There is something to that old rhyme about sugar and spice vs. sticks and snails and puppy dog tails.

I’m not sure I had a strong feeling either way about nature vs. nurture before I had children.  But as my two have gotten older, I’ve come to believe there’s something to the old rhyme that can’t be nurtured into kids. 

My two are less than 2 years apart, and while they play together, they’re quite different. Some of this is due to the fact that son clearly got more of his father’s genetic fingerprint and daughter takes after me, for better or worse.  And some of it is just the personality they were born with. But they were different before #2 was even born. 

There were little insignificant things, like how son kicked vigorously pre-birth (with both feet at once—I know because I saw him do it when only a couple hours old), whereas girl gave fluttering kicks and rolls. Boy cooed with gusto. Girl cooed gently, like a dove.  Son is a gentle boy and daughter can be decidedly un-dovelike when she wants, but I did see inklings of their personality differences that early, whatever the cause.

But by the time Kid 2 (the boy) was a toddler, I could see their differences solidifying.  Although they both had access to a wide variety of toys, I had to laugh at how their preferences showed one day when we went to a friend’s house. Both kids headed straight for the toy box, and daughter picked out the dolls with clothing she could change (OK, remove), while son picked out everything with wheels.

Nurture? Possibly, although if I haven’t been able to train them to put their clothes in the hamper after years of concerted effort, I don’t think I could have trained such deep preferences into them while trying not to do so.  (They certainly sense maternal disapproval around the third time I remind them to PICK UP THE [mental addition: &*#$%&#] CLOTHES ... to little apparent effect.)

But I really began to be a believer in nature when I started seeing them interact with their peers.

We have Brownies and Cub Scouts on the same evening each week. The Brownies do have a good time at their meetings, but they are capable of sitting in once place for an extended period of time for their projects.  In the next room, the Cub Scout leader is lucky if she can get the boys to alight on the carpet in a rough attempt at a circle for a moment to do the pledge and the promise.

They do kind of resemble little puppies, bouncing all around the room and full of the wiggles.  Now, the girls aren’t ALL sugar, and granted, some spices have a good kick. But there’s something to that old rhyme.

However, it wasn’t puppies the boys reminded me of in my most recent episode of observing girls vs. boys in a natural habitat—the school cafeteria.  What the boys really reminded me of was the monkey house at the zoo.  That visit to the cafeteria put me squarely in the nature camp, because you can’t train this behavior into (or out of) kids.  (The poor teacher has tried.)

I had the day off that day, so I visited each kid for lunch.  First the girls, where I enjoyed a half-hour of conversation with daughter and her friends.  OK.  That was fine.  Waited another half-hour, and then came my son’s class, where I sat with the boys.  Oh my, the boys.

I didn’t have much conversation with them, since apparently they don’t talk in their natural habitat.  There was plenty of noise, but little that could be categorized as conversation.  Unless you count when the boy across the table shouted out my son’s name repeatedly until my son turned around to see the friend fly his sandwich into the air and crash it into his lunchbox in an explosion of crumbs. 

The boy next to that one complained to the cafeteria monitor that sandwich boy had said bad words.  I didn’t actually hear any words amid the hollering and laughter myself.  At any rate, those two made up when they began calling out strange sounds to each other, then doubling up with hilarity.

When the half-hour was finally up, I reeled out of there, dazed, mumbling some incoherent words of appreciation to the surprised cafeteria worker on my way out.

The monkeys are actually quite sedate by comparison. I’ll take puppies gladly, but I think I’ll avoid the monkey house for awhile.