For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morningās live 3-D reenactment of āInvasion of AstroMonster.ā This is what theyād say repeatedly:
āYou know!Ā Boys will be boys!āĀ
āHeās just going through a phase!ā
āHeās such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!ā
āOh my god! Girls and boys areĀ SOĀ different!ā
āHe. Just. Canāt. Help himself!ā
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldnāt have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, āWhat red-blooded boy wouldnāt knock it down?ā
She built aĀ beautiful, glittery castleĀ in a public space.
It was soĀ tempting.
He just couldnātĀ control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
SheĀ had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didnāt matter. Besides, itās not like she made aĀ big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasnāt a ālegitimateā knocking over if she didnāt throw a tantrum.
HisĀ desire ā for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she āshouldnāt have gone to preschoolā at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know itās a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of donāt āget rapedā and this child, Boy #1, didĀ notĀ learn the preschool equivalent of ādonāt rape.ā
NotĀ onceĀ did his parents talk to him about invading another personās space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. Ā How much of the boyās behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the ārulesā his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did itĀ hisĀ mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasnāt much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He wasĀ really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She,Ā beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yesā¦ butĀ onlyĀ after she was done building it andĀ said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You canāt make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when heās older, say, at college, drunk at a party,Ā mad at an ex-girlfriendĀ who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, āNo, I donāt want to. Stop. Leave.ā
The āoverarching attitudinal characteristicā of abusive men is entitlement.
