Nicholas is starting to differentiate between girl stuff and boy stuff (purses are for girls, cars are for boys).  I really hate making any kind of assignments for gender (especially to things that I would love for him to play with or do) and it bugs me when I find myself doing it. There are some things that I am finding are total boy things where he is concerned.

Peeing standing up

I was really sweating this one when we first started potty training. I mean, it’s not like I can show him how to do that in any real way. Thankfully, my fiance, William, took over the “peeing standing up” lessons. Seriously, this is one of the first things I thought of after Mark died, “Who is going to teach N to pee standing up?!?”

I think that some of it must be instinctive though, as Nicholas was arching his little back and pointing aiming at the toilet from pretty early on in the potty training process.  On a side note, I think he must have seen one of the construction guys around here peeing outside because there is a certain part of the yard that, for several months, he insisted on “peeing” at each time he passed it (he would go to the spot, spread his little legs, tell me he had to pee and arched his little back). Weird.

Baseball

Here is where my own gender bias comes in. I played basketball in school and have never been a big fan of baseball or football. Just not my sports, but I’m aware that there are many rabid fans who are women. Shoot, one of my grandmothers was such a huge baseball fan that we played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at her funeral. Anyway, Mark was a huge Astros fan, and since I don’t particularly care for the sport, I think of it as a “boy” thing. Here’s my problem: I want Nicholas to love the sport as much as his Daddy Mark did, I don’t like the sport much, know nothing about it, and William doesn’t like baseball. My solution? My friend, Jeremy, has been assigned baseball duty with Nicholas. He is an Astros fan, he knows how important the ‘Stros were to Mark, and he folows the sport/team. He’s my go-to guy for teaching N about baseball and the Astros. Crisis averted. I hope.

Women

Okay, I know this isn’t really a “boy” thing I need to teach Nicholas, but I am really hoping to raise a son who loves women, respects women, and surrounds himself with quality women (both friends and partners). Maybe this isn’t a traditional boy thing to teach him, but I feel as a woman it’s my responsibility to teach him the finer points of the female mind. Do open doors for them, do use manners and be polite, do take it slow with a woman romantically and allow them to dictate the pace as much as possible. Don’t assume a woman is bad with numbers or math. Don’t blame anything on PMS, even if she’s brought it up first. It will only lead to badness.

What “boy” stuff have you come across? What gender assignments have your kids made that you’ve been surprised by? What about your own gender assignments?  What do you wish your spouse or partner knew or did as a man?

Sherry Carr Deer is a Mommy to 3-year-old Nicholas, fiance to William, the widow of Mark, and a PR professional at a non-profit hospital.

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Kate Olson is a mother of 2 toddlers and lives in rural Wisconsin. She balances motherhood & working from home in a semi-functional fashion - you can read more about Kate on our contributors page. She blogs about education and lots of business/tech stuff at Kate Says . Want more? Read all of Kate’s posts!

…….is the one in the bathroom. Well, ok, there’s a little potty sitting in my living room, but that’s understandable when potty training my kids. Right? Or not, whichever.

My  point is that I do NOT write with a potty mouth, which seems to be rather “out of style” among the mommy blogging masses these days. Let’s just get this out of the way: I do NOT care if YOU swear. Swear away, do as you wish - I’ll still read, laugh, respond. I’m NOT JUDGING YOU.

I’m drawing my OWN line, which includes not swearing online - anywhere. I’m not going to swear on my mommy blog, I’m not going to swear on my professional blog. I’m not going to swear on Facebook or Twitter (feeling like I’m in Green Eggs & Ham) - I’ll listen to you do it, but I’m not joining the crowd.

Why? Well, it all comes down to my goody-two-shoes routine that started when I was born. It’s just who I am, and I need to feel comfortable with with my writing and having it read by the masses. I need to feel ok with my mom, my kids, my grandma, my stepmom, my students, my bosses, my colleagues, my EVERYONE actually reading this stuff. When I first started writing online it felt like I had this private little world that no one in my REAL life ever saw……….now, due to my big mouth, EVERYONE knows where I write and what I say. I meet people at a professional training session, people I’ve never met and people who I was unaware were in my online network, and these people talk to me about my twitter posts and blog posts. You know what? I LOVE that. I also love the fact that I don’t have to be embarrassed about what I wrote. I’m not saying everyone who swears online should be embarrassed, not by any means. I’m just saying that *I* would be mortified if *I* had been.

See, that’s what it all comes down to. Personal comfort level and personal preference. I just know that if my kids stumble upon ANYTHING I post online, I’ll be ok with it. I won’t have to explain why I can use the f-word and they can’t. I won’t have to explain about my sexual history or illegal consumption of things. I also won’t have to explain these things to people I work for, which means a lot to me.

I follow people on twitter and read blogs and have no problem READING profanity, I’m not THAT puritan. I just wonder sometimes if everyone really thinks about every single person that could be reading their work. It all hit home for me one day when someone who I didn’t even realize knew what Twitter was, emailed me with a list of my twitter posts and made some comments about them. That was the moment that I realized for the first time just how public it all is - knock me over the head for being so naive up until that point, but now when I see people criticizing family members and colleagues (friends too!) on Twitter and their blogs, I just cringe.  I want to keep my life and work cringe-free, that’s all.

Swear away, I’ll still read and laugh my tush off.

It’ll just be like those parties where I just watched people do all the naughty stuff I couldn’t bring myself to try.

I’ll still be your friend, just not quite as exciting as you.

I’ll never be the party mom or the fun mom. I’m just going to be a mom. With funny, daring friends.

If you haven’t picked up on this yet, we are in the continual process of potty-training my son.  We started when he got curious about the potty - at the ripe age of two.  He is now three and one month, and shows little progress.  Yes, he will go on the potty, but he just doesn’t care.  I kind of think that he is doing it to torment spite torture show me that he can make his own decisions.

Then - this weekend, we made a huge discovery.  We had a billion (exaggeration? perhaps) open houses to go to (I mentioned that I teach seniors, yes?) and at every one of them, Aidan had to use the potty.  Hooray!  By open house number three, we wondered how it was that he could ask us to use the potty then, and yet not at home.  We went to a restaurant, and were curious if this newfound potty-freedom would translate to the restaurant - and it did!  It was a potty miracle!

So - what is next?  Will we continue on the road to potty success?  Or will this all be a wash? (or, more practically, a flush?)  How many more potty words can I come up with?  Stay tuned…

We bought a potty today for Braxton. He says “potty” a lot. He knows where the potty is. He occasionally tells us when he’s going “pee pee” or “poop.” I honestly don’t know if he’s ready. But if he is, we’ve got the equipment!

In the meantime, enjoy this little ditty from Elmo about pottying. And please leave your best advice in the comments.