Different strokes for different folks

While the nature vs. nurture debate continues, they say that parents rarely get two children who are just alike.  More often, siblings will be completely different in personality, interests, abilities, learning styles, love languages, etc.

As newborns, our kids looked just alike, but it wasn't long before everyone was saying that our daughter looks like me, and my son looks like his daddy. 

Photo by Julie Holt Photography

Considering that my husband and I look nothing alike, the differences in our kids were first obvious in their external appearance, although I still think our kids look very much like siblings.

Photo by Julie Holt Photography

Recently, the differences between our children have become much more obvious to me.  I have already mentioned the differences in their optimal learning environments in previous posts, although these may also be due to the difference in their ages.  Our daughter thrives best in a group setting surrounded by other like minded students. Our son would rather learn in a simple quiet setting at home with me.  His sister is very competitive in a group setting while our son is less competitive in groups but very driven to keep up with his sister.

Our daughter prefers words to numbers.  Since most people loathe word problems in math, it took me a while to discover that word problems work best with her.  If I can present a math problem in the form of a creative story, she becomes Sherlock Holmes trying to solve the mystery.

Our son is an excellent reader, but prefers numbers and diagrams to words. As a visual learner, he would rather read a technical manual with lots of figures, tables, and diagrams than a much more interesting chapter book.  Every week I check out books from the library for each of our kids using the Classical model's 1000 great books list.  No matter how many books we bring home, our daughter will devour them within the next few days.  She will read any great work of fiction at any reading level in record time.  When my son was on the "reader" level, he would also read the books and enjoy all the pictures.  He would not read them as eagerly as his sister, but he would read them and recite all that he learned or found interesting.  When he advanced to short chapter books with few pictures, however, he lost interest.  The other day, we brought home some exciting, adventure packed short chapter books, but he shoved those books aside and chose instead to read the instruction manual for our iRobot Roomba.  Then he eagerly explained to me the vacuum's various features and could not wait to test them out.  He loves to take things apart and rebuild them or build something new.

If I had given him a tool box, he would have dissembled my Roomba and built something new.  His sister, on the other hand, would have collected different supplies from her room and painted it pink, accessorized it with jewels, bows, and a boa, and then proceeded to teach it to dance. Different strokes for different folks.

Our son is our resident Mr. Fix-It who seems very likely to pursue a career in engineering.  Our daughter is creative, imaginative, and possibly destined to become the next Walt Disney.  She is certainly a trend setter.  One day last week, she designed her own wallet using duct tape.  She took her wallet to camp that evening, and by the next day, several of her friends had made wallets just like hers.

Duct tape wallet with pockets for cash, change, and credit cards.

Our daughter is also the silliest girl I've known.  I can so see her working in theater or becoming an author of children's books or fiction novels some day.  She comes up with so many funny ways to amuse herself.  For example, one evening last week, she spent the day planning an elaborate wedding for her and her brother's early childhood lovie blankets.  She scripted the wedding and assigned her father to serve as minister and soloist while I had to serve as photographer and pianist.  Two of her stuffed animals served as best man and maid of honor.

Maid of Honor and Best Man

She even made a veil and gown for her lovie blanket and a long tailed tux for the groom.

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Bubba Lovie:

Our son usually finds more left brained ways to amuse himself. For example, recently, while I was ironically consulting with someone about incorporating technical science and engineering training into the high school curriculum, my son was upstairs teaching himself some basic electrical engineering using his sister's circuit kit.  He first designed a circuit that would act as an AM radio.  Then he built another one that launched a propeller into the air.  When his father suggested that he add a second battery pack to the circuit, our boy rolled in fits of laughter when the additional power sent his propeller all the way up to the ceiling.  Here he is demonstrating his self initiated science experiment for me. 



I'm discovering that our children also have very different love languages.  Our son is all about physical affection and demands daily doses of cuddle time with me to maintain his equilibrium.  Affection is a top love language for me as well, so I enjoy meeting this need for him.  He loves to wake me up in the morning with big bear hugs.  One day, he hugged me so long that I insisted that I must get up to start my day.  Then that cute little love bug replied to me in a country western accent, "You're not going anywhere!"  If you ever come to visit for the weekend, you can count on lots of early morning hugs from my cuddle bear.

Early morning hugs for our weekend guest

While our daughter enjoys hugs as much as anyone, the all time best way to communicate love to her is through quality time spent playing together.  When you step into her imaginative world and play games with her until you are both giggling wildly or until she has beat your socks off in some board game, then you have topped off her love tank.  This love language comes VERY hard for me.   I like to play board games but struggle to find the large blocks of time her games require.  I am really trying to be more purposeful about setting aside these chunks of time for her now that I realize how much it means to her.  I like to laugh and be silly, but I do not know how to pretend.  This imaginary world of hers is so foreign to me that I get the willies just thinking about it.  I can remember playing similar games as a child myself, however.  Growing up rooted it all out of me, I guess. Sometimes, we just have to step out of our comfort zone to meet the needs of our kids, so I'm writing this out as a reminder to step out and just pretend for a little while...for my daughter's sake.