My darling Osiris has been 'testing the boundaries' a little in the last couple of weeks. That's Good Mum speak. In Bad Mum speak he's been a little bugger and he's driving me up the wall. He won't listen to a thing I say and has started doing 'naughty' things because he wants to see what happens when he does.
Whenever I have a parenting crisis I cast the information net out and see what other mothers say about their children of the same age. At the moment there seems to be an consensus that Osiris is just "being a boy". People with boys say they are experiencing the same thing and that's the trouble with boys.
"But I'd rather have boys any day than a girl" more than a couple of people have said to me.
People with girls say "It's because he's a boy" and go on to tell me their girl has been behaving badly, it sounds like that same behavior to me but they talk about their girl as being "a little bitch at the moment" "a right little cow" "stroppy" "just like her mum".
"the trouble with girls" I've been told "Is they can be really nasty"
Now, Osiris and Solomon have loads of cousins, 8 in fact, of various ages. All but one are girls. I have seen them all behave in the same ways even though their parents have lots of different parenting methods. The little boy is clingy, sensitive and quiet, one of the older girls is JUST LIKE Osiris and her little sister is like a naughty magnet (I love them all, of course).
So from my observations I conclude: No, it's not just "because he's a boy" that Osiris is going through a challenging stage, it's a stage all children go through to some degree or other.
Another conclusion: Will all these young girls go on to fulfill their parents predictions of being bitchy, catty cows (all female words, I notice)? They will have to break free from a very tightly wound net of female behavior expectations.
