Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Boys and Girls

Much as we try very hard not to stereotype the boys and girl at home, they inevitably show their differences in ways that were never schooled by us. It's amusing to see the differences so stark.

1. Language.
For Evan, language is functional. He would love the Chinese variety of English where articles are unnecessary. We try to get him to be a bit more effusive. But he goes straight to the point. And he reports the facts.

So, recently, when he thought his terrapin had escaped, he sent us a text to let us know. It was polite, formal and informative. All bits of relevant information were there.


Following his message was Jordan's. It was over-dramatic and read like the buttons got sticky on the emojis. It told us pretty much the same thing though we had to wade through the deluge of ellipses and emoticons. So effusive it wouldn't fit into one screen shot. 

                     

On a side note, they found the terrapin wandering around the garden. 

2. Play. 

While Jordan is happy to engage the boys in rough play and can keep up with her brothers and their shenanigans, her preference for play is indoors and quiet (mostly). She still loves pretend play but her pretend play has evolved (whenever allowed) into playing dress-up for real. So, at a recent sleepover with her best friend, she and her BFF gave each other manicures and pedicures and then broke into her mum's make up kit and slathered enough eye shadow on their eyes to be on stage. Thankfully the mum thought it was hysterical and did not read them the riot act for spoiling her make-up.

For the record, I don't approve of manicures, pedicures or make up for 9 year olds but I think we all did it at some point in our childhood. 


The boys, taking advantage of the fact that their bossy sister was out were loud, gregarious and rough with one another. They chased each other, played Monkey in the Middle, worked collaboratively on some Lego project and were downstairs or at the playground. There was a lot of inappropriate toilet humour and they happily made a mess of the house. 

Similar to Jordan, there's a lot of pretend play as well but it includes make-believe swords or sabres and lots of sound effects that rain saliva pellets everywhere. 


At the end of the day though, both kinds of play require good bath after. One to remove all that make up and the other to remove all the stink, sweat and sand off thei



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