Thursday, October 28, 2010

More Man Than You & Other Tales of Secondary Sexual Characteristics

My son who is in third grade is kind of hairy, which makes sense because I am very hairy. The other day a male classmate of his saw his arm hair and said, "Eeeuw, you are pretty hairy!" My son looked that the boy, who he said actually had a decent amount of body hair himself, and said, "It just means that I am more of a man than you are," and the kid dejectedly let out a sorrowful, "Oh," and slunk off.

I have been trying to teach my son the art of the witty comeback as a non violent defense mechanism, and I am glad he is developing that ability. It is cute to see the difference between him and my 5 year-old who is afraid of getting in trouble for telling mean kids to "shut up," but thinks an okay response to a verbal insult is to "punch him in the penis!"

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I am currently reading about adolescent development and writing a paper on it in which I had to interview a teenager. One point is that as a girl's body mass increases during puberty and they often develop a negative body image because of it (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). Reasons for this are developing earlier than their peers and the media portrayal of a thinner pre-pubescent body type as beginning the standard for beauty.
I am sure this is not new news to anyone reading this, but I find it sickening that girls in our society are lead to believe that there pre-pubescent bodies which are really their pre-sexual bodies are more attractive, beautiful or sexually appealing than their post-pubescent bodies, which by definition should be more attractive because they are now physically ready for intercourse (not mentally ready in our society of course) and childbearing. It is totally ill, a completely unhealthy view that our society perpetuates.
It seems that tween girls long to grow up to be "mature" teenagers and once they do some long to not have physically mature bodies. It is like society is set up to make us not be satisfied with who we naturally are.

Monday, October 25, 2010

My New Friend Tee Just Pee'ed on Me

I was at my older son's soccer scrimmages yesterday. I bring my 5 yr-old son sometimes because there is a playground at the field and he has some friends that are sometimes there.

Yesterday he ran up to some kids he didn't know and started playing with them right away.
About an hour later he comes up to me and I notice his pants are wet, I asked, "What happened buddy did you have an accident?" He answered, "No, me and my new friend Tee had to go peepee so we went back there (behind the jungle gym) and he got peepee on my pants."
Me, "Are you sure you didn't have an accident, it's okay, I know you don't know where a bathroom is around here."
Him, "No, Tee is little (looked to be 3 or 4) so he wasn't so good at it."
Me, "Okay well next time come to me if you have to go to the bathroom, and don't pull your pants down around strangers even if they are other little kids, and especially don't pee standing next to another kid who is peeing okay?"

Too Often of Two Minds

Something I have realised lately is that I am too often of two minds and that is why I am less efficient than I would like to be. A prime example is with my current grad school class, I love the mental stimulation aspect of it, but the time it takes away from my life I hate. Other cases are when I am say doing laundry, but can not stop thinking about other chores that I have to do, and so I only put away half of clothes because I feel pressure to move on to the next thing and accomplish more, which winds up with me actually completing less tasks and results in the dreaded loose ends all over the place.
I go into my garage and think I should ride my bike some more before it gets too cold, but oh yeah, two weeks ago my kick stand came loose and made the bike un-rideable, and I never looked to see if I had the correct tool to fix it when it happened so now it is sitting unusable because I did not follow through when the initial incident occurred.