We have some news, my grand daughter has arrived: a 6 lb 15 oz little bundle of joy, Elliana has entered our world and it has changed everything!
More wonder, more delight, more fun, and a heck of a lot more cuddling!
Having raised 3 boys, girls have not really been my world, I have lots of “girl friends” but raising girls is not something I have experience in – so this should be a fun learning curve with a granddaughter.
Being able to buy something pink, is such a treat!
“But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female”… this is not a controversial blog – I am not talking gender arguments simply quoting scripture: Mark 10:6
I was painfully aware in our household, boys and girls think much differently. I had little boys with little boy brains and no matter how much I would try, my girl brain would not understand some of the male thinking patterns and it still does not!
I babysat for quite a long while when my boys were little – 5 boys and 1 girl. This was probably the closest I got to “training a girl” and it was babysitting. She stuck out in the crowd, the boys were happy to make loud noises, shoot pretend guns and bows and arrows, punch each and yell and jump on the furniture.
She on the other hand was quite content to sit and talk, and talk and talk….. My boys did not do that and after a while I had a complex that there was something wrong with them. Needless to say, I found out boys simply do not talk the same way girls do.
Girls I learned were more complicated – the boys were fairly easy, give them outside play time, feed them continually, and ensure they got to sleep okay. Girls were more thinking, they hung onto grudges a lot longer than boys. They had way more feelings than the boys.
It was not that I did not enjoy having both around me, it was more that I had to learn the communication style of each one.
Little boys, punched each other and the argument was over.
Girls threw their punches with their words and the hurts were deeper.
As these little people progressed into adults a lot changed but a lot did not. Boys still are not as communitive as girls, and passing a message along to a guy, well that does not ensure anyone else will ever get it. Girls love to tell you what is going on and often with the greatest detail!
I took some great courses to explain the differences in the two brains – male and female because truly the pink brains think so much differently than the blue brains and never do the two meet! Which causes frustration, exasperation, and confusion in each of the genders trying to relate and communicate with the other.
For instance:
Standford Medicine says that are numerous studies that show in human and rhesus monkeys the males preferred toys with wheels and females preferred plush stuffed toys. Girls went by landmarks for navigation while the males went with estimating direction and distance travelled rather than landmarks. (no one has a study on asking for directions but I think we know which brain will ask and which one will not…..)
It is well known that women retain memories and vivid emotions of events, we feel situations more than men. The two hemispheres of the woman’s brain talk to each other more than in a man’s brain. In a 2014 study of 428 males and 521 females it showed a more strongly coordinated activity between the 2 brain hemispheres in women while the males brain activity was more concentrated in local brain regions.
If you want a good honest laugh and some straight information on how the 2 brains differ, treat yourself to Mark Gungors video – Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage. Even if you are not married and single – he does such a hilarious way of describing the differences. You will then understand each other a bit more. He describes the woman brain as an interstate freeway where everything is connected while the male brain is made up of boxes – that cannot touch – ever.
Apparently according to Mark, men really do have a nothing box, for a woman this is fairly impossible as we are usually multi thinkers, thinking of many things at the same time. Our brains do not “quiet down” to nothing. Men can then answer honestly when a woman asks, “what are you doing?” and he says, “nothing.” Now you know that it is indeed possible for men to be doing nothing.
For me, I will love learning who my little granddaughter is and how she thinks and understands her world.
In the Christmas story in the Bible there is a line that is often quoted: “And Mary pondered these things in her heart.” Luke 2:19
What things? It was the wild story the shepherds who came to visit baby Jesus told Mary and Joseph about the angels that had come to see them in the fields, singing and praising God and talking about Mary and Joseph’s baby.
Mary was “feeling” the experience – she pondered, she mulled over and over what the shepherds had said. I bet Joseph was over on his side of the barn, being logical and trying to reason what the angel stories really meant.
Two different but oh so necessary kind of brains. Each is so valuable in different situations. You would think that perhaps someone had planned it that way, even if we think the other side should have come with an instruction manual.
Do you have to understand the other person’s thinking? Is it really necessary to “get it?”
This Christmas as I mentioned last week, the presents which I am referring to the people in our lives, that are sitting around our tree are the ones we need to value over and above everything else. People matter, their hearts matter, their view point matters – and even if one of those presents around the tree makes you feel crazy at times, remember how frustrated we must make God, thinking we know better and off we go on our own.
Christmas has taken on a life of it’s own, life gets frantic, the presents get expensive and we loose ourselves in the not really important details of Christmas.
I love the old Amy Grant song (link below): I Need a Silent Night about how we have lost ourselves to “Christmas”. Christmas is the thing that is lost, not us. The whole reason for the season is that a Child Was Born, His Name is Jesus and He shall be called: Immanuel which means God With Us.
Sit back and enjoy the song and see which part you identify with the most.
(the line that hits me every time is "did my own mother keep this pace?"
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