Raising boys and girls

 Being a mother of 4 girls and an only child with numerous girl cousins, I was ignorant of what it would be like to have a son. It seemed weird at first to even be able to say out loud that yes I have a son.  I wondered how I was going to clean his ding dong (as Daniah puts it), when I should have him circumcised, how to toilet train him and basically what to expect in general. 

Interestingly, or maybe not, I realised, he was not all that different from the girls.  He is just as affectionate and cuddly. But what stands out is him being the risk taker, he was not afraid to climb and jump. Initially I thought it was part and parcel of him being a boy but I realised through observing others his age, that it was just him being him.  He was a risk taker.  First time ever I lost my child in the Courts shop cos he decided to wander around at age 2.5 when I was distracted. We went searching for him to find him in a far corner, with not a tear. He was searching for us too but didn’t seem too anxious about it. Father of cos would compare this to losing Sarah at age 2 in the HK night market cos she decided to walk back to see a toy she wanted. Or when Sarah and Daniah went missing in Aust SeaWorld. Hmm, why is it always Sarah getting lost?

He is sociable and would not be afraid to go to someone he has never met before to ask to play. Well, all the girls were this way too. All social butterflies who became absolutely unsociable as teens! Now I worry how he will be as a teen!

But seriously, back to the topic, I have not found it to be much different. Well yes toilet issues will be different but other than that, it’s been very much similar… all 5 walked at 9 months or so, are cuddly, sociable…oh wait, I suppose the biggest difference would be in speech development. Simply put, Hanz has not been talking. Far different from his sisters who were talking a mile away before the age of 1, this boy has not been talking very much even at the age of 2. He has speech delay but not language delay as his language comprehension is good. Funny thing was his tendency to use sign language rather than speech.

Well boys do use language and speech very differently from girls and this is very apparent for Hanz who is just happy to gesture what he wants rather than to ask for it verbally.  His sisters say that he is a man of few words!  He has been making recent strides but hopefully, he will say more words as he goes to school. Now, we just have him calling mama, papa, nana. He does says words when we least expect it, screaming out Daniah to ask her to wake up and Kakak when he sees Sarah coming to pick him up. There are other words too locked up in him, coming out here and there but most of all he is just a good actor - acting out animals and even how to die when he is shot by a bullet!