Hands Full of Rocks

Oh, boy! Girls have noticed The Boyo... (again/still)

So, Mr G has a wee problem.

He's cute.

Oh, such a problem to have, but given the 12-year-old-girl-hormones-thing, and his tendency to think in terms of 'I am an island unto myself', we have something of a challenge on our hands!

Ah, but the fun, too!

Maybe not so much for him, as he finds it disturbing (though also gratifying by the smile he couldn't quite suppress) to have girls come up and just stand there watching him on the playground. Or talking to him about his hair. Or hearing from his friends that so-and-so likes him.

When he says 'likes me' the sound has italics. 

LIKES. Like, uh, 'that kind of like'. AHHHHH! he says, run away!

He's confounded.

Not sure what to do.

Flattered.

Weirded out.

A bit overwhelmed.

All of that.

And he's Mr G. So he didn't at first buy it - were girls really that hot over him?

So he tested the theory. He went and sat by himself on the playground. Looked pensive, and thoughtful, and solitary. Girls kind of wandered nearer and waved and smiled. The way he said it sounded like they giggled, too, though he didn't say so.

He was freaked a bit by it.

So I told him he had a simple solution - stop sitting by himself looking pensive.

Heh. Kind of like saying 'if it hurts, stop doing it'.

He didn't find that so funny. Darn.

Anyway, we've been talking the last few days as a result, about the Girl Thing. And the Girlfriend Thing.

He was thrilled with the idea that he could use us Parents as a stick to beat them back with. Mr G, if a girl starts getting to the 'would you go out with me/be my boyfriend' level of conversation, you have my direct permission to say, 'Sorry, my parents won't let me have a girlfriend until I'm (whatever age he chooses to say, I suggested 14 was a fair start).'

They might argue or pout or count him out as too reliant on his parents, but hey, still problem solved.

And in the meantime? We talked about how to be friends with a girl. Talked about asking her questions, being nice but not encouraging excess, and allowing her to just be friends. Giving her room and time to chill out a bit, calm down, get to know him for real instead of just watching him on the playground and admiring his hair and his fabo new teeth (braces off!).

I asked him if he thought any of the girls he knew were cute.

I got The Look.

The OhPleezeYouMustBeKidding look. The look had italics, too.

Still, I thought it a fair question. And he gave it a fair thought, but couldn't come up with how to answer.

Me being me, I gave him a multiple choice answer to select from. He picked (very paraphrased as I was rather direct with my comments): "I'm not really interested in prepubescent/near-pubescent girls, thanks."

Okay, so he already has a preference for high school-to-college-age women, with their, er, physiological maturity in evidence. So to speak.

But he's also handling that aspect well - he thinks dating a girl who is not physically demonstrating a greater maturity is kind of freaky. Ew! Girls that age are not ready to date.

He likewise has a strong preference for waiting himself - he thinks both he and his peers should be much more grown up first.

Which isn't to say he won't be looking at the older girls. He already does. He'll admire the older girls/women, but he really does not want to act on it.

Fine by me, all around.

Still, the start of some new conversations. About learning about girls from girls, and understanding that they are different from each other as well as different from him, and being okay with that. I want him to be able to hold to the statement he made when he was seven: that girls are just people, and there's nothing wrong with being friends with them.

It's kind of the Acceptant Loving Faithful thing, starting up for real. A new set of filters to bring in focus - remember that they are themselves, accept that even when you don't understand it, act kindly and with affection toward your friends, and act faithfully toward them and yourself.

Starting with Acceptant for now.

He seems okay with that perspective. Considering it. Taking it seriously. We'll talk strategies for conversations that don't go to heck immediately, and how to set a boundary (and how annoying it is to have to set it repeatedly, but also how very hard it is to fight hormones so some compassion and patience required in the process).

Is it weird that I think it is really really FUN to get to where we're talking sex, and dating, and pornography, and the implications of being too friendly, STDs, social risk, and heartbreak? I am thrilled that he went to Ep first, told him what was going on that was bothering him (Girl. Likes me. Help!!).

I'm also glad he then came to me after talking to his dad, and asked if dad had filled me in (Nope, he hadn't had time, but it was nice to not have shared it yet, on this go, as that set the tone and required he fill me in on the whole deal). And then that he went ahead and told me. Just let the conversation roll.

It's really exciting to me to watch him hit this stage, to see the teen inside the boy peek out, to watch the suppressed satisfaction of being attractive to someone leak out around the edges, but at the same time see the will to make sane choices remain.

I love that we get to have these talks. That he trusts us with it. I don't fool myself that all the kids will be that way with us - they're each so different. But I'm glad I get to have this child for my first run at it. I'm sure I'll make some mistakes, but hopefully nothing too catastrophic.

And meanwhile, I'll let him carry on working on learning how to be friends with girls. Hormonal preteen/tween girls.

