Ruminations on my son's writing and gender differences

I must be "getting back to normal," as my old sleep pattern is starting to reassert itself. I am staying up later in the night and sleeping later in the morning, arising this morning at a decadent 9:30.

It might have something to do with staying up too late to finish reading. How I love being so gripped by the story that my eyes race over the pages to find out what happens next! Very few authors have the knack to keep me from my beloved snoozing.

My son's writing has it, the voice and pace that makes me itch to turn the page, but I don't know if he continues to write his marvelous stories, or his eerie, dark poetry. I hope so, it was singularly thrilling to read.

Of course, every mother thinks her child is a unique talent, but I have outside confirmation--the school was so moved by the power of his writings, they called us in to discuss his so-called "cry for help," presumably revealed by his dark themes. We laugh at this now (and what did Stephen King's teachers think of his imagination, I thought?), but at the time, I was outraged and Bill was nonplussed. After a half-hour of blathering and dismay about Alex's frank descriptions of violent, bloody sword battles ("But he's a boy!" I argued, "and shouldn't we be thankful that he's also literate!"), Bill stood and asked the assembled team of principal, teacher and psychologist, "Are we done here?" and stalked out the door. "Thank you Bill, well said, just like a man-in-charge to cut through the B-S," I thought, and I followed him out of that ridiculous meeting gratefully.

I should have known something was up years earlier, when his kindergarten teacher despaired at Alex refusing to have anything to do with the unit on Teddy Bears, but worked his heart out on Spiders. I wonder how many little girls exhibited the opposite reaction in the Spiders vs. Teddy Bears controversy? Would that be a reason for concern?

Boys are different, and thank the heavens for that, I say. Before I had children, I bought all that 1970s nonsense about so-called gender conditioning, the theory being there was no great difference between the sexes save anatomy and biology. Having the real laboratory of observing and participating in child-rearing for a couple of decades, I was so glad when science stubbornly reasserted itself later and confirmed what our mothers and grandmothers already knew instinctively--there really is a brain-chemistry difference between "sugar and spice" and "snails and puppy-dog tails." Stereotyping genders in groups isn't productive when applied to individuals (as in "but that's a man's job!"), but trying to societally-condition children into exhibiting only traits that adult females find "nice," is a really bad idea. For men and women. For civilization. For survival.

My son, with his vivid imagination and visceral imagery talents is now an adult male. He writes (still, I hope) of the darkness and violence that is a deep, primal part of the male species. Yet, he continually strives for honor and responsibility, which is really the only desirable societal conditioning needed for males, I think.

Well, that and personal hygiene, with maybe some table manners thrown in...