Dear Kerry, My husband and I have a disagreement about our 7-year-old son, Jake. He says, “Boys need to be boys. Leave him be,” and lets Jake get away with messiness and rude language. I think certain standards are required and boys should learn them too. Why should they be exempt from manners and helping out? RJ, Illinois

Dear RJ,

You are asking some hard questions about gender roles and expectations that our society has been struggling with out loud for the last 50 years at least, and, more silently, probably forever before that. Maybe we are asking the wrong questions or fighting the wrong battles, if we restrict the issue to defining what boys can do and what girls can do. How about if we ask what we want for and from all our children? What kind of people do we want them to be and how can we help them reach their fullest potential? And how can we usefully and practically think about these questions? Are there baselines that apply to all children (or all people) and can we then help children feel good about who they are as boys or girls?

So I have to ask -- Does Jake’s dad use harsh or crude language to you and leave stuff all over for you to clean up? If so, the issue is not about Jake’s behavior. Jake is only doing what he sees you tolerate from his dad, and Jake has no way to consider an alternative. His model for how males relate to women is to be bossy and inconsiderate at best, abusive and exploitive at worst.

Often moms expect their daughters to be like them and dads expect their sons to be a “chip off the old block.” There is a good feeling from seeing your child learn from you and want to be like you. This is a very important part of children learning how to be grownups. As children grow older, you will start to see that they have absorbed qualities from each of you. Just as they look like one parent more at a certain age, and then it may change, so too their personalities grow in complexity and change over time. But many parents are not completely comfortable with their children’s differences from them, or look to their children’s behavior to validate their own.

If Jake’s dad is ordinarily helpful and nicely-spoken, then his concern that you are asking too much of Jake or nagging him may relate to other issues. Parents struggle from toddlerhood on to distinguish assertion from aggression. Every day parents of young children are faced many times with a child who wants fiercely to ‘do it myself.’ Drive is the distinguishing quality of toddlers. This is assertion and the drive to explore, repeat, master and discover is located in its own part of the brain. It is a different part than where aggression is located.

When assertion is blocked, toddlers become frustrated. If they cannot overcome the frustration in order to continue the blocked activity, they get angry. If, as parents, we find their constant, high-driving activity wearing, exhausting, and annoying and then try to deal with our own feeling by stopping them, toddlers get furious. Grownups are challenged by that anger and can easily respond with anger themselves. Thus the whole assertive sequence can turn into an aggressive face-off.

Parents are not helped by the cultural confusion of assertion with aggression. Much that is really assertive is labeled as aggressive. Aggression and competitiveness are also equated and seen as highly desirable, especially in men.

As children grow through preschool and into the school years, the distinction between assertion and aggression can either be further refined or get more confused. Girls and boys can struggle to know what is appropriate self-assertion and what is prohibited aggression. It is parents and teachers who define these things. If we react to assertion as if it is aggression, kids start using it that way. Then the only way they know to assert themselves is by angry, bad behavior that feels aggressive to parents.

Maybe Jake isn’t stuck in this particular kind of confusion, but the fact that the issue has been raised between you and your husband is a good indicator of the need to think and talk about expectations and how you label different behavior. Jake may need you and his dad to talk to him together about what language and tone of voice is acceptable among all the family members. His dad can tell him, “I don’t talk to Mom that way and I won’t let anyone else speak to her in a mean, disrespectful tone of voice. That doesn’t make me think you are a big, strong guy. Big, strong guys know how to treat other people well, because it takes more strength to ask nicely and answer when you’re spoken to than to mouth off.”

When Jake leaves his muddy soccer shoes in the middle of the kitchen and you want to yell at him, and end up nagging him several times to clean them up, you have taken on the job that really belongs to his own conscience. He knows where his shoes should be, but it is extra trouble and it also feels bad to realize he has done the wrong thing. It is much easier to push his conscience outside and have a fight with you than to deal with the prickles from his own conscience and then actually do the job.

You and his dad will have to work together to hand Jake’s conscience back to him, saying, “When I feel like nagging you, that means you have turned me into the boss of you. I don’t want to be the boss of you, and you don’t want me to be the boss of you. So, at those times, I will remind you that you know how to be in charge of yourself and feel good about it. Then you will be able to pick your shoes up and feel good about it and so will I. That will leave more time for us to have fun together.”

I don’t think this is a question about boys or girls, but about supporting children of either gender to assert themselves appropriately and be in charge of themselves. Parents can help by differentiating aggression and assertion and allocating responsibility where it belongs. Then we will have upstanding children who are a pleasure to partner with.

Kerry Kelly Novick is a local psychoanalyst and a family consultant at Allen Creek Preschool. You can reach her through AllenCreek.org, or you can email her your comments and questions for future columns.