Guarding the Gate

One of the biggest problems I’ve had in raising five boys is dealing with girls. As you can see, my boys are reasonably attractive. And friendly. And relatively clueless when it comes to females.

 So far I’ve got one married and two more that have girlfriends. But if I weren’t the loving mother that I am, I could have auctioned them all off a long time ago.

When a guy wants to date a girl, he tries to impress the girl and assumes that he will be hated by the girl’s father. When girls were interested in my boys, it wasn’t that easy. I swear, sometimes I thought I'd have to beat them off with a stick!

*When I was teaching in a Christian school, Matt, who was single at the time, came home on a visit from college. He showed up at the school to see me, and the female portion of the student body was buzzing for the rest of the day. Two of my female students stayed after school was out because they were suddenly extremely interested in helping me change out the bulletin board in my classroom.

*I’ve received more than my fair share of homemade gifts – everything from cookies to bath salts – from well-meaning girls who tried to buy their way into my good graces.

I ate the cookies, but didn’t give up my boys.

 *Girls sometimes offered me assistance in my work, especially if they thought my boys would be around while they’re helping.

I accepted the help and sent my boys off on errands.

*I get occasional clumsy compliments. Such as, “You have beautiful eyes. I think (fill in a son’s name) gets his eyes from you.”

*I’ve had girls who had a collective crush on the boys. As in, I don’t think they really knew which boy was which … they’d take whichever one they could get.

As I said, most times my boys were clueless about all this. One of my sons was texting and talking with several different girls at a time. When I mentioned that at least one had a crush on him, he disagreed because they all said they just wanted to be friends. Sure they want to be friends … for as long as it took for my son to realize he was madly in love with them.

Never going to happen.

Since my boys are oblivious, and definitely in need of help, Kylee, Stephanie and I have worked out a system. When a girl shows up on the horizon, if we don’t approve of her, then I become the distant and forbidding mother. Stephanie plays the passive-aggressive sister, making barbed comments and occasional insults. And then Kylee slides up behind them and murmurs, “Get out! Get out while you still can!”

It’s not a subtle method, but it is effective.

It’s important to note that neither Kylee nor the two current girlfriends got my sons’ attention by giving their mother gifts.

It’s also important to note that, if we didn’t like the two current girlfriends, they wouldn’t be coming around anymore.

It's also important to note (for me anyway) that getting the guys to pose for pictures for the blog took longer than actually writing the post.