For those of you who are raising boys, this may strike a cord with you. It certainly did us. First, I have to say that I have found some very good books at the Deli Counter of our local grocer.

One such good book is The Hair-Raising Joys of Raising Boys by Dave Meurer.

It had my husband and I cracking up in nearly every single chapter! First his boys are the same ages apart as ours, so the situations are exactly what we find ourselves in or can definitely imagine our boys doing.


For example.......Chapter 2


Chapter Two excerpt "You'll digress quite a bit too if you raise boys. You will be tucking one of them into bed, for example, and talking to him about his class field trip to the museum tomorrow when you suddenly discover that this kid's face is absolutely filthy and he just finished his bath twenty minutes ago! And you'll ask what in the WORLD did he do between the bathroom and his bedroom, and he will reply, "Nothing!" which is what they ALWAYS say, and you will finally discover that he has a package of Jell-O Dutch Chocolate Pudding Mix under his pillow and he has been eating the powder with his hands and now you have to wash all the sheets and he needs another bath because he is a boy and you are doomed. Get used to it. When I say you are doomed, I do not at all mean to imply that your boy has a high propensity to become a dropout of a felon or a senior White House advisor. In fact, you will notice that I have never even hinted that your boy will be anything other than a good and noble young man who will marry a very wonderful woman and have the challenging and productive career and teach Sunday school and give you wonderful grandchildren. I never said your kid is doomed. I said you are"

Another example......from Chapter 3



Chapter Three excerpt "The Moral Training of Boys"

"I tried moral training one day when Mark and Brad were quite young, and after a very close call I decided to leave it to the professionals. If I can't even tune up my lawn mower, what makes me think I can impart character to the same children who cackle hysterically and roll on the living room floor every time an advertisement comes on for Preparation H?

As a rank amateur, one day I called the family together and opened the Bible to the story of David and Goliath. My intent was to demonstrate, at this impressionable age, that if we trust in God and stand for what is good and right, it is possible to overcome obstacles that are far bigger than ourselves.

What actually occurred, however, fell short of the lesson goal.

I had scarcely begun to outline the drama of the fateful battle when Bradley, then four, immediately wanted to know if our commode would possibly suffice if Goliath felt a need to use it. I had rather deftly sidestepped that unpleasant question by noting that all the giants were now dead, so we really don't have to confront that dilemma. It certainly isn't anything addressed by Miss Manners.

But Bradley merely shifted to another almost identically unpleasant inquiry.

"Since Goliath was a giant, if he sneezed would his booger be the size of a golf ball?"

My other son, who is two years older and far more theologically astute, argued that it would be more the size of a pizza. That reply created a furious debate over what size of pizza it would be: small, medium, or large. It also reminded them that they were hungry, and could we please, please, please go to the pizza parlor?

We still have not finished the story of David and Goliath. Their Sunday school teacher said he would do it for twenty bucks.

One of the problems with imparting moral guidance to young boys is that they fidget or completely ignore you or simply fail to get the point of the lesson when you are doing everything in your power to teach them, and then they turn around and pay obsessive amounts of attention when you don't mean for them to do so.

For example, Mark and I were driving to the store one day (when he was about five) when we pulled up behind another car at the stoplight. When the light changed, the elderly woman driver just sat there as though she were waiting for a more pleasant shade of emerald to come along.

"It's not going to get any greener, lady," I muttered under my breath.

"I don't think she heard you," Mark said.

"That's OK," I replied.

"Maybe if you rolled the window down and yelled it real loud she would hear you," he continued.

"I didn't really want her to hear me, buddy," I explained, perspiration breaking out on my upper lip.

Mark cast a quizzical look my direction.

"Then why did you say it?" he asked

"I was just kind of mad that she was waiting when the light changed," I admitted.

"Mom says that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

"Sorry, Mark,."

"That's OK," he said. "Just remember for next time."

See what I mean? You waste hours and hours trying to get them to pay attention to valuable moral lessons, to no avail, and then they just pick some little personal flaw you have, such as berating other drivers behind their backs, and turn it into some big deal! Boys have an incredible problem with focusing on the issue at hand.

And it gets worse. A few years ago, Mark was in the boys' rest room at school and found some money lying on the counter. Do you know what he did? He took it directly to the school office and gave it to the principal! Not only did the principal nearly have a stroke, but to add insult to injury we had never even had a moral lesson on this! He certainly didn't pick this up from our fiasco with David and Goliath! This is incredibly frustrating.

Giving back money that you find lying around is something that I planned to work up to through a methodical series of moral training sessions. The concept should have been clearly over his head, and he completely blew my training schedule.

As it turns out, he picked this concept up YEARS ahead of schedule when he saw me return $100 to a camera store after I discovered they had incorrectly rung up a sale and shorted themselves by that amount. So we clearly see that the inability of boys to appropriately benefit from planned moral training sessions means they are often going to pick up their moral training on a completely unpredictable, willy-nilly basis as they do stuff with you.

This means you have to REALLY be on you toes, because they are watching you like some super-secret Russian spy satellite.

Don't you find this unnerving?

Where is Billy Graham when you need him?"

