Little children are wild things. Yet wild in different ways. And I’m fascinated by gender differences. Birth gender. Not gender ‘claimed’ and self-identified definitively yet, that’s to come. But for now we’ll go with the really old-fashioned ‘if ya got a dick, yer a boy, if ya ain’t yer a gel’ technique for gender assignment. And I’m prepared to commit the most fundamental and basic of statistical errors and use a sample size of just 1 boy and 1 gel. And from that sample reserve the right to make generalisations of a truly global, world-spanning, all-of-humanity type nature.

Mummy dropped Lila and Joey round this morning on her way in to work. And mornings are high energy times. 10 hours sleep, two breakfasts and they are fully tanked up and ready to rock’n’roll. And it’s how that manifests itself that is really the point of interest for this study. For which we have to make allowance for the age difference. Lila is now 7, and thus ‘mature’, in a way that quite staggers. Ok, she’s bossy (I will NOT make any statements about maternal genetic lines, that would be… well, possibly true, but definitely unfair), but she’s funny and comes in showing stuff she’s taking in to school, playing with ‘stuff’ (anything) and eating another breakfast, cos you can never have too many (and if you haven’t tried Otolenghi granola, DON’T; its fucking addictive!!!), and climbing on various bits of the house. But she’s very co-ordinated and in control. And eloquent. Frighteningly eloquent. (Read: ‘GOBBY!!!’)

Joey, at almost 5 (just 3 weeks time), has a different approach. He also wants more breakfast(s), all he can get. Doesn’t eat them all, just likes to have them there in case. As he wanders round trying to find any sharp, dangerous, possibly deadly, objects we may have forgotten to hide before his arrival. Any drawer containing knives is locked. So he’ll got to my tool box and find the sharpest, deadliest, most wicked looking chisel, trowel or drill he can find, upon which to base his next ‘game’. Which will not be about building. No. With Joey, it’ll be about destroying. Then 2 minutes later he’s ’playing’ with the cactuses. He knows they’re sharp. Knows they’re a DON’T TOUCH THOSE!!!!’ kind’a thing, but he’s there, prodding. Until he can find something else to possibly break, or something electrical to unplug, tamper with…

Therefore, it can be stated with an accuracy slightly less than 5% probability, that all gels talk too much and all boys are destructive violent monsters. Traits which never leave their respective genders through life.

Now I need some trans-kids (surely there’s loads?) to work out whether they suddenly bite the heads off their Barbies and spit them at passers by, or whether they suddenly drop all the knives and tools and embrace soft cuddly things, whilst removing their fingers from the electric sockets.

More research is urgently needed.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx