Boys and Girls Are Different. Really.

"The cardinal difficulty," said McPhee "in collaborations between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in where', they say, 'in there, of course.' There is consequently a phatic hiatus."

C.S Lewis, That Hideous Strength

I'd like to recommend two resources for those who are married to males, parenting boys, who are male, those who teach boys, or those who know a male. One is anything written by Leonard Sax. He has a Ph.D. in psychology and an M.D. degree.  His three year residency in family practice prepared him for the 18 years of private practice serving families in a small town north of D.C.

As I have heard it from another speaker, Sax was frustrated because teachers were repeatedly sending boys to him asking them to be put on ritalin, and he would send them back saying the boys were normal, and the teachers would refer them again. He wondered if teachers just did not know about the differences between boys and girls, and he tried to educate teachers of young children about this, and he found that not only did they NOT know, they were angry at his suggestion that they were different. They took umbrage, in fact. So he did more research and wrote these books.

Boys are in crisis- they live with their parents years longer than they used to, they don't have jobs, or at least not real jobs, and they don't really have a problem with that, they aren't going to college (but the girls are), and... well, there are a number of other markers indicating they are in crisis.  You can find that stuff elsewhere.  Here are the reasons Sax suggests they are having so many problems:

• Video games. These addictive activities disengage boys from the world....
• Teaching methods. Girls develop intellectually up to two years ahead of boys. Boys in grade school are naturally rambunctious. They need ways to express their native energy. They are being taught to read and write too early. Their mostly female teachers prefer compliant, dutiful girls.
• Prescription drugs. Hyperactive, frustrated boys are increasingly being medicated. This we all know. What Sax claims is that these drugs shrink the motivational centres of the brain and that the effect of this lasts years, well after these kids stop taking their meds. I hadn't heard this before but if it's true, it is truly frightening.
• Endocrine disruptors. Chemicals from plastic bottles, canned food linings and some shampoos mimic natural estrogen, the female hormone. Boys' testosterone levels are half of what they were in their grandfathers' day. Also, their bones are significantly more brittle.
• The devaluation of masculinity. Boys don't know how to become men. They no longer have appropriate rights of passage. Once Father Knows Best was the paternalistic model but now he has been replaced (and mocked) by a dopey Homer Simpson. Sax likes the old virtues of courage and temperance, with a good measure of intelligence.

He favors single sex classrooms for children, and he is very persuasive about it.

I would also recommend Andrew Pudewa's fantastic talk which you can download for only 3.00. It's called Teaching Boys & Other Children Who Would Rather Make Forts All Day. His website is here. You can also get his DVD of his very interesting, informative, and also amusing talk for only ten dollars.


These messages are very important for parents and teachers.  I think they are also very important for Sunday School teachers, because we have incorporated the public school model of the classroom into the Sunday School far too often, and it's not a model that is friendly to boys.

Some important differences between the sexes:

Hearing: You think boys aren't listening to you? They often really can't. Just as dogs hear frequencies people do not, boys have a narrower range of sounds they hear than girls do.  Dr. Sax says many boys labeled slow simply need their teachers to speak more loudly and more directly.   They also have trouble when young (this is a statistical thing, there will be individual exceptions) processing more than 8 words of instruction at a time. Mamas, we often talk too much and they just can't process it.

This has implications for girls, as well.  Studies on preemies showed that soft music played in their cribs really helped girl babies develop- they went home nearly two weeks earlier than babies without it.  However, it made no difference for boys, probably because they just couldn't hear that music.

Hearing is a brain function, and scientists can measure acoustic brain response in newborns and over time. Girl babies hear a 1,500 Hz tone about 80 percent greater than the average baby boy does. This is especially important because this range of sound is critical for understanding what others say. Other studies have demonstrated that the female/male differences increase as children get older.  Implications for the classroom: Not all boys and girls can be easily categorized by this information; situations vary, teacher styles vary. The important point is to consider the implications that would benefit both boys and girls. It has been demonstrated that noise levels that distract 11-year-old girls are 10 times softer than noise levels that distract boys.

My youngest girl insists that she has to do her schoolwork alone in another room, she cannot concentrate on her own reading out in the same room with the rest of us.  I thought she was just antisocial, although I did realize she is very distractable.  Now I suspect she really does struggle with the ambient noise three boys, 11, 5, and 3, can make.  Um.  Duh.

Color: we all have rods and cones in our retina.  But how many of each type is determined by our gender:

Rods are color blind. Cones are sensitive to color. They send their signals to the ganglion cells, some of which are large while others are small. They have different jobs. The large cells are wired to rods and are sensitive to motion. Think of them answering the questions, “where is it now and where is it going?” They are essentially a motion detector.The small cells answer the questions “what is it and what are the colors and textures?” The male retina has mostly the larger, thicker M (magnocellular) cells, which are essentially a motion detector and can track objects anywhere in the field of vision. The female retina has predominantly the smaller, thinner P (parvocellular) cells that are concentrated in and around the fovea, the center of the field of vision.
If boys’ eye structure is geared to motion, then looking out the window, out the classroom door, watching the classroom action and anything moving will catch their attention — they are wired for that. Looking at a worksheet, in the center field of vision, is better designed for the girls and their retinas.

