<p>3.) If we don’t want to tell you, that probably means it’s none of your business.</p>
<p>4.) The assertion that smarter kids would talk less than dumber kids doesn’t make sense. Smart kids would generally speak more than dumber kids simply because they would have more to say. </p>
<p>5.) I like video games, so I talk about video games. I talk about music and…</p>
<p>" So, you like those tits? "
" Don’t I always? "
" Nah, sometimes you’re a ■■■. "
" You’re always a ■■■. "
" …I like that ass too…"
" <em>props</em> agreed "
" Anyway, peace. <em>leaves</em> "</p>
<p>This is what I talk about. Me and my friends. We also talk about weed. But we’re special cases.</p>
<p>H is a smart guy. Is successful and all that. Have tried this many times in the past to try to get inside his mind and understand him better…</p>
<p>Me: “A penny for your thoughts…”
Him: “Huh?”
Me: “What were you thinking about, right then when I asked you?”
Him: “Nothing.”
Me: “Huh? You must have been thinking about something.”
Him: “Nope. Not thinking about anything.”</p>
<p>If my S is to be believed, he and his friends talk about computer games (World of Warcraft and EVE), music (Swedish metal bands as compared to Brazilian metal bands, for instance). And girls. A lot.</p>
<p>I went to a high school graduation party once for the younger brother of one of my son’s friends. This kid has been one of his good friends for years. When I got their I asked the mother where her husband was. She looked at me and said “We’re separated.” When I got home I asked my son why he hadn’t told me. His response: “Didn’t think you needed to know.”</p>
<p>OK. Ladies.
When I was in HS, I belong to a band. We talk much about music but never about college things. I had a good friends whom I know since middle school. We discussed much about Math and Philosophy. After graduation, I had not been aware of the college he decided to go until my Mom told me when she heard from his Mom.
Because we, boys are very delicate in nature, we hesitate to ask “touchy” personal things each other, I guess.
I am always wondering why women can so easily ask personal things each other.</p>
<p>The things that I picked up that my kid talks about are: about cars, sports, exercising, parties/organized social get togethers (not really organized though) about 20 minutes before he goes, and video/computer games.</p>
<p>Around here we just shrug and say “spiderman with a laser gun” after one of those failed efforts at conversation with S1.</p>
<p>We owe it to an old Zits strip: Jeremy and Hector are quietly talking about Jeremy’s interest in paying back the wealth and opportunities he’s been given by joining the Peace Corps, but when his mom walks by with a basket of laundry, he quickly shouts, “Are you kidding? Spiderman with a laser gun would beat Hellboy any day!” Mom walks on past and sighs. And Jeremy says, “I can’t bring myself to ever have a serious conversation in front of my mom. It means too much to her.” :D</p>
<p>Lafalum - thanks for posting this - at least I know it isn’t just my son. S (sophomore) goes to the same school as your S. We were desperate for information from him last year, since he was a freshman. He called every so often, but he never had much to say. Luckily, he is on a sports team. The only way my H and I were able to find out any news was when we went to his matches and talked to the other parents and sometimes his teammates. Last week, we were discussing web cams. S said, if you get me a web cam for my laptop, we can chat while I’m at school. I looked at him with disbelief, and said. “but you don’t chat”. He said, “oh, yeah”. Guess what, I am going to get him the web cam.</p>
<p>LOL! These exchanges occurred in our household twice. s went to a reunion with kids he’d been inseparable from for three summers. All of them have just graduated. I asked what their plans were. S: “I dunno.” Me: “You didn’t ask?” "S: “No.” Me: “So what did you do for two days?” “S: We just hung out, watched the game and commented on it and made fun of the other side.” Apparently that took two whole days. The standard answer is “this and that.” It does not mean NOYB, just that S and chums genuinely do not talk about things that parents want to know. I know enough not to ask about “girls.”</p>
<p>Husband and son engineering types in this house. Talking reserved for sports and mocking/harrassing their friends in the moment about golf/video games etc whatever they are doing. Ask them “how they feel” and they both look at you blankly. No info about their friends either.It would never occur to them to ask. A whole different breed. Thank goodness I also have a daughter!</p>
<p>D has always told me a lot. S tells me nothing.</p>
<p>A friend of mine said that when her S was in elementary school she the only things he would mention were if someone threw up or got into a fight.</p>
<p>My 19yo son sounds like everyone else’s son. It’s useless to ask him about what his friends are up to because he doesn’t know…they never talk about it. They play video games, watch sports, go to movies, but apparently don’t talk.</p>
<p>My older son talks alot more about his personal life, especially since he entered college where most of his friends were not into video games, etc. so they spent their time talking to one another.</p>
<p>"This one baffles me. H is a smart guy. Is successful and all that. Have tried this many times in the past to try to get inside his mind and understand him better…</p>
<p>Me: “A penny for your thoughts…”
Him: “Huh?”
Me: “What were you thinking about, right then when I asked you?”
Him: “Nothing.”
Me: “Huh? You must have been thinking about something.”
Him: “Nope. Not thinking about anything.”</p>
<p>men talk about stuff that is different from what women talk about</p>
<p>your sons many times talk about stuff that has nothing to do with the topics that you would think they would find interesting</p>
<p>when I read toblin’s earlier post I smelled truth:
“Men scratch their heads and then accept the fact that women are just different. Yet women are always wondering why is it that men are not like they.”</p>
<p>Great thread. Some how other mothers have had more success in getting info about MY son than I do. </p>
<p>I remember one school event where S’s friend’s mom congratulated me on S’s academic honor XYZ. I had no idea. When I asked him later, he said “Oh yea, they announced that at school. Didn’t you know?”</p>
<p>I lived and walked among them for decades. So I have firsthand knowledge. (There were times, especially towards the end, when I felt like a spy. A highly embarrassed and annoyed one on occasions when the topic of conversation among middle-aged male attorneys turned from whatever case they were discussing to the bodies of women they saw passing in the street.)</p>
<p>When I was in college and law school, the main topics of conversation among my male friends were:</p>
<ol>
<li> Women </li>
<li> Sports</li>
<li> Movies</li>
<li> Politics</li>
<li> Where to go to get something to eat.</li>
</ol>
<p>School itself was almost never discussed, except as a burden taking time away from doing things one actually liked. </p>
<p>I did usually end up knowing a lot about the lives and families of my friends, but that happened more in one-on-one conversations than in groups.</p>
<p>My son isn’t “typical” at all in terms of that kind of thing; he’s always seemed to know everything about his friends and their parents. </p>
<p>To get an intimate conversation with a guy, you have to corner him alone. I know this because I’m a guy who likes intimate conversations with guys.</p>
<p>Apart from that, conversation will run to jokes (especially insults and sex), fiction (storytelling and sex), facts (movies, politics, videogames, common interests and sex), bare practical stuff right in front of them, and arguments about said facts and fiction. Men usually prefer to do stuff together than to talk to each other.</p>
<p>I went to it with my son, who often displays quite sophisticated taste in movies, music, et al. I watched him laughing at the endless jokes and conversations about male genitalia. The audiences at the comedy clubs in the movie also laughed at stuff that was to me completely without wit or even humor of any kind. Of course, they were acting. (Some of it was funny, of course, but a lot was not, at least not to me.)</p>
<p>It’s actually a good movie, but as one reviewer said, I’ve never heard so many [insert five letter word beginning with p here that I didn’t know was banned] jokes.</p>