Is it a guy thing?

Logan has been going through a rough patch lately, with a few changes and struggles happening in his life. We've spent some time talking about things, and a couple of times he's started crying in the middle of telling me what's up. He's said to me, "I don't like this water that's coming from my eyes" as he's wiped his tears away and made a visible effort to stop crying. (Talk about heartbreaking Mom moments.)

I don't think there's anyone in his life who would have made him feel like crying is an inappropriate way to deal with his feelings. I'm sure he'll pick up on plenty of that in time, with the macho man world in which we live. We talk sometimes about how he doesn't need to cry about certain things, like when Dex takes the crayon Logan wants or if Logan drops a Chalupa on the floor. But when it comes to physical pain or hurt feelings, there is no one who would think of telling him to suck it up and not cry. So it's interesting to me to see him try to hold it back, or make such an effort to stop it after it starts.

Of course, crying in and of itself is not pleasant. And maybe all it is, rather than any desire on his part to be more masculine, is a desire to not be a goopy mess. But I guess that's the really interesting thing to me – he just doesn't like to do it, and I suspect that before he gets too much older he'll have trained himself to not cry as an emotional response. That thought makes me a little sad. The image of the stoic, incapable-of-crying man is so cold and … lacking something. Not that Logan is necessarily headed in that direction specifically.

Perhaps I just don't understand what boys go through in their childhood, adolescence, ascent to manhood? Alright, there's really no "perhaps" about it. Logan is my first observation of baby to toddler to boy (and in time, beyond), and maybe he's just reaching an age where he recognizes crying as crying rather than a way to get what he wants. Declan's certainly not there yet. By the sound of it, he's regularly dropping Chalupas.

I'd ask Chris and Ed about this, but my hunch is that both of them will claim they've never cried a day in their lives. Wieners.