Gotta cut this short, baby is starting to moan, which means she will be up soon!
My 3 week old, already smarter than your average liberal
Posted on 07/15/2004 7:20:55 PM PDT by Tax-chick
Good morning, FReeper parents! I'm filling in this week for grellis, who has liberal houseguests.
Our subject this week is: Gender differences in children. Several articles posted on FR this week mentioned the startling observation that ... boys and girls are different! I'm sure we've all noticed this, either in our own children or other people's children. However, the comments on the articles this week, while generally supportive of the thesis, also pointed out that it's difficult to generalize about exactly HOW boys and girls are different. Any list that says, "Boys (girls) are like this ..." quickly piles up 100 responses about the exceptions.
So let's pool our wisdom regarding boys and girls. Here are some questions to start off a discussion, but feel free to improvise:
What qualities do you think are "intrinsically" masculine or feminine? Do you observe these qualities in the child from birth, or at some point later in life?
What is most difficult about rearing boys or girls, and what is easier?
How does your parenting style change between boys and girls?
How can mothers best contribute to the healthy development of boys?
How can fathers best contribute to the healthy growth of girls?
What elements in society and the educational system tend to support or oppose your efforts? To what extent are stereotypes or generalizations helpful or harmful?
Please provide links or excerpts for any articles you've found useful, and titles and authors of books!
Good morning, FRiends! Grab some coffee and jump in with your opinions, observations, and stories ...
I'm going to need a whole heck of a lot more than just coffee to even begin to come up with anything, let alone anything insightful ............
I only have one girl, and actually never gave it a thought. Now I have something to think about on the 2 hour drive we have to make tomorrow morning and empty a storage unit and make the return 2 hours trip!!!!
Seriously, I really never have thought about it. All of my friends with kids my daughter's age also all have girls, except one. My daughter's birthday party is Saturday, and of the 10 rugrats there only 2 will be boys.........I will have to watch and then get back to you.
Thanks for filling in this week...and for starting this this evening - so I could let all know I will be AWOL from the table in the morning.
Some friends and I were just discussing this, this morning at swim class. It's fascinating to me, and I have noticed a lot of gender differences over the years since I have become a Mom.
When my now-16 year old daughter was in day care (14 years ago), I started noticing the differences. All the kids would be outside playing.....the girls would be in the sand pit, talking and working, huddled around some sand project. Meanwhile the boys would be in a herd, running from one end of the play-yard to the other.
I grew up with only sisters, and so having sons has been a big learning experience. I think it's the testosterone than makes them different. LOL. We have three girls and two boys....it goes: girl, girl, boy, girl, boy. I was very well-versed in girls by the time our first son came, and he was a shock to my system. Even in the womb, he was more aggressive.
Our second son is a little bit more mellow than his brother. They like to rumble and rassle, the girls don't. They tend to be less reasonable than the girls....they have much more of a "my-way-or-the-highway" approach to things.
They are all so very individual, it's hard to generalize a *whole* lot, but definitely there are differences that cannot be attributed to environment! :)
It's interesting that you mention that! I read a book recently that said mothers produce more testosterone when pregnant with a boy, and that most of the difference occurs during the 3rd to 6th months of gestation. So by the time you really feel the baby moving around, he's definitely a boy!
All my children (3 girls, 4 boys) are different from one another, but the big thing I notice that the boys have in common is all the physical activity ... running, jumping, thrashing, leaping, spasming. If I tell my oldest boy (10) to stand up, he can't just stand, he leaps up, spins around two or three times, waves his arms around, and levitates across the room. Drives me insane!
Of course, it was my 6-year-old daughter who put a dent in the wallboard with her head last week :-).
BTW, mine are all boys but I come from a fmaily with five girls and one boy. My boys are a fresh summer breeze compared to what my sisters and I were like while growing up!
topic idea for future: how to handle sibling rivalry.
My kids boy 12 and girl 8 are constantly fighting and bickering sometimes physical. I almost am at the breaking point.
Anyway having a boy and girl the differences are very clear. My daughters best friend is a tomboy though and that is cause for concern. The little girl has no feminine qualities. She is a year older age 9 and we are hoping that they part as friends soon but right now I help the girls mother a lot by watching her.
