I am a mom of 4 boys, which makes me a "referee" ...
An important referee phrase, "stop wrestling, finish getting ready or a penalty will occur" is heard no less than 10 times every morning before school...
At the bus stop our daily soccer game/sword fight/foot race often turns into a 3 boy pile up with the bottom boy being left to go to school with "mud knees"..(Melissa cheering the whole time for her daily "pick" to win) the only one who cries "foul" in this game is me, the referee, who will have to srub the knees clean tonight! (not to mention what a loser mother it appears I am for sending my kid to school with mud knees!)
After school snack time is chock full of good humored break out fights that end up on the floor in a massive "brawl", not unlike the cartoon brawls that look like a giant blurry dust ball rolling wildly all over the place..the referee calls out to the culprit "what on earth are you doing!?!?!?" to which the offender usually replies, "beating him/hims up.." referee responds with, "I see that, but WHY?" ...offender thinks for a moment and responds with, "ummmm..." at which point it becomes clear to the referee that the offended son has long forgotten what the original offense was and said brawl continued for the sheer joy of brawling...
homework! Oh for the love! WHY do we have to have homework!! (see after school snack time for what usually occurs during homework time)
I love to watch my boys battle it out for the basketball, baseball or soccer ball..whichever sport it is that they are in at the time..It gives me sheer joy to watch other little boys behave in much the same way that mine do, helping me to gain confidence that it is not poor parenting that results in constant "brawls", it is just what little boys are about...tonight was hockey practice...and I sat back and enjoyed every moment as these little guys were playfully falling all over each other, or pushing and shoving each other,using their sticks to trip each other, in what looked like a bunch of little boys determined to brawl with each other, if the volunteer coach (aka stand-in referee) had not stopped them, I am sure we would have seen a few playful brawls break out.
I absolutely love being a referee to my little guys and will never tire of watching their playful, suprise brawls occur. With all the broken furniture, ripped/ stained clothes, cuts and scrapes, and all the other things that result from break out brawls, I often think of how much they do look like little puppies rolling around wrestling each other. I absolutely think it is adorable! I know I will miss this when they are bigger, I hope it never stops, if my husband and his brothers are a glimps into the future, it won't ever stop!
4 comments:
I, for one, do not understand how backward the male species is. I don't get it. Why would one want to inflict harm? And more confusing to me, why would one want harm inflicted upon himself? The next time this is going on in my house, tonight, I will have to try the puppy trick. Then, I might not be AS annoyed.
Considering how good your kids are the rest of the time, I'd think it's cute too. I love how your boys are real boys and wrestle.
It's in the DNA. I remember last year, watching one of our kindersteps classes waiting in a boy's line and a girl's line. The girls were right in a row, like little ducks, and the boys were all over the place, half of them in "battle mode" against some imaginary opponent.
In my own classroom,I have had years that were heavy on girls and years that were heavy on boys. It makes a big difference in the class dynamic. In fact, for a brief time many years back, I had 19 boys and 4 girls. I let the girls have their own table so that they could have some
refuge.
Karen is right. It is in the DNA. That said, my girls seemed to be quite involved, as least at home, in most of the battles. Maybe Dale just forced it on them, but I don't think so. Karen broke her thumb once wrestling with Dale while their dad was acting as referree. Also in their DNA: dads aren't very good at that, they allow too many fouls before assessing penalties. I have several pieces of broken furniture to prove that they it doesn't stop when they grow up. Wait, did I say "grow up?" I should have said "get older."
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