To what parents have known forever:
Lots of parents may wonder: Is raising a boy really all that different from raising a girl? Yes. Until recently, we assumed boys and girls needed mostly the same things from their parents. But recent research has demonstrated that their brains are actually quite different. This may provide a biological explanation for the things people have said about boys for centuries…
Thus begins an interview with Dr. Michael Thompson in the latest issue of Parents magazine. I will probably read Dr. Thompson’s book when our local library gets a copy. I suspect it will contain much of the same information as Dr. Sax’s book, but it will be nice to see a different presentation of the same facts.
Both Drs point out that modern kindergarten classrooms are toxic to boys academic performance. Hopefully the school systems will figure this out soon. It’s not a major concern to us, as we’re homeschooling, but we do have friends with kids in kindergarten. One of them comments how her son is continually marked down on his report cards because he can’t sit still. A five year old boy has trouble sitting still, go figure. On our side my wife has made several comments about how the atmosphere in our house changes when the boys leave. Our son, who is five, and our two daughters, who are four and two, will be running around the house and laughing. Generally they are playing tag or fighting pretend monsters or something. Then I take our son out to the store with me, and within two minutes of our departure the girls are putting their stuffed animals to bed on the couch.1
There are people where I work who insist that all differences between boys and girls are socially imposed. Of course, those folks don’t have any kids.
1For the record, our son has stuffed animals, too. He just uses them as monsters to destroy the buildings he’s built with his blocks.