I am always at odds with my daughter age 8 but my son age 12 is a gem. I dont have a favorite but right now I like my son much more. He is kind and giving etc things my daughter just is not yet. She is mean and can be vindictive and is very impulsive. All things my son was at same age so I can only hope she grows out of it all. She has her moments though, like last week she asked me "How do you throw away a garbage can?" LOL
Both my kids were HEAD WALL BANGERS when younger.... very strange LOL
My 2nd son (now 7) was a head-banger as a little boy. I honestly thought he was possessed for a while, because every time we started prayers, he would run into the kitchen and bang his head on the linoleum! He's pretty much outgrown it now, although he's in a phase where he hits things, sometimes with his head, when I tell him "no."
The reports on the hole-in-the-wall incident (somewhat garbled ...) indicate that Elen was cheerleading on her bed when she succumbed to Physics. Billy (the oldest son, 10) will get to learn wall repairs!
I think sometimes moms have more conflicts with girls because we're also female ... I know exactly what my daughters are thinking! You may not have the same type of conflicts with a boy, because you're different personality types.
Eight is a very tough age. It seems like each child goes through a mean and rotten phase at that age. There's probably some threshold of mental development that's reached, and it takes a year or so to "clear up." I definitely recall that my oldest daughter (now 13) was impossible at 8 ... and you know it must have been bad if I think 13 is better :-).
****If I tell my oldest boy (10) to stand up, he can't just stand, he leaps up, spins around two or three times, waves his arms around, and levitates across the room. Drives me insane! ****
Yes, thank you! You have described my son to a 't'.....everything he does is like this!
Whether it's brushing his teeth (toothpaste and water everywhere), getting dressed(the dirty clothes go flying around the room), walking down the hall (he runs and then slides into the kitchen on his knees), eating dinner (you can *always* tell which place was his, from all the food particles around his plate and on the floor beneath). OH, and he's loud too!!
He drives me batty, but he can also be so delightful and very sweet....boys are really complex and that has surprised me.
Well I've gotta get the wild thing ready for swim class. Will check in later this afternoon! Ya'll have a great day.
I think our boys are twins separated at birth! Billy has to sit in the chair with no back, because (near as I can tell from the conflicting reports ...) he TWITCHED the back to smithereens from across the room.
He's a wonderful boy, really, just needs about 10 hours a day of farm work!
What an adorable baby ... all that hair! Where'd you get the Bush/Cheney suit, and can I get one in time for the primary on Tuesday?
People who think gender is "constructed" must not have been around human beings at any point :-). I'd never "construct" 2-year-old boys who charge headfirst down the hall into the wall, yell "CRASH!!!", and then get up and do it again! (For the record, none of my girls has done this, even after being snowed in for a week!)
Thank God my parents never saw me that way. Could you imagine being told to "explore your sexuality" at the age of nine??? Yikes!
ordering from the george bush website takes a while, but you can download a graphic and using iron on paper from walmart make one! sorry about typos, typing with one hand is hard! Evie likes to be held, and I have a hard time putting her down! I was really hoping to get a shower today....
That's too funny! My boys were all head bangers as tykes. My eldest used to take apart anything if you left any tools where he could reach them. My mother can attest to this since he took apart her patio furniture and her back porch door when she (Lord knows why!) gave him a screwdriver to play with.
My middle son used to put his forehead on the rug and spin in circles. I was afraid he was going to have a permanant brush burn. They have all taken flying leaps out of high chairs, pulled out the kitchen drawers to make stairs to get to the cookie jar. They get more water on the floor than on themselves in the tub where they pretend to drown their GI Joes and attack them with plastic sharks and dinosaurs.
When my two youngest are upstairs you can set your watch by the intervals between thuds and crashes and cries of "shut up!" My youngest must make 700 trips up and down the stairs everyday and also must slide across the kitchen floor on his knees.
I have a hard time putting the baby down, too, and mine is almost 6 months old! One of the good things about having six older kids is that there's almost always someone available to hold the baby :-). Of course, he didn't roll over until last week, because he's never on the floor long enough ...
Now that sounds like my two little girls (6 and 4). Sally has a voice that would strip paint from the walls (if only it were true, maybe her Dad would get around to the painting ...), and Elen, the older one, pretends she has no idea how the destruction occurs. I'm so tired of Elen's picking fights with Sally (and then complaining that Sally is screaming) that I told Sally she could hit Elen!
It's the opposite of the pair of boys ... I told Billy he could hit Tom, since Tom always starts everything. Only now Tom is heavier than Billy, so it's a good thing they're not in a fist-fighting phase at this point!
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