Provided they don't go all weird on him, anyway.

And again, right on schedule

This time, it's puberty.

Or really, pre-puberty, since he's 7 1/2. But the testosterone has been kicking in gradually since around 3 years old, spiked a lot at 6 (playing doctor), eased off mid-to-late 6, and then started ramping up around 7 again. Plus or minus - for kids with a constitutional growth delay it will be a few years later (about 10% of the population has this normal variation in growth pattern - the curve is lower but continues longer into adulthood - guys for example can still be gaining height into their 20's, and may not hit puberty until several years after the average).

When we rearranged the bedrooms, the boys got the top bunks. (When I say bedrooms, I mean all two of them. Yes, for six people. Tiny house.) To give them some privacy, we set up curtains on cable around their bunks.

Mostly, Mr B has not slept in his bunk. He'd rather sleep next to mom or dad on the trundle on the floor, or in our bed. It's a regular cycle of cosleepers - and mainly, we don't mind too much. Sleep is good. And they'll already know how to not steal the covers from their partner/spouse/whomever when they grow up. Providing a long-term view, there...

But all of a sudden, not only is Mr B needing to wrestle with everyone, he's vanishing behind the curtain for long spans of time. With The Book. (It's So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families (The Family Library))

I'd read somewhere a long time ago (when I was researching growth issues due to Mr B's crash in growth) that testosterone tends to come in short intense bursts, in different patterns (I'm not sure they know why it happens in the patterns it happens in). Three days of 'testosterone poisoning' at a go, with (at least in the early days) some 'down time' between them. (I use the poisoning term with both genders, so it isn't an attack on guy hormones... I think of my peri-menopausal hyper-ovulatory stages as estrogen or progesterone poisoning, too.)

In our experience, the three day thing seems about right. Mr G definitely does three day cycles. We can see it starting, because he is suddenly VERY PHYSICAL. Wrestling, cuddling, pushing on his sibs or friends, leaning against me, sitting too close, kicking the table when he sits at it, fidget, climb, leap, etc. My sister said (if I recall correctly) that a friend of hers had described it for her (she is the single parent of an only son and wanted some insight) - and it felt to him like a need to touch everyone and everything all the time. Huge sensory impulse and drive. I don't know that it shows up like that for everyone, but it sure looks like it from the outside. I'm borrowing her explanation to her son, because it makes sense - she said that you'll start wanting to touch everyone, and one of the jobs of puberty is learning how to Not Do That. It also means finding outlets for the urge to be physical, because I know it is a bad idea to try to fight biology entirely. Channel it is more effective, because if we put a lid on it, it will just leak out sideways somewhere else. And that's usually even less useful.

So, we now go into cycle two of this pattern, at different levels. Mr B is just starting out, and Mr G is well into the early stage of official puberty. Like, his mustache is starting to darken, and the rest of his body is tracking along on development just fine. Unfortunately that also means he already has acne at 11 years old (though the essential oil skin care approach I use for me, which works astonishingly well when NOTHING ever worked including tetracycline, also works for him. Plus it smells nice...). He's also doing plenty of hinting that he's okay with learning about sex. Only, maybe not from mom. And probably not from dad. And maybe not from school, either (oh the horror of talking puberty with Teachers, and Other Kids, and .... shudder). Books is good. We have this one (What's Going on Down There?: Answers to Questions Boys Find Hard to Ask ), which is fabulous - gives great information, including about sex, without having a moral stance on it one way or another. It is very clear that your family determines the start point for a moral position. They talk about STDs and pregnancy and all that grody (er, interesting) stuff.

But that's a bit over Mr B's level. Even though Mr G started reading the What's Going on Down There book at around 8, I think. Maybe 9. Mr B isn't ready for that yet, and likely won't be until he's older than Mr G was. There are a few books out there for younger boys, but they're also mainly aimed at 8-10 age.

But, we're doing okay with The Book, which has some very nice drawn art, and expresses the squeamishness as well as the curiosity rather effectively. Mr G was never squeamish, but Mr B is very prone to blushes and such - very much an F, feelings and values and 'what does this mean about me that you saw me reading this book'.

If I can't find him, I'm now getting used to looking in the bedroom to see if his curtains are drawn. If they're closed, he's probably in there, reading - or whatever. And if he's closing doors and doing 'stuff' behind them. He's suddenly very entertained by his foreskin (no, you can't do that while watching tv with your family, you can do that in your room by yourself). He's learning to do tricks with his parts (he showed me).

Hey, at least overall, he's not mortified by his parts. So that's a fine thing.

It's a little entertaining from this perspective. In a way, charming in his fascination, and in his silly shyness and embarrassment when he gets caught doing something where he shouldn't (nothing awful, just 'please take it somewhere else, thanks!'). And yes, it tends to run in three-day bouts with him, too. Complete with the sudden need to wrestle with his brother.

Right on schedule.