I went to the Internet one day last week surfing for news, and I came away thinking about what it means to raise a son in this day and age.

I found a letter to the editor on the website of some small Florida newspaper. I’m sure it was from a father, a man wondering about the future of young American males. As the father of a young man just one week shy of 3 years old, my interest was piqued.

Here’s one paragraph: “A fourth-grader at Bunnell Elementary School received a 10-day suspension for drawing a picture of himself shooting another pupil with a laser gun.”

The letter ended with this:

“Where there is no room for boys, there will be no great men coming up any time soon, unless those ‘rebels’ who are homeschooling or teaching their boys otherwise and keeping them out of the clutches of the gender-neutral police produce a few.”

I have no information on the author, but his point was well taken. Our son is in that stage of guns, spears and swords. That guy in Florida is right - there is no clearcut dividing line between the normal play antics of boys and what may later be deemed potentially violent inclinations.

But that guy was wearing blinders or something, because he only discussed half of the issue. It isn’t the “gender-neutral police” who somehow supplant aggression and try to bring out the gentler side of boys.
That gentle part of wild young boys is as natural as the aggression. In the old days, however, we nurtured that side away, building a society that labeled sensitive, artistic men as wussies, rewarding only the tough swagger that was most often just a put on. Nowadays, as the letter writer noted, a huge chunk of society is nurturing the natural, aggressive side into submission. The challenge is to find a middle ground.

It’s easy to see those two seemingly different character traits in young boys. I offer up my own young son as Exhibit A.

If there is such a thing, he might be called a happy hellion. Part of his morning routine is to come barreling into our office, pick out whichever co-worker seems a likely target and begin to shoot them, his arms taking the form of a rifle and the sound effects adding to the display. Growls, shots, space weapon sounds, rulers, sticks - whatever comes to his mind or is nearby - are part of his display.

All of it, though, comes with a sly smile, part of the game he loves to play. His two older sisters had their own games, perhaps a bit more elaborately constructed with more character development, but never once did they go through a stage where they loved to play shoot and sword fight. Never.

And how about this: the only gun - real or plastic - in the house is an oversized water rifle. There is a plastic sword with with a helmet and shield. We don’t own a single video game (though I suspect it is only a matter of time). He has watched Toy Story and often becomes Buzz Lightyear, but that’s about the extent of the violence to which he’s been exposed. That tells me that part of his game is as natural as his blond hair and big ears.

And, like some small children of both sexes, he hits when he gets ticked off at someone. We are teaching him to use other ways of channeling his temper, but his natural tendency often is just to strike out before he has even thought about the consequences.

Did I mention he does all of this with painted toe nails. He loves to let the girls dress him up - including doing his nails, wearing dresses, and donning face paint - and he thinks it looks cool. He hasn’t yet been imprinted by society’s code. He is, we like to think, an independent thinker.

I don’t know when young boys begin hiding their emotions, but perhaps that is when the play acting morphs into the potential for real violence. Our little guy certainly hasn’t hit that stage, and I hope he never does.

No, his idea of bliss is to curl up in a warm bed with mom early in the morning, snuggling, hugging, talking, laughing and kissing. That was also my favorite part of the day, so we engage in that typically male ritual of trying to impress the female, fighting for mom’s attention. Guess who usually wins.

That man from Florida had a point about letting boys be aggressive. Perhaps in some ways we have become so preoccupied with youth violence that we are not letting boys - or girls - show the wildness that is only natural. But it also seems that part of the violence problem may be the result of refusing to nurture in young men a more sensitive, gentler side. Maybe the men of the new millennium can have it both ways, like the little warrior with painted toenails.

 

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