My son and daughter are fundamentally different — and it's a beautiful thing

Boys and girls are different.

It’s one of the most self-evident truths there is. Entire libraries of jokes, novels, films, and essays exist because of it, all orbiting the same basic observation: Boys and girls — and later, men and women — are not interchangeable.

The things I have learned about how the female mind works could have been very helpful when I was dating but are now no use to me. That’s funny. God is a poet.

Of course, society doesn’t really like to talk about this basic fact of life these days. I'm far from the first person to point this out, so I'll spare you another screed calling for a return to common sense. If you're reading this, I suspect we're on the same page anyway.

Gender reveal

As a normal, thinking person with functional brain, I have always known boys and girls are different. I had a sister growing up, dated girls when I was younger, met my wife and somehow convinced her to marry me and even have children with me. So I understood that there was something about women I just couldn’t quite get, some different way of thinking and feeling that I couldn’t really understand.

But it’s funny: I didn’t realize just how immovably different boys and girls are — and how beautiful this difference is — until I became a father to both.

Looking back, I realize I carried an unconscious assumption that the differences between men and women were learned somewhere along the way — socially instilled rather than baked in at the deepest level imaginable.

This wasn’t because I was a liberal before having kids; I’ve been a conservative for essentially my entire adult life. It was because I was raised in the aftermath of an idea that insisted men and women are basically the same. We are all modern now, and even those of us who resist that worldview absorb its signals over time. They work their way quietly into how we see the world, and the only way to fully dislodge them is an encounter with reality.

Snips and snails

Our son is such a boy.

I don’t know how else to put it. My wife and I say it to one another all the time. He checks all the boxes. He was obsessed with construction equipment when he was really little, then dinosaurs and dragons, and then tools. He loves building things, and he loves destroying things. He loves swords and shields and Nerf guns too. And frantically wrestling with me when he should be falling asleep soundly.

He’s more focused on things than people; he is blunt and too smart for his own good; he loves to argue and litigate. He hates “Let It Go” from "Frozen," and when my daughter asks my wife to play it, he covers his ears and walks away. He doesn’t want to describe an emotional part in a story to us and pretended not to cry when Mufasa died in "The Lion King." He is such a boy.

Sugar and spice

Our daughter is such a girl.

She is emotional. So emotional. She cries during movies, and she isn’t embarrassed about it. If she had her way, she would change her clothes ten times over the course of any given Tuesday. She loves carrying a little purse around. She wants to get her ears pierced like Mom. She loves our new baby and always wants to hold her. She pretends her stuffed dog is her baby and that she is a mom too.

She is so sweet, just so sweet. So much sweeter than our son. He is a callous grump compared to her. She wants to help us; she tries to help him; she says after sharing some of her dessert with him that she wants him to be happy. She is so pretty, so sweet, and so emotional. She is such a girl.

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Nobody taught them these things. Yeah, we run a traditional household, but they started acting the way they act long before we ever told them anything, and it’s so obvious that the way they are is such a part of their very essence that we know for a fact nothing we ever did made them the way they are deep down. They just are that way. They are boys and girls.

I’ve learned so many things from them. I’ve learned that guys really are just naturally blunt. It isn’t just a lack of manners; it’s our default setting. The things I've learned about how the female mind works could have been very helpful when I was dating but are now no use to me. That’s funny. God is a poet.

I’ve also learned, in a deeper sense, that we cannot be all things. Boys are boys, and that means all the good things and all the bad. Girls are girls, and that means all the good things and all the bad.

That can’t be changed. It’s the nature of the world. It’s how it’s supposed to be. Women and their ways can be frustrating to men, and men and their ways can be frustrating to women. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them, as the old saying goes. But seeing how pure and true it all is, how deeply embedded in their spirits these predilections are, I have begun to just sit back and marvel at the incredible balance God struck when he made man and woman.

Indeed, boys and girls are different.