Okay, so at church tonight my wife and I attend a couples group while my son  and some other boys go into their Royal Rangers meeting. During tonight’s meeting in our couples group we discussed how the differences between men and women can affect our communication.

It was an interesting conversation, and we spent some time talking about how men are Wild at Heart. If you’re familiar with that term (and book), then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, then let me give you a quick rundown.

The basic premise is that God created men very differently than he created women. Men have this innate desire to conquer, overcome and to rescue the princess. God just hard-wired us to (typically) be more adventurous. It’s easy to see in this young boys. If you don’t let them play with toy guns, then they will find a stick and pretend that IT is a gun!

As far as our group is concerned, we tried to focus on how these types of differences affect how we understand and communicate with each other in marriage.

Then after group tonight, several of us parents went upstairs to collect our kids. I was getting my son from his Ranger Kids group when I noticed he had a broken piece of a cell phone in his hand. When I and some of the other parents were asking the Commander (Nick) what that was all about, he explained to us that it was a part of the lesson for the night…

They talked about how God’s Word is indestructible, but everything else in the world is destructible. To illustrate that point, they smashed things (including a cell phone) with a hammer! Then he let each of the kids take a piece of the broken cell phone to remember the lesson.

The boys were SO excited about what they did, and my son couldn’t stop talking about all of the things they got to smash during this lesson.

Then as we were about to leave, another one of the parents walked over with their daughter after picking her up from the group the young girls were in. When a cotton ball fell off of the young girl’s craft from the night Commander Nick picked it up and said, “we don’t play with cotton balls in here.” That comment got a few “yeahs” from the boys!

I had a good laugh with some of the other parents from our couples group that witnessed this series of events, and we just had to laugh at how the very thing that we discussed in our group was happening right before our eyes.

So what do you think about the natural differences between boys and girls? How do you think that understanding these differences can affect communication in a marriage relationship? In what ways do you nurture these differences in children?