I went back to college after being a stay-at-home mom for 16 years to seven children-four boys and three girls. I somehow found myself taking a Family and Parenting class. I thought the professor, whom I had had previously, would probably let me teach most of the class. After all, I was in the middle of teenagers on one end of the child spectrum but still dropping a three-year-old off at pre-school to run across the street in time for class. I was basically besieged by “bad stages” on all sides.
But I was certainly wrong! There at the religiously (barely) affiliated college, I found myself totally at sorts with many of the teachings of that class.
The professor and I especially disagreed about how the characteristics of gender in children were determined. She was one of tabula rasa (blank slate) believers that children come into the world with no personalities and the parents create their personalities by the way they treat them. (That’s a general description-I obviously didn’t take a single psychology class.)
Well, that was an interesting thought. All of my kids were thrown into the same house with basically the same circumstances and, through the years, basically the same teachers, and they all turned out differently-from a highly organized older daughter to a quiet son who would send himself to a time-out to a lively nine-year-old son who once had to spend a week downstairs-a 1,500-square-foot timeout- for taking it upon himself to fire the aide for my handicapped daughter.
Although my professor had a PhD, I had a community toy box. Constantly struggling and mostly failing to maintain an organized “toy organization system,” I had a few clothes baskets full of toys tucked behind the couch. All sorts of toys. Boys toys and girls toys all mingled together. At any one point, each child could take a baby doll for a ride in a dump truck, wear Mardi Gras beads, play with Matchbox cars or do all three at the same time!
But somehow the boys always seemed to pull out the trucks, cars and anything that could either make an immense amount of noise or hurt someone if thrown. The girls always picked up the dolls and the pink Legos.
(For the sake of honesty, I will admit my youngest child, a daughter after four boys in a row, did sleep on top of a toy Uzi a couple of nights, but I’m not convinced one of her brothers didn’t put her up to it.)
Then there was the kitchen center that Old Saint Nick delivered one Christmas. It was for everyone-a future Rachael Ray or a future Emeril, it didn’t matter. Complete with dishes and plastic food, it was put in the middle of the family room floor available to all.
That proved an interesting experience. Within a week, one of my older daughters with a streak of authoritarianism had turned it into a library with herself as the head librarian, books in the refrigerator nicely marked with “dew dates” and the sink full of checkout papers.
That lasted a few days until my sons turned over all the appliances to make fortresses and waged a war of toy chicken nuggets and French fries. The librarian was as appalled with that as with most decisions her brothers made.
That brings me to my great experiment in Never Exposing My Sons to Weapons of Violence. Nary a gun showed up in a toy box-this was pre-Uzi days-for at least the first 10 years of my being a mother of sons. I thought I could squelch any semblance of a Rambo gene.
I tried, I really tried. It was to no avail, however. The boys-never the girls-made guns out of sticks, broom and mop handles, and every kitchen tool imaginable. I held out as long as I could, even though my father had retired from the Army. I held out until the night we had company over for a spaghetti dinner and every boy there chewed their French bread into the shape of guns and shot at each other across the table.
Even the best mothers know when a battle is lost. Toy guns showed up soon after in the androgynous toy box.
(Most) little boys are drawn to weapons, whether they are cowboy guns or light sabers, and (most) little girls whine and beg for the latest and most glittery Barbie dolls.
Even though none of these experiences convinced my professor, I knew it was true. My children came to earth with distinct personalities developed long before they arrived in the cribs in this life. The boys were boys, and the girls were girls.
The class I took was many years before the Family Proclamation came out, but I remembered these experiences and how the class went when I read the Proclamation the first time: “All human beings-male and female-are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”
As my patriarchal blessing states about my quick acceptance of the message of the restored gospel, my observations about my children and the statement of the Proclamation were “a reawakening of truths I had known before and loved.”
I know my children have an “eternal identity” that began long before I held them in my arms and looked into their eyes for the first time. Mothers of two-year-olds don’t like to hear this, but the child at two is the same adult with either the rough edges smoothed or roughened at age 25.
My “highly organized daughter” became a CPA and then a mother of three who keeps a list in her pocketbook of what is on each aisle in Wal-Mart and, when I’m willing, helps me make out a weekly menu. The son who tried so hard to help me fix things when I was a single mom has a backyard playground and garden that is a testimony to his builder genes. My tender-hearted son who once put a Band-Aid on an injured baby snake has traveled three times across country with his two cats because he can’t bear the thought of finding them a new home.
The son who put himself in time-out is still the first one ready on Sunday mornings and a responsible man who accepts what life has to offer with patience and few comments. My youngest son who always tried to speak kindly of others as a child is a peacemaker within complicated adult relationships now.
My youngest daughter who marched into preschool with a confidence I never had faces her busy life of school and work with an energy and optimism I envy. (I couldn’t leave anyone out, or I would hear about it!)
My sons and sons-in-law accept the responsibilities of church leadership and financial support of their families, and my daughters and daughters-in-law nurture children and home. The guys try, but it’s Mommy the kids want when their boo-boos or hearts are hurting. The girls at different times work outside the home, but they mostly complain about it and long for home!
Although there may be occasions we find toy Uzis under little girls, the solid foundation of gospel truths are an unchanging beacon guiding us through the murky and often confusing waters of mortality.
And about that class-I got the worst grade of my whole college career on a test in the parenting class. Go figure. But maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had spent the night before in the emergency room with an asthmatic child. Anyway, that reason was one of the few things I said that semester that the professor believed!
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