I was not a physical child. Some might say this is most likely because I was a girl, but I also didn’t get angry all that often—at least not angry enough to hit. I do remember hitting my sister once and only once, when we were teenagers and she said something that really enraged me. I think it had been piling for a while. She stole one of my shirts, messed it up, and tried to hide it from me. It was something really important like that.
It’s an entirely different story with my boys. My boys can pick a fight and finish it before I can even get the words, “We touch each other gently” out of my mouth. One minute one of them is complaining about how his brother stole a piece of his puzzle, and the next minute the words are knocked out of his mouth by an errant smack (not by me. I don’t hit my kids. Neither does Husband. That shows us that this is something that is born inside them.). Of course they get in trouble for this. Of course they have to make amends when they’re ready (I don’t like insincere amends). Of course there are consequences intended to keep them from doing it again. But it never works.
I’ve heard stories from other parents of boys who say that their kids, even when they were teenagers, didn’t get over this physical part of their nature. Husband tells me a story from his childhood wherein his parents weren’t home and he and his brother, 15 and 13, respectively, started fist-fighting because they could not agree on something also really important, like who left the light on. Husband punched his brother, and his brother started crying and writhing on the floor like it really hurt, but when Husband came close to make sure his brother was really okay, his brother punched him right in the face. Husband responded by locking his brother outside the house and not letting him in no matter what or how loud or how long he screamed. This is a lovely thing to look forward to.
For the life of me, I can’t understand this immediate physical response. When I feel angry, I don’t see a wall and think, I should hit that. I might see the wall and think that I would like to hit it because I feel so angry inside that hitting might make me feel better. But then there’s this complicated thought process that happens after that initial observation, and I’m suddenly thinking about how much it would hurt to hit a wall and how I’d most likely break something, and I really don’t want to break something, because I need my hands for writing and for playing the bass guitar and for picking up my youngest son, and then I start thinking about what I would possibly do if I broke my hand, and the answer is, I would go a little crazy, because things would pretty much fall apart in a home like ours. One parent down is like claiming defeat before the battle has even begun. How would I cook? How would I do my workout? How would I keep the boys out of anything, when I would have only one hand and already need fifteen? So the thought, I should hit a wall, never results in an action.
The problem is that boys don’t have this complicated thought process. They just receive the thought, I should hit that, and they do it. I know, because the 9-year-old has done it before. He’s hit a cabinet or a table or something else—more than once, I should add—and every time he crumples up like his hand is undergoing the worst pain imaginable. Tell me why you would do this again. He always regrets it.
I also know this because Husband punched a wall when a picture dropped down and cut the top of his skull, and the nerve of something this ridiculous happening sent him over the edge for a brief moment in time. He put a hole in the dining room wall.
I know, too, because the 6-year-old, who is one of the kindest children you will ever meet in your life, has hit his little brothers when they destroyed his writing journal and he couldn’t make sense of the masterful pages after they got finished with it.
Boys hit. They don’t think.
We’ve tried to create a system that will help them think before they do anything. Emotions are tough, and the moments of emotional flood are even tougher. We have reminders for them to breathe. We have consequences. We have rewards.
I’m beginning to think that systems don’t work.
When our boys hit one another, they’ll do their brother’s chores to make up for it—washing the dishes, taking out the trash, cleaning up the toys they were playing with alone instead of together. They will be required to write a kind note to their wounded brother. They will be expected to complete their retribution—sincerely.
And yet often I wonder if there is something within them that is simply wired to be physical. Brain science hints that there is, of course. But even if brain science wasn’t around to suggest this, one could take a look at a boy’s play pattern. My boys will regularly roll on the ground and wrestle each other until someone is crying in mercy. They enjoy standing up at the top of our stairs while Husband throws heavy couch pillows at them and tries to knock them down. They think it’s fun to engage in a slap-fight.
One time, when we lingered a little longer than usual at the library playground, our boys were playing with some other boys they’d found somewhere around the slides. The 9-year-old hurtled past me, screaming for his life. I thought he might be hurt, so I followed him. It was not easy to catch him, but I eventually did.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay? I couldn’t tell if you were upset or happy.”
“We’re playing a game,” he said and made as though to move off again. I grabbed his arm.
“What kind of game?” I said.
“A hitting game,” he said.
“What?” I said. “Why would you want to play a hitting game?”
“Because it’s fun,” he said.
“That is not my definition of fun,” I said.
He laughed and said, “That’s because you’re a girl, Mama.” And he ran off.
On the way home, I listened to the chatter in the back seat. All three of my older boys miraculously agreed on something: They couldn’t wait to play the Hit Until You Cry game again.
This is an excerpt from This Life With Boys, the third book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by This is Now Photography.)
