when people at work ask me about Dermot, I just reply that he's all boy. And he really is. Ethan and I are both pretty hardcore feminists. Not in the "men are all scum" vein, but in the "gender shouldn't really be an issue other than when it comes to childbearing" vein. I have tried to raise Dermot without mentioning gender very often, and I have tried to make it clear that he can do whatever he wants. I am also a realist, and I understand that peers quite often make a bigger dent in this realm than adults do. But I want him to know that home is a safe place to try things. That being said, Dermot is really all boy. And that's fine.

As a developmental psychologist, one of the biggest things I emphasize in my classes is that both nature and nurture matter. In fact, you can't talk about one without it being tangled up with the other. Genes affect environment and environment, surprisingly, affects genes. But I also believe that when it comes to parenting, people depend a little too much on environment. Our kids are the way they are, and it's up to us to accept that. Dermot is a ball of energy. So are most kids, but Dermot is a little bit more energetic, and his energy likes to turn aggressive. I am convinced that that's his temperament. I can't change it, but I can teach him that there is a time and place. That's why I like to sign him up for physical activities. He's now in tumbling and karate.

Here are the other ways that Dermot is all boy. A lot of this stuff cracks me up. He's totally into super heroes. He decided to be Spiderman for Halloween, and he now wears the costume every day. We bought him Spiderman pajamas and he wanted to wear them last night even though they have long sleeves. He did change his mind once he got to bed and realized that it's not that time of year yet. He has a Batman mask that he was wearing a lot for a while. Apparently Spiderman has won that battle. He loves any TV show with super heroes. He likes to create new super powers. The other day he was smash man. He was also ketchup man at daycare when he was wearing his Heinz ketchup shirt. He would squeeze his waist and pretend that ketchup was coming out of his head. He's always worried about protecting me from the bad guys.

Dermot is totally into video games. I question our position on this a lot, but he really has learned a lot of puzzle solving skills from them. He quite often can figure his way out of spots that Ethan and I are still trying to figure out. His hand-eye coordination has also improved.

He adores building. He likes to tear apart and re-build his Legos. He also lives in the building section at day care. They need to make him move out of it every day so that other kids get a chance and so that he can do something else. He's very mechanical and he can already build things free-style.

He loves aliens and robots. He's also starting to get into dinosaurs. Now that we've been going to the library, we've been going pretty regularly. We found the non-fiction section in the kids' section, and Ethan brought home books on dinosaurs and fossils. Dermot is fascinated. He loves to have Ethan read things to them, and then he tells me all about it the next day. He's getting so smart. In fact, he's doing subtraction in his head. At 4 1/2. Wow. The other day I had him helping me make pancakes. I needed 4 tablespoons of baking powder. Dermot put two in and then said that he needed to put in two more. He's done it a couple of other times since, too. In the Lego Batman game, you need to collect 10 black containers per level. The other day Ethan had 8 and Dermot, out of the blue, said "Daddy needs two more". We were flabbergasted. He can't add, or at least he won't when I ask him too, but he can figure that out. I think he's going to be real big into numbers like his Mama. I took an IQ test when I was his age, and they were going to leave out the math section, but my mother told them that I could do it. I have no idea how well I did, but I do know that I was doing addition.

Speaking of gender and kids, one of my grad school friends (Hi Shenan!) has a little girl who is almost exactly one year younger than Dermot. My friend is also a feminist and is well trained in gender psychology. I have noticed in her recent pictures that her little girl is "all girl". Ballet, pink, Barbie, etc. It's funny that you can make any type of toy available to kids, and so many of them still choose the items that supposedly fit their gender. I was so not like that as a kid. I collected football cards and Hot Wheel cars. I had a ton of Barbies because my mom bought them for me, but I hated them. I wanted to play with my brother's really cool building toys and race tracks, but I wasn't allowed to. I loved to play with my friend Jeff's crash 'em up remote control cars. I was such a tomboy. It's funny to have a boy who's totally into boy stuff, and yet he's still not into the boy stuff I liked as a kid. I never liked pretending to fight or any of the violent stuff. I think I liked the building that was involved in laying out the race tracks and moving the cars. All I can say is that Dermot has been allowed to explore and choose to be who he wants to be, regardless of how non-conforming his parents might be, and he has very much chosen to be Dermot.

I should also say that he's an incredibly sweet, loving kid who adores his Mama right now. Apparently I am cuddlier than Ethan is. Dermot likes to faux-argue with me about who loves each other more. He tells me that he loves me more than anyone else could possibly love me. He also loves me so much that there are no words for the number (he got that from me). He also loves me one hundred seventy one hundred sixty four one hundred forty seven much. He loves to string together large numbers. He just cracks me up.

Also, I am really sick and it sucks. I canceled class yesterday, which I rarely do.