As the old saying goes, boys will be boys. Unfortunately, some folks let boys do whatever they darn well please with no discipline. Others think the saying is nonsense and allow absolutely no foolishness whatsoever.
I believe if you don’t discipline a child you are serving him a grave injustice. However, a boy needs to have the freedom to be himself, to learn from life’s experiences, and grow into the man he’s meant to be. How do you find the right balance?
I have a boy. He’s a really great one too! I try to give him room to experiment, test his strength, and let his testosterone course heartily through his little boy body as he works his way all too quickly toward manhood.
Sometimes it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Like the morning I walked into the kitchen to find him standing next to his plate of scrambled eggs, holding a snake. Outwardly I stayed calm, remembering that boys need to subdue and conquer things, and handling snakes is a great way to do just that. Inside, I was freaking out!
I said in my very calm mother voice, “Son, could you take that snake outside, please?”
Of course he asked me why, because boys genuinely don’t understand things like that. So I replied, “Because if you drop it, I will have a snake in the house, and I’d just rather that didn’t happen.”
He dutifully took the snake outdoors and spent the better part of the morning playing with it before finally setting it free. Boys will be boys! At least he didn’t dissect it on the picnic table this time.
Last week I stopped by Speedway to get my favorite 44 oz. Caffeine Free Diet Coke, packed with ice, and topped off with a shot of regular Coke. As I was heading into the gas station, I passed by the Polar ice machine. I heard a rustling, and then the door popped open and a little face peered out at me. He looked slightly startled to see me there, as though I was the one sitting on 700 pounds of ice. I waved and smiled, but the door promptly jerked shut.
Suddenly, I had a flashback of that movie they made us watch in elementary school. Remember the one with all the kids in bell bottom pants and Converse tennis shoes, playing hide and seek in their local dump? Everyone is happily running to and fro, then suddenly, the music turns sinister. The camera zooms in on an old refrigerator lying on its side, and the narrator warns in his sternest voice that you should never, under any circumstances, play inside of a refrigerator because you would suffocate in a matter of minutes.
I personally never played in dumps, nor felt compelled to cozy up next to the Jell-O mold in my mom’s Frigidaire, but the message stuck with me nevertheless. So, as I walked past the cash register I said to the manager, “I don’t know if it matters or not, but there is a little boy sitting in your ice machine.”
I hated telling on him because he wasn’t hurting anything, and it was really hot outdoors, but I didn’t want him to suffocate.
The manager went outside and opened the cooler. Lo and behold, there were four boys staving off the heat in there! I couldn’t help but grin, and hope she wouldn’t be too hard on them.
Lots of store managers would have kicked them off the property and told them never to come back, but not this lady. She talked to them for a minute and then she went and got four gigantic cups of ice. She told her coworker what was going on and he let out a hearty guffaw, obviously enjoying the young boys’ antics.
As I took a sip of my Coke and headed back to my van, I watched her hand each of the boys a cup of ice. They stood in the parking lot, next to their bicycles, and dug into the ice with their hands. The manager turned to me and said, “They don’t have any money, God love ’em. They’re just little boys.”
I drove away, contemplating her words. The entire situation made me smile. God does love ’em, and so should we. These boys will be men soon enough, with all the cares and responsibilities that come with manhood. Let them be boys while they can.
Sure, that manager could have kicked them off the property. She could hav
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