Boys and Girls Can Be Different

The son heals, the garden grows, our nest empties back down to three, and two manuscripts sit in the inbox of over a dozen editors.  In the midst, I've been making lots of trips back and forth to Wildwood Hills Ranch, outside Des Moines.  Wildwood Hills Ranch is a camp for under-resourced and at-risk children ages 8-18, and it's a place that is beyond incredible.  Wildwood's target audience is the child who may be in foster care, the child who may have troubles at school, the child with a challenging home life.  It's a unique camp with a well-trained staff who understand the often fragile, yet full of potential children they are serving.  They offer the kids not only the most high-intensity camp fun you can imagine (horses, aquatics, art, athletics, team-building, etc.) but a non-denominational, faith based foundation as well. 

Our Waterloo campers, ages 8-12 go to Wildwood for one week each summer.  But having been involved for multiple years, we now have a small group (7) of young teens who grew up attending camp and have now been selected to enter a "Leaders In Training" program for ages 13-18. These lucky ducks get to attend camp multiple weeks each summer, so they've required lots of  trips to and from Waterloo.  Last week, I took two 13 year old boys to Wildwood, then picked up two 13 year old girls to bring back home. 

As a former tomboy with continued leanings, and as a parent, I've tried not to stereotype the genders of our kids,  but the contrast between the ride down to camp with boys and the ride back home with girls made me laugh as well as ponder.

Being careful not to wall in either gender (can you tell how careful I'm being???) , here are specific examples from the boys....

1)  The boys commented on cool cars.  We played a long game of "the next car is yours", which kept them entertained for at over an hour.  They thought it was hilarious that I always got the mini-vans.  Fitting.

2)  We played "would you rather?". One of the boys asked the question, "Would you rather have your eyes plucked out by a buzzard or be shoved in a cage with a grizzly?"

3) They talked bodily functions.

4)  They did the arm gesture that signals semi drivers to honk and were SO EXCITED when they actually honked.

Onto the girls....

1) Girls used many, many more words.

2) They talked about the friends they had made and the little relational dramas that took place.

3) They analyzed boys of every type, including the one who "looks-cute-but-he-knows-it-but-not-in-a-bad-way-you-know-what-I-mean"?

4) They did much more stream of consciousness talking, flitting from one subject to another effortlessly then back again.

 It could have been this particular mix of boys and girls, I don't know. All I know is that it was fascinating to see such clear, concrete examples of differentiation. 

Back to the grizzly and the buzzards?  Grizzly, all the way.