News and Blog

By Heidi Soholt

“Boys will be boys” is an expression I’m hearing a lot these days. It’s usually delivered with a wry smile, and frequently by someone genetically predisposed to producing only female offspring.

Oh how those mums of perfectly-behaved little ‘pink things’ like to gloat when they encounter a wild-eyed, panic-struck, exhausted boy-mum, cringing in a corner after yet another anti-social encounter between her ‘little soldier’ and a random child.

Little boys seem to like nothing better than bashing the living daylights out of each other and, having struggled through the aggression-fuelled toddler years, I honestly thought I’d seen the worst of it when my son started school. I was wrong.

My five-year-old has been coming home with tales of his ‘boy gang’ since the beginning of term. At first I was quite pleased he’d made some friends. I didn’t take much notice of the ‘war games’ and so on that seemed to be going on at playtime. As a parent you assume that your kids will be supervised, to some extent, particularly when they’re only aged five or six. However, when my son started telling me that he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to play in a boy gang any more, and that a member of staff had now become ‘boy gang monitor’, I realised things had gone further than I thought.

It seems that the ‘play fighting’ had been pretty aggressive stuff, and children were becoming upset. Some of it had tipped over into bullying, and I witnessed for myself the heavy-handed pushing and shoving that seemed to have become common place among the boys. My son had also become disrespectful and lippy at home, and other mums seemed to be experiencing the same thing. Things really hit the fan the night I found him in the middle of ‘executing’ his bewildered baby sister – having trussed her up like a prize turkey.

I was relieved to hear that the problem had (hopefully) been nipped in the bud by the school and, according to my son, the boy gang had dispersed, their energies channelled into more positive things like football. His behaviour also improved at home after a few stern words and punishments.

The question remains though – why do they do it? My son is not a particularly boisterous boy but he turns into a raging bull when the mood strikes him – usually when left alone with a similarly affected pal. Steve Biddulph, author of best-selling Raising Boys, talks about how young males get a shot of testosterone around their fourth year which endows them with a certain ‘maleness’. Does this mean that we simply have to turn a blind eye to it all? There is such a fine line between playful exuberance and full-on aggression that teaching our sons the difference is extremely difficult.

Having grown up in a female dominated environment – no brothers and a girls-only school – I must say that having a son has been a huge education. I shall stop my rant now, as I hear the voices of countless dads asking what on earth I’m making such a fuss about – perhaps I am making a mountain of a molehill – what do you think?

Oh yes, and most importantly, don’t forget mums – name tags and labels get ripped off in play fights – make sure yours are sturdy enough to stand up to any raging bull by ordering from this website!