Large Fierce Mammal

“Man has a large and highly adaptive brain – nearly as smart as a Crow – along with this pesky opposable thumb – one on each side unless you’ve gone through life being called “Lefty”. We Man critters can imagine and build solutions to problems that Nature didn’t give us the speed, wings, teeth, fur, claws, armor, sense of smell, or eyesight to solve otherwise.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Archaic Revival

Nature is a Lady of many moods. One of them is popularly known as Spring and it is in the spirit of that singular mood that She has once again lain Her invigorating hand upon the northern hemisphere of the Earth.

Everything has either given birth or eagerly awaits its season. For some, it’s fire and forget — lay the egg and move on — and for those of Nature’s creatures called upon to both birth and raise offspring for a spell, a different imperative applies — make them self-sufficient as quickly as the nature of your kind decrees.

In raising a child, from the moment of birth the child’s life energy, bestowed by its parents, is literally a force of Nature. This force grows as the child grows, and as physicality outstrips understanding, will inevitably come to be expressed in ways that are counterproductive to safety and demanding of good management. The same can be said of raising a puppy to the full flower of Doghood. ~ A Long Winter’s Night 2016 – Day 9: Offspring

I would like to draw your attention to the highlighted portion of the above quoted passage, and most particularly the parts I’ve underlined. You will find this concept elsewhere in such alternative expressions as Robert Browning’s poem, Andrea del Sarto —

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?

— As well as in my own references to some LFM Family Wisdom my late Mother held to be a basic Truth both of child rearing and every other aspect of interpersonal relations — “Those who won’t listen have to feel.”

We live in a time in which the push to redefine Masculinity as antisocial behaviour has cast a pall of toxicity over what it means to be a Man, and in its zeal to strike at the root of the FACT of Maleness, a generation of boys are being molded from the premise that because they think and behave differently from girls, they need to be treated as defective Females.

A recent episode of the CBC Radio series, The Current, detailed a refreshing return to treating “roughhousing” including war games, mock gun battles, and swordplay, as healthy and normal steps toward developing sound conflict resolution and stress coping skills in boys as well as those girls with such leanings. The reader/listener is reminded that games and contests that mimic combat are not the same as violence.

I will conclude this chapter of The Goode Fyght by inviting you all to read Roughhousing benefits kids, suggests Quebec daycare guide, and then listen to the associated radio broadcast you’ll find by clicking here.

After that, read Boys want to be dangerous, and we should absolutely let them, which you will find by simply clicking the title.

Until next time.