Running on the treadmill at the gym today (me! at the gym! TODAY!), I noticed two little boys out the window.  They must have been around eight years old and each held a long stick in their hands that they were using to whack at the branches of a tree with the aim, I think, to knock the leaves off. 

I looked at the boys. They were dressed nicely. They seemed to be sweet kids. And yet they were compelled to relentlessly pummel this poor tree (possibly with one of its own branches).

I draw attention to the boys' clothing and general demeanour (from what I could gauge from my sweaty and breathless position on the treadmill) because there is a type of kid we expect to see wielding big sticks. You know the one. His hair is cropped as close to his skull as humanly possible, maybe with some gelled spikes at his forehead, and his little jaw is set in what I call  'destruct mode'. Aggression seems to have been bred into him like he was a Pitbull. He's the kid whose dad picks a fight at Under 6s footy. He's the kid you don't want your kid to play with. He's the kid you pray your kid will never become.

There was a time when I thought I could raise a son who showed zero aggression. That if my son did show aggression, he was morphing into our little set-jawed friend.

In the beginning, it looked good. Luca was a very cruisey baby. He was the sort of kid you could go shopping with, pushing the pram through endless shoe stores while he lay quietly. He very rarely fussed about anything. Baths, nappy changes, car rides – he transitioned to each new situation without a stir.

As a toddler, he was equally placid. Other children would snatch or push and he would blink at them impassively. He wouldn't cry, he never retaliated. Nothing seemed to phase him.

He started one day a week of childcare when he was two and though I was filled with anguish at the thought of leaving him, he did not shed a single tear. I mean, not one tear.

Actually, I was a leeetle bit smug about how easy Luca really was. And with his long hair and angelic face, he was often mistaken for a girl.

And on no conscious level had Bren and I been trying to model stereotypical gender roles. We agreed our kids could be whoever they authentically were. 

But his interests have always been distinctly those of a typical boy. From the youngest age, he loved cars and would turn them upside down to watch their wheels spin. And though we gave him a range of toys to play with, he gravitated towards the ones that were traditionally geared towards boys.

Comparing that sweet baby with the ball of frenzied energy that is Luca now is jarring, to say the least. As he has gotten older, his play has become more and more physical, his little body a jangle of bottled momentum if he is not given the space to run it off. And the need to beat things with other things, especially if doing so makes an ungodly racket, appears to be deeply satisfying for him.

I think perhaps I should have twigged at what the future had in store when, at one year old, he started to tear the pages out of books. With relish.

On a side note, Ziggy has been into ungodly racket and page tearing from Day One.

Earlier this year, I was the parent helper at kinder. I sat with Luca and another boy as they played with a construction set. The pieces were perfectly shaped to be turned into spaceships and crazy alien creatures and that's exactly what Luca and his buddy were doing, racing their flying objects around the room and at eachother. Zooooom! Look out! Raaaaaaaa!

Then a little girl sat beside me and I stared with disbelief as she turned her pieces into a flower garden. I watched that little girl quite wistfully, a bit jealously, as she quietly constructed her sweet little alien flowers. I was heavily pregnant with a baby girl, but my day to day reality was boy. All boy. 

Girls and boys are different. They just are. Of course, human beings are all unique and there are a million variations inbetween, but on some level, boys will be boys. Some level of aggression appears to be normal. Pretty sure it's linked to a testosterone surge in little boys that rivals the surge seen in puberty. Which means on a chemical level, Luca was destined to be who he is.  

I still despair occasionally. The chaotic whirlwind of the little boy (times two) sometimes makes me tense. I would like to play a game of tea parties that doesn't end with the crockery being thrown around the room.

It seems ironic that we were all about accepting if Luca didn't align himself strongly with male norms, and yet, we're less thrilled about him going the other way and being quite typical of his gender.

But in my defense, little boys, man! They're full on. FULL fucking ON.

And I never wanted anyone to think that we were raising the little boy with the big stick and the clenched jaw. Today , those two little boys reminded me that Luca is not that little  boy. But he is still a boy. Even though his mother won't cut his hair and his father knows sweet fuck all about footy, he is a boy with all the complexities that go with it.

Luca is sweet, affectionate, funny as hell. If he had a propensity to wear tutus, I like to think we would have embraced that. Turns out, he likes big sticks instead.