Snakes or Lizards pet

“Mama, I’ve finally decided what kind of pet I want. Number 1 is a lizard and number 2 is a snake.” That was Daniel, my 10 year-old, the other day. By the phrasing of his question, you’d think I had inquired what type of pet he would like. You would be wrong. Since we are thinking of living abroad for a chunk of time, I’ve been actively avoiding anything near a “pet conversation” for the last 6 months. But that didn’t stop Daniel.

My first reaction to his comment was visceral, a kind of internal, repulsive shiver. If we were acquiring a pet, snake and lizard would be my second and third from last choices. Spider would be dead last. Daniel is clearly a boy.

My mind drifts back to the days when toddler Daniel, deep in his truck phase, would say, “Some day I’m going to drive a big rig that hauls Dorritos, the one with the picture on the side. What kind of truck do you want to drive, Mama?” I’m about as much of a truck person as I am a spider person. It’s hard enough for me to climb behind the wheel of our minivan. I’m pretty sure I’ll never be driving a “big rig” in this lifetime.

It can be strange raising an opposite sex child. I love him so much, but there are parts of him that seem forever foreign to me. (Don’t even get me started about those scary, angry-faced Bionicles Daniel loved for years.)

When these issues arise, and invariably lead me to some guilt, I ask Todd how he’s faring raising our daughter, Annie. In our latest conversation Todd admitted that the aspects of girl culture he currently finds hardest are:

• hair issues: Brushing it, styling it, the way it can affect a person’s mood.
• girl crafts: Todd can hardly bring himself to enter Michael’s or JoAnn’s Fabrics.
• role playing pet dog and owner: This makes him want to run and hide.

I always feel better after talking to Todd. But then I was recommended a book which enlightened me even more, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, by Leonard Sax. When I finished reading it, I’d used half a stack of tiny post-its, marking pages I wanted to read again or share with others. All of the findings Sax describes are from current research.

For example, girls hear better than boys. Who knew? Sax recommends that boys sit near their teachers, especially if they are women and naturally talk more quietly because they hear more acutely. He suggests there are cases of misdiagnosed ADHD, which simply involve a boy being distracted due to his inability to hear what’s being said in the classroom.

Then Sax makes this noteworthy statement about girls on the home front. “I can’t count the number of times a father has told me, ‘My daughter says I yell at her. I’ve never yelled at her. I just speak to her in a normal tone of voice and she says I’m yelling.’”

Here’s another good one. The eyes of males and females contain vastly differing distributions of rods and cones, and M and P ganglion cells. The male eye is organized to answer the question, “Where is it?” and thus is skilled at tracking objects in the visual field. Whereas a female’s eye is quite different, according to recent science, and is set up to answer the question, “What is it?” The female eye has a superior ability to gather information about texture and color.