If you thought it wouldn’t be until she hit adolescence that you’d hear “I hate you!” you’ve never had a 4 yr old daughter.
So let me be your guide. I am rapidly becoming somewhat of a know-it-all on raising….well, at least having…girls. During a visit this morning with our close friend J and her kids, Noosh earned back-to-back time-outs for being rude and then remarkably ruder.
As I set the timer for the time-out it’s fairly certain that everyone on the block heard N yell out a smattering of phrases that signaled her anger over being placed in time out. She sat there, but she was disturbingly loud, rude, and let’s be honest, annoying.
Listening from the family room, J and I stifled our silent laughter and quietly started calling out random things our daughters have said in frustration. It sounded like this:
“You’re not my mommy anymore!”
“I’m going to live at another house with nicer parents!”
“I don’t love you anymore!”
“I am not looking at you anymore…this is me not looking at you”
Both our daughters are 4 yrs old. They growl, throw just about anything within reach, and scrunch up their faces in very primal ways to show their disdain. They are four, and somehwere somehow they learned to say “I hate you”. I swear to god it did not come from us.
J has three boys along with her daughter and I have Sugus who’s 2 1/2, and what we both remarked on is the amount of drama associated with having a girl compared to the more physical exertion of having a boy. Our consensus? The girls are hands down require more emotional energy to navigate.
Having only daughters and expecting another I only know of the hair, clothes, and attitudinal drama associated with raising girlies and very little about the energy output of boys.
So now I’m curious, just how much more “energy” does it take to raise one gender versus the other?
How does the emotional drain of the verbal/psychological fatigue compare with physical fatigue? I heard that it takes more energy to be pregnant with a boy than a girl….I learned that from Grey’s Anatomy so don’t go quoting me or anything dumb like that. But what about when they are born?
Do girls cry more? Yell more? Scream more? And why am I under the impression that while boys may be louder and wilder, girls are more…dare I say it? Demanding.
I’m going to find people to weigh in on this and get back to you.
In the meantime, if you can shed light on this, please do – I’d like to hear from you. Whether you’re professionally in the know or have the real-life kind of training of raising both son’s and daughters, or are an innocent bystander with an opinion, lets hear from you.
A.
wiggle room 