Boys.

In my marriage and family class on Wednesday, we talked about communication and how boys and girls generally communicate differently from one another and why that might be. I left the discussion smiling enigmatically, feeling greatly endeared to every boy I passed. I just love boys. They are the cutest thing.

My professor said that boys just want to be right. That's not a bad thing; it doesn't mean that boys are egotistical jerks who can't be corrected. It's actually a very good thing. You want your husband to want to be right, because then they will do whatever they can to avoid doing the wrong thing. Which is good.

He also said that boys just want to please their girls. They want to help and be appreciated. They want to be needed and feel useful. He gave the example of washing the dishes. When a man's wife says to him, "Oh, honey, will you please do the dishes?" his first thought isn't going to be, "Oooh, dishes. My favorite chore." Instead he's going to be thinking, "She wants my help. She needs me to do something for her....oh dishes, I can do that, yep." Then they'll go to work, putting away the dishes. So what happens when they put the bowls where the plates go, and the plates where the cups go, and the pots and pans where the silverware goes? Their wife is going to want to correct them. And when she does, that means that they are doing something wrong. Which, as we just discussed, men don't like. They don't want to be wrong, they really just wanted to do it right the first time. And now the dishes are all in the wrong places so the wife is unhappy, and the husband did something wrong, so he is unhappy, too. So how can we avoid this? If the wife tells her husband how she wants something done, he'll generally be happy to do it that way. My professor asked the boys if they cared where each dish went in the kitchen, and not one of them raised their hand. Then he asked the girls if they cared, and a good number of girls said that they did. He concluded that again, boys just want to be right, and if their wives tell them from the start how they can be right, they will be happy to do things the right way.

My professor also talked about how boys want praise and appreciation for little things that they do. He said that girls need that too, but not to the same extent as boys, generally. When a girl sees that the dishes need to be done, she'll go ahead and do them and then move on to the next thing. But if a boy sees that the dishes need to be done, and for whatever reason, he decides to do them, you can be pretty sure that the first thing he'll do when he finishes loading that last saucer into the top rack is to go get his wife, take her by the hand, and lead her over to the dishwasher to point out what he did. How cute is that??

I've totally noticed this in my life. When I'm home, I know everythingg my dad does to help around the house. It's because while he's doing it, he talks to the kids about it. "Now look at this. See how your daddy is scrubbing this floor? It's so your mommy will have a nice clean floor." "Do you see this wall? I'm gonna paint it. I'm getting it all ready so your mommy can have a nice red wall. I think this is a good color. Right? She'll like it so much." "Look at this, look at this. Who's making dinner tonight, huh? That's right, your daddy. I'm making the dinner tonight. We're gonna have such a good dinner. I'm making it." "Now when your mommy gets home, she'll see we cleaned this whole house. She'll be so excited. She'll say, 'Oh, Sid. Did you clean this whole house?' I'm getting everything all ready for your mommy!" He gets so excited about it and as he is working, he makes sure everyone knows what he is doing and why he's doing it, what he predicts will happen in the end. He is always expecting to be showered with exultant approbations, no matter how menial the task may seem. Then, when my mom does get home, he doesn't even wait for her to notice on her own. He takes her to the kitchen, or the living room and points out everything he did.

This starts pretty early. I remember once when I was younger and I made up a Lost and Found box for my family. I called it the "Make a Match, Save a Single" Center. If someone found an earring, a shoe, a sock, or something that didn't have a match right there with it, they could take it to my box. If its match was not in the box, they would leave it there so the person who later did find its match could find the other one already in the box, and they could make a match! I introduced the system at Family Night and then left the box in the laundry room, someplace convenient. A few days later, my younger brother Joseph, who was probably only about 5 or 6 at the time, came up to me and said, his eyes bright with excitement, "Heather. Come here. I have something to show you." I followed him to the laundry room where he stopped in front of the box and said, "OK. Today, I was walking upstairs. Just walking. And I saw this. On the landing." He pulled a shoe out of the box. "All alone. It was single!" I gasped appropriately. He grinned. "Sooo," he continued, "I puttt ittt...." he dropped it in the box, "Right here! So someone can find the other one and make a match!" He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, smiling hugely. He was just so excited that he had used my system and he couldn't wait to hear me praise him for it. Which I did, of course :)

So in conclusion, I just love boys. Their impish delight in doing something impressive and their innate desire to be right just makes them such pleasant people when you are the one they want to impress and be right for.