Raising Boys Versus Girls

What do boys’ par­ents need to know if they are expect­ing a daugh­ter? Are you curi­ous to know the rea­son behind the stereo­typ­i­cal behav­iour you have noticed recent­ly in your child? Depend­ing on the per­spec­tive, your answers can be sim­ple, obvi­ous, com­pli­cat­ed, nonex­is­tent, or severe­ly ‘gen­der nor­ma­tive’ which sug­gests that all girls will do some things as well, and all boys have cer­tain traits. But it has turned out that these gen­der dif­fer­ences are not much sig­nif­i­cant – although there are some which start when the child is in the mother’s womb and then con­tin­ues through­out childhood. Accord­ing to anato­my, sex­u­al dif­fer­ences among girls and boys can be quite obvi­ous. How­ev­er, as far as brain devel­op­ment is con­cerned, the dif­fer­ences between the sex­es are minimal. By this, we mean devel­op­ment and behav­iour are great­ly influ­enced by dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences in life than gen­der. For your lit­tle one to attain full poten­tial, he or she requires loads of encour­age­ment, along with atten­tion from the very beginning. In this arti­cle, you will learn about how much and where the role of gen­der is instru­men­tal in your child’s development.

- Toys Preference

Babies do not dis­crim­i­nate between ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ play­things. It is backed by many stud­ies (and sev­er­al par­ents already know) that a lot of baby boys like play­ing with dolls. So it is fea­si­ble to believe that boys pre­fer cars and girls pre­fer tea sets as soci­ety teach­es them to. Although gen­der-spe­cif­ic pro­mo­tion along with peer pres­sure at preschool may impact your child’s taste among toys, there is suf­fi­cient evi­dence that sup­ports there is some­thing innate relat­ed to pref­er­ences for par­tic­u­lar play­things as well that begins around the first year. In real­i­ty, girls exposed to more than aver­age sex hor­mones lev­els in the mother’s womb, which include testos­terone as well, showed high­er than aver­age inter­est among trucks and cars. Also, in a study that involved mon­keys, it was observed that male pri­mates picked wheeled play­things over plush play­things, while female pri­mates liked both. Now, what does it mean for human beings? It can be expect­ed from your baby girl to be a lit­tle more open com­pared to her broth­er regard­ing the play­things – gen­er­al­ly begin­ning around kindergarten. You can widen your baby boy’s hori­zon for toys by pro­vid­ing him with all kinds of toys rather than opt­ing for stereo­typ­i­cal stuff.

- Spatial Ability

One of the rea­sons behind boys outscor­ing girls over the SAT’s math por­tion can be their advan­tage of spa­tial abil­i­ty or the capa­bil­i­ty of solv­ing prob­lems that involve rela­tion­ships among objects, size, and distance. Stud­ies reveal that boys of 3–5 months age can envi­sion how the object would appear if rotat­ed com­pared to same-age girls who cannot. To pro­mote spa­tial abil­i­ty in your girls, you can give her build­ing blocks and play ball activ­i­ties with her. As she gets old enough, you can intro­duce her to games that con­cen­trate on tar­get­ing things.

- Comprehending Emotions

Females have more abil­i­ty to get in tune with people’s emo­tions. Researchers have con­clud­ed after review­ing more than 100 stud­ies that even dur­ing infan­cy, girls tend to be bet­ter at under­stand­ing oth­ers’ feel­ings through facial expressions. The results of anoth­er study revealed that baby girls rather pre­fer look­ing at faces as com­pared to mobiles, and the oppo­site is cor­rect for boys. Although the skill of face-read­ing starts at birth, nur­ture, and nature both plays the role – the dis­par­i­ty in abil­i­ty among grown-up women and men is more notice­able as it occurs in younger ones. What is the rea­son behind this dif­fer­ence? Experts believe that this is because females are instruct­ed to con­vey their feel­ings; on the oth­er hand, boys are taught to absorb their emotions. Today all moth­ers every­where know that baby boys are not less sen­si­tive. You should teach your baby boy the appro­pri­ate words to express his feel­ings when you talk with him, such as, “You are upset because you can­not reach the toy.”

- Physical Activity

In any play­ground, you are bound to observe more boys play­ing, jump­ing, and run­ning. This dis­par­i­ty in phys­i­cal active­ness may begin in the mother’s womb. Cana­di­an researchers have con­clud­ed after review­ing many pre­vi­ous stud­ies that dur­ing infan­cy. Baby boys tend to be more wig­gle worms com­pared to baby girls such as they wrig­gle more while chang­ing, get more rest­less in a stroller, and also crawl for longer distances. Though, you might not observe the dif­fer­ences in your baby boy and baby girl, as per sci­en­tists. While com­pared to the typ­i­cal girl, boys, on aver­age, do not move about much more, but the most ener­getic chil­dren are always usu­al­ly boys, and girls are the least energetic. To make your chil­dren more phys­i­cal­ly active involve both sex­es in a lot of sporty play­times – from play­ing chase in the play­ground to danc­ing indoors.