Boys see and process speed, distance, movement, and direction more clearly and sharply than girls- again, in general.  Girls see and process color and texture more clearly and sharply than boys- again, in general. An individual boy or girl may be different, but in general, this is what we find.  And this explains to me why, when I had a hamper with three dividers for the whites, the reds, and the rest, my husband continually dropped all sorts of colors, including reds,  in the whites section, no matter how often I dug things out and resorted them, and even when I pinned a giant label to the correct sections of the hamper reading WHITES; REDS;  THE REST.  I finally gave up and now we just wash everything together.  He may have pink underwear, but since he can't tell the difference between pink and white, it doesn't matter.

This also explains to me why, last week when I told my son: "The tracing paper is in an orange box on the ledge over my bed, next to the curtain,"  he came back and told me it was not there.  I sent him again, rather forcefully insisting that he look, as we say around here, "like a woman."  He returned with the paper, explaining to me that it had been 'buried' under a bunch of stuff.  That 'stuff' was a library card, a driver's license, and two or three other items the same shape and size.
I guess the reason he could not see the bright orange box as well as I could because it wasn't moving.

Because they see more clearly movement, distance, and speed, the boys draw verbs, mostly with the black crayon.  Their drawings tend to be explosions, firing guns, crashing planets, and... movement.   Girls, who see color and texture more clearly, draw nouns- pretty cottages, flowers, grass, cute puppies or rabbits, and there is usually a rainbow (Mr. Pudewa forgot to mention the rainbow, but if you are a mother of girls, you know it's got to be there). Teachers tend to prefer pretty pictures of nouns with lots of pretty colors, contributing to the reason many boys learn as young as preschool that they aren't any good at school.

Pain- this one was amazing to me. Research shows that for  boys, pain increases the blood flow to the brain. For girls, it reduces the amount of blood to the brain. Pain sharpens a boy's thinking., but it makes girls kind of dim and confused (another reason women should not be in combat) If he's wrestling with a math problem and biting himself, this is actually a good thing. It helps him think.  What was really fascinating about this one is that, according to Mr. Pudewa, there were no exceptions found in the studies done.  100 percent of males were found to have an increase of blood flow to the brain when in pain.  100 percent of females had a decrease of blood flow under the same conditions (a balloon inserted in a formerly dark and private place and then inflated)- it didn't matter what sexual orientation the subjects were, either.

It turns out the 'fight or flight' response I learned about in school is largely a male response- researchers used to do research only on male animals because they believed the genders weren't really different enough to matter. But this is ironic, since the reason they preferred to do research on male animals is because of the inherent gender based differences- the monthly cycles and hormonal fluctuations were inconvenient to researchers. According to Anne Marie Owens, who wrote this story about a Leonard Sax speech in a National Post story in 2003, Sax says it's a:

male response to stress, the decades-old ''fight or flight'' principle, which
shows an increased heart rate, increased blood flow to the brain and a boost in alertness that collectively triggers a desire to fight or run away.

However, the female response to stress is completely different, and prompts instead a decreased heart rate and blood flow to the brain, dizziness, nausea -- all of it triggering a desire to hug and be hugged, he said.

''Most boys will experience confrontation as arousing and exciting -- they enjoy it. Girls, however,
experience nausea and dizziness; they are not that interested in being under fire,'' said Dr. Sax.

Boys also do much, much better in school if they do NOT have to sit in their chairs. In classrooms where chairs are optional, most boys prefer to stand at their desks to do their work.


abstract concepts- Boys tend to  have more trouble with this, especially when it comes to emotions and putting themselves in somebody else's shoes. It's not nearly as effective to ask a little boy, "How would it make you feel if somebody did that to you?"  as it is to ask a little girl this same question.  The boys may learn to give the right answers, but they really don't process information that way for many years past when girls can do it. What is more effective, my smart married daughter the Equuschick has told me,  is coming up with a similar instance when they have been on the receiving end, asking them to remember when that happened, and then point out that how they felt then is how so and so feels now.

Boys also learn better, are more alert and engaged when the room temperature is about 68 degrees, give or take.  For girls, the optimal temp for learning is about six degrees warmer.   Shasta says he still remembers, back when we used to babysit him, his then future wife would curl up under blankets with a book- sitting on top of a heating vent or near the wood stove, and he would think, "WHO would do that?  How could you possibly stay awake when you're that hot?"  Turns out the answer is (generally speaking), girls.

Fascinating stuff.

So now, when teaching my son, I will make him stand in front of the freezer while I do jumping jacks and talk very loudly, throwing hard things at him, and when teaching the girls,  we will curl up under the blankets, speak very softly, and eating chocolate.

Okay, not really.  But it does explain why all of us are under the blankets all winter long while my son is running around the 65-68 degree house barefoot and in shirtsleeves.
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Don't forget to tune this Thursday when  four moms of many (seven Progeny or more)- Connie at Smockity Frocks., KimC  at Life in a Shoe: the methods and madness of one family of 12 ,Kimberly at Raising Olives , and me, your friendly DHM right here in The Common Room, will be live-blogging our entire day!

Postscript-  You should also read my friend Cindy's post "Why boys fail."

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