Chapter Four excerpt

This one had my husband and me in hysterics, laughing so hard we were crying! Because we could SEE our own doing just this very thing


"In the course of listening to my two boys as they played together, I was struck by how readily my youngest son took instructions from his brother.

"Let's put the train tracks together now," said Mark, the kindergartener, to Bradley, his three-year-old sibling.

"OK!" replied Bradley excitedly.

Now, these are the same two dwarves who, fifteen minutes earlier, had reacted to my suggestion that they set up the train tracks as though I had sentenced them to twenty years of eating eggplant.

In a blinding flash of comprehension, it occurred to me that if I could learn to tap into that spirit of brotherly cooperation, I could significantly ease the task of parenting. Why, I could be just like Tom Sawyer, who made his peers eager to whitewash the fence while he relaxed in the shade and chuckled. I could get my boys to work for me instead of against me and they would think it was fun to boot!

Elated with my hypothesis, I decided to test it immediately. Bradley had earlier in the day been diagnosed with an ear infection and I had not yet attempted to give him his medicine (for much the same reason that I hesitate to force-feed an enraged polar bear).

Getting liquified antibiotics down the throat of a preschooler, even if it is cleverly colored and scented like a cheap strawberry milkshake, takes endurance that no marathon runner ever dreamed possible. It is at the absolute minimum, a hard-fought, twenty minute battle.

"Mark," I whispered, motioning him to come closer, "Bradley has a yucky ear infection and the doctor said he needs to take some medicine to get better. Would you help me explain to him that he needs to do what the doctor says?"

Mark grinned widely and nodded, clearly thrilled with his crucial task.

I glanced at the kitchen clock so that I could accurately record, for the scientific record, the time saved by utilizing my experimental method.

"Bradley," I announced, "Mark has something important to tell you and you must listen closely."

Mark wiped the smile off his face, turned to Bradley, and announced with the grave tone of a concerned surgeon, "Bradley, if you don't take your medicine you are going to die in two hours."

Bradley gasped.

I gasped.

Mark turned to me with a triumphant smile.

"That's not what I said!" I blurted out.

"Is I'm going to heaven?" Bradley asked.

"No, no, no!" I spluttered.

"We are too going to heaven because Jesus loves us," Mark shot back, glaring at me.

"But not right now!" I bellowed as Bradley's eyes filled with tears.

"I only want to go if I get to ride in a airplane," insisted Bradley.

"You can't go to heaven in a airplane because it takes too long," Mark corrected with theological precision.

"Well, then I;m not going to go," Bradley replied defiantly.

"You have to because the doctor said," Mark continued helpfully.

"The doctor did not say that!" I retorted.

"Well," Bradley said, ignoring my every word, "let's just lock the doctor up in jail."

"You have to pay lots of money to the policeman to lock up the naughty doctors," Mark explained patiently.

"Let's get out our banks!" replied Bradley.

"LISTEN TO ME!" I roared as they scampered down the hall to raid their life savings. "The doctor is not naughty and you are not going to put him in jail and Bradley is not going to die and he just needs to take his medicine!"

I was drowned out by the sounds of loose change cascading to the floor.

I took a moment to calm myself by quickly removing several handsful of excess hair, then I stomped down the hall to Bradley's room.

"Now listen," I began but was immediately interrupted by Mark.

"How much does a Baskin Robbins ice-cream cone cost?" he inquired, clutching a handful of his college fund.

"Yea, how much quarters?" chimed in Bradley.

"Uh, well, uh, four quarters," I stammered, throw off track by the speed with which they had shifted gears.

"Yea! We get to have a Baskin Robbins ice-cream cone," they shrieked in delight unison.

"I didn't say that!" I retorted

But I knew I was in trouble. In the bizarre logic of children, merely acquiescing to discuss Baskin Robbins is the same as signing in blood that you are going to straightaway indulge in a minimum of two of the thirty-one flavors.

"Look," I said apologetically but firmly, "We can't have ice cream. The doctor said that Bradley can't have anything made out of milk until his ear infection is gone or it will just get worse. Ice cream is made out of milk."

Bradley burst into tears.

But I was pleasantly astonished to watch Mark reach over and give him a comforting hug. I didn't know he was capable of that kind of sympathy in the face of such a monumental disappointment. And I was proud that our parenting labors were producing such mature and selfless behavior in our offspring.

"It's OK, Bradley," said Mark soothingly. "Me and Dad will just go by ourselves and you can wait here with mom."

"No one is having ice cream!" I snapped.

Then it was stereophonic tears.

"I'll tell you what," I said as the torrent rose above my knees, "we can still do something fun, even though we can't have ice cream."

"What?" asked Bradley warily.

"Um, popcorn! How about popcorn?" I replied, shooting a warning glance at Mark lest he fill Bradley's head with competing alternatives.

"You have to have a movie or else popcorn isn't fun," Mark managed a point out, which was no small feat considering that I had my hand clamped firmly over his mouth.

Three hours later, after a trip to the video store, two batches of popcorn, and the action-packed adventures of Davy Crockett, Bradley finally swallowed his medicine.

A net loss of two hours and forty minutes. So much for the theory of harnessing brotherly cooperation to improve efficiency."

LOL!! Too funny!