- Potty Training

Baby girls tend to ditch their nap­pies faster than baby boys – some­times much quick­er. Many baby girls begin pot­ty train­ing around 22–30 months, while baby boys tend to take 3 months‑1 years longer than baby girls. On aver­age, girls learn to pee all alone by the age of 33 months, which is a huge mile­stone. How­ev­er, the boys can take until 37 months to reach there. The main dif­fer­ence between boys and girls is sit­ting still to poop in the toi­let for five min­utes, which girls on aver­age can do till they are 3 and ¼ years old, how­ev­er, boys can take rough­ly around 5 months longer, for learn­ing this skill. If your tod­dler boy doesn’t get used to toi­let train­ing till lat­er, you can bring the pot­ty out near his 2nd birth­day and let him enjoy it. Who knows this might inspire your tot for beat­ing the statistics.

- Aggression

Accord­ing to research, boys tend to be more aggres­sive com­pared to girls, sur­pris­ing­ly before the age of two. Sci­en­tists believe that pre­na­tal testos­terone plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in this, and boys are play­ing sub­con­scious­ly at some­thing which they are sta­tis­ti­cal­ly more expect­ed to do dur­ing adult­hood com­pared to girls, like get­ting involved in phys­i­cal confrontations. How­ev­er, this does not mean that girls are angels. Tod­dler girls bite, hit, and kick thrice more com­pared with either gen­der till the time chil­dren go to grade school as by then the two sex­es are social­ized enough, so they make use of their words instead of their fists. You should teach your lit­tle girls and boys their lim­its and be firm to enforce the ‘no-hit’ rule.

- Walking

Many par­ents share the opin­ion about the boys that they attain gross-motor mile­stones such as sit­ting up, cruis­ing, crawl­ing, and walk­ing before girls, but some pedi­a­tri­cians firm­ly believe the oppo­site. How­ev­er, both groups are wrong. It is backed by stud­ies after stud­ies that there occur no con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ences among girls and boys as far as the devel­op­ment of gross motor skills is concerned. Both the sex­es usu­al­ly begin to walk some­time around 9 and six­teen months: still, a study on parental expec­ta­tions not­ed that moth­ers of eleven-month-old babies con­tin­u­ous­ly over­es­ti­mat­ed their baby boys’ phys­i­cal abil­i­ties and under­es­ti­mat­ed their baby girls’. These expec­ta­tions for boys might be due to their phys­i­cal size as boys are usu­al­ly taller and heav­ier com­pared to girls until around 6 months. What you can do to pro­mote walk­ing in your infant is to focus on build­ing up your tot’s mus­cles by mak­ing him or her do much tum­my time dur­ing their ear­ly months. You should also ensure that your baby does not spend a lot of time in a car seat, play yard, or stroller.

- Talking

Talk­ing is a mile­stone that both boys and girls achieve con­sis­tent­ly at not the same time. Girls, on aver­age, begin talk­ing around a month before than boys, some­times around the begin­ning half of age two. British researchers not­ed that baby girls had con­sid­er­ably greater vocab­u­lar­ies com­pared to boys ear­li­est at 18 months and two years. How­ev­er, experts believe that gen­der only explains 3% of dis­par­i­ties in the ver­bal skills of tod­dlers. Still, the kid’s sub­jec­tion to lan­guage, along with their envi­ron­ment, accounts for not less than 50% of disparities. The role of par­ents in attain­ing this mile­stone can be to read and talk to their lit­tle ones more often irre­spec­tive of their gender.

Last but not least!

By the end, we can con­clude there occur no big dif­fer­ences among rais­ing boys ver­sus girls. Con­ven­tion­al­ly what boys enjoy and pre­fer are also enjoyed and pre­ferred by girls, plus vice versa. Your job as a par­ent is to look for your children’s strengths and work on them, also rec­og­niz­ing their flaws and help­ing them. It is to defend them from soci­etal pres­sure, which is to teach them the prop­er way to act and allow them to do things that make them happy. It is also about keep­ing alive the enthu­si­asm and excite­ments of child­hood in their hearts until they can be before the pres­sures of life dim them out. Remem­ber, you have to raise indi­vid­u­als, not the gen­ders. As a par­ent, your role is to approach each child dif­fer­ent­ly irre­spec­tive of their gen­der because they have their char­ac­ter and pos­sess their likes, dis­likes, strengths, and weaknesses. There is no such thing as a per­fect par­ent. So just be a real one. – SUE ATKINS