Sugar and Spice? Not My Little Girl!

I grew up in a female-dominated home. My father traveled a lot and it was often me, my sister and my mother. Our days were full of dolls and makeup, dancing and music. There were no wrestling matches. No games of indoor tag that inevitably ended with one child slamming a toe into the wall or tripping and banging an elbow on the edge of a sharp table.

Now my home consists of me, my husband, my boy and my girl. And maybe you're expecting me to say that my boy is the wild one. Not so.

While my son does indeed love to wrestle and play tag, he's generally a pretty conservative kid. It's my daughter who sometimes seems to be the spawn of satan.

My four-year-old girl loves to be outside. Running, jumping, rolling in the dirt, picking things off the ground and, more often than not, eating them. She likes to fight with a light saber. She plays wrestling and indoor balloon baseball with the boys and has the bruises to prove it.

If there is anything available for my daughter to get messy with, she will find it and use it improperly. Lip gloss? Used it as eye shadow, polished her nails with it, covered her princess dolls in it. Crayons and markers? THOSE she'll use as lip gloss. They've also been used to decorate her skin and clothing, as well as her toys and our furniture. Just tonight she sucked Moon Sand through a straw.

She knows right from wrong, but seems to willfully disobey and test me. Reaching her fingers dangerously close to an open electrical socket (after standing on a stool to reach said socket), she says, "Mommy, I might get shocked and die if I touch this, right?" As my heart jumps into my throat and I lunge to pull her hand down, she looks satisfied.

And don't even get me started about the hands down the pants. And the "smell my finger."

My son *never* did any of these things. He used everything appropriately and didn't go near anything dangerous. And as I said, he's very conservative, even afraid of many things. So maybe it's a good thing that my daughter is so brave and adventurous? That she thinks outside the box? That she questions authority?

Sigh. I'll keep trying to convince myself.

Original New Jersey Moms Blog Post. Shannon blogs about parenting, homeschooling and technology at PHAT Mommy.