An excellent summary! It seems that over the past few decades, boys have been 'expected' to act like girls. When I attended elementary school, the boys settled arguments in the school yard. Now they are expected to sit quietly at their desks, like the girls. Kudos to a psychlogist who "gets it".
Catholic Ping
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maybe even let girls be boys?
Every once in a while, a girl will be born with less "girl traits" and more "boy traits" (or vice versus). This was very true for me. Reading the article made me realize how much more male than female I am. No wonder I don't like having this female body; I feel like it's holding me back. Still, I am very glad that I'm far from being the average woman.
Today all of this is different, boys and girls are always together, and I think this familiarity means that the sexual awareness which comes with pubery is just as likely to be projected toward members of the same gender.
I teach a class to 2nd graders, and a few years ago, a year or 2 into the program, I read an article similar to this. It changed everything. Instead of spending time correcting (as we were told to do) or disciplining for things like wiggling or not standing still, I simply switched my expectations and let the 'boys be boys', within our 'rules', of course. We had far fewer disciplinary issues and everyone was happier. And some of the odd behaviors diminished as well. One little guy would repeatedly fall out of his desk. Yes, hard to believe until you see it. I thought he was getting far too much attention for that. After I started more or less ignoring it, the incidences fell by more than half. I decided I could live with that because his class participation and effort increased much more dramatically. We now share this info with the new ccd teachers.
The War Against Boys, How Misguided feminism is harming our young Men Dr.Christina Hoff Sommers