Can boys be civilised, as in, made civil?

See what I mean op? We're 'rough' now. Nice upper middle class mumsnetters out in force to tell us we've imagined the sexism we're surrounded by or if not we should avoid the majority of parents we live around!

Probably, but much less difference between males and females, lower levels of violence overall and less extreme violence at the upper end.

Neuro - could be a boy or girl but they're bald so everyone assumes they're a boy regardless of outfit

My son is nearly 3 and is very energetic and can be rough/violent with other children occasionally. It’s very difficult to deal with. Sometimes I will see another, generally male, toddler like him and it gives me some comfort.

I tell him off, he ignores me or laughs.
I shout, he laughs or gets worse.
I pick him up and take him home, he hits and kicks me.

My only other option is to smack him. Even when I physically restrain him, I sometimes have to do it hard and I worry that I’m modelling violence.

I am not a bad parent, I try really hard. I’m a feminist and I would never say he’s just a boy or ‘a real boy’.

He’s also very kind, affectionate and clever. I hate threads like this.

So my second child is very large, around the highest centiles at 6 mo.

Lots of strangers have cooed over my baby and commented "aw they're gonna be a bruiser"

What sex is my child?

Maybe it is death by 1000 cuts - if dd1 bumps someone in a playground I'll call out 'look where you're going' but if she was a boy would I just shout 'sorry' to the unfortunate victim? And so the boy learns he's not responsible for his actions?

I've only got dd's so I don't know if I would be different with boys. I guess if they were constantly flying around bumping people you'd lose the will to live telling them to look where they're going but I'd like to think I'd remove them from the playground and find an empty field for them rather than give up!

I hasten to add that I know lots of girls who are also extremely active and need to be out of the house most of the time too!

Toddler boys do not have higher testosterone than toddler girls. That's an excellent example of the kind of myth that perpetuates about young children's behaviour.

Really, a huge amount of development has happened from 0 to 2. The foundations have already been laid for behaviour. Research shows that even parents who say they don't treat children differently do actually, from birth. Things like how much risk they allow, different for boys than girls, and so on. This is bound to have an effect!

My DS is very active and needs to be out of the house running around twice a day. However he has excellent manners for his age, is kind and thoughtful and by and large does as he is told (he is two so he has his moments). I am a laid back parent in many ways but I will not accept bad manners, unkindness etc and DS knows this. I have never excused bad behaviour by him.

OP, it’s the company you keep.

I have 2 DSs and I don’t hang out with people who indulge in ridiculous stereotyping (boisterous boys and well behaved girls).

As you’ve said - not all boys are like that, some girls are.

So - some children are like that, some aren’t. Yours aren’t - partly because or their temperament and partly because of how you’ve brought them up.

If people say oooo yours are easy because they’re girls, Just challenge it. It isn’t true. My boys aren’t expected to behave like hooligans and my niece isn’t expected to be good.

Woah, OP I think you need to adjust your view of children just as much as your 'boys will be boys' friends. Your subsequent posts about adult male violence and parallels with boys play are totally inappropriate - I've seen just as many girls hitting as boys (talking about 'developmentally normal' so around age 2 I suppose) and I'd never dream of suggesting any of those children would go up to be violent. My boy went through a 'hitting' phase just as almost all the girls we knew did - he is now very gentle, kind, considerate. Honestly he has only ever been hit by older girls, but I wouldn't ever dream to suggest all girls were like that.

What do I think causes adult male violence? In my experience all the young men I know who were violent to young women did themselves grow up in violent households.

I hate this. I have a girl and then a boy. I stood in playgrounds with my girl and her friends and the parents watched and gently guided their behaviour. Three years later I stood in the same playgrounds with my son and his friends and watched as the same parents did nothing to intervene or to guide but just fondly tutted and said ‘boys will be boys’ with a rueful smile. It drives me ballistic.

Boys are capable of behaving in a moderate and calm way but parents are very invested in the idea of tough, rambunctious boys. My son and his friends horseplay with each other in a way that simply wouldn’t be permitted among girls.

What age r u talking about? From observation I notice that more (not all!) girls are able to sit down and focus at an earlier age (like age 2-3). Someone mentioned that it may be due to higher testosterone in boys. It is hard to communicate and reason with toddlers (boys also tend to have later language development), especially When they frequently throw tantrums. Thus - while I believe we should have the same behaviour standards, it can be hard in the pre-communicative years. Parents should remove a child does not stop violent/anti-social behaviour though.

That’s true. Do you think they are like that because they are girls?

I suspect there are some innate differences between boys and girls which would, even with perfectly identical socialisation, result in overlapping normal distributions for many things one might care to measure.

Who knows why your individuals are the way they are, though.

What do you think causes it?

I think that's a really complex question, and I'm not an expert, just a parent

My gut feeling is that its a mix of a bunch of factors - boys not being taught to handle angry feelings correctly (ie "boys don't cry" mentality), idealization of violence in the media (video games, tv etc), poor male role models in some cases, learned attitudes to women (objectification etc)

Loud & boisterous play at toddler/preschool/early primary age seems to me to be healthy for both sexes

I have two boys, primary school age and under. Neither of them are violent or aggressive, neither are allowed to be pushy or unpleasant to other children they are playing with. They are expected to be calm and sensible, as their age allows, and to listen to instructions.

I assume that their good behaviour is due to reasonable parenting combined with their natural personalities. Some boys and girls are going to be more challenging than others and need more parenting. Some boys and girls will get less than adequate parenting and the results will be poor behaviour in those susceptible to it.

What you're asking, I think, is whether sexist stereotypes affect parenting? Clearly they do, and it's not good for either sex.

As the mother of a very gentle and quiet little boy I don't like your title. It is true some children are frequently loud, rough and annoying. It is sexist to assume these children are always boys. They are not.

I am also deep in zone 6 and living in a an area where childcare is almost inevitably split along gender lines. I wonder sometimes if there is a bit of a positive feedback loop.... childcare is is done almost exclusively by mothers day to day, or if not then outsourced to a female carer (out of all my friends and DS' classmates, I know TWO mums who work full time. That's out of a good fifty families). So we are women, liking on the whole things women often like, raising girls who like those things too and gets lots of lovely positive feedback when they do them. Like crafting and board games and art and whatever. So girls become more adept and content doing those things and their mums have lovely cosy relationships with them and everyone is happy.

Meanwhile, the boys, who often want to do boy things that just don't appeal to women on the whole (like play fighting, football, lining up cars, chasing games) are over the other side of the room going feral with each other whilst their mothers ignore them or communicate with them badly and just don't know how to connect through play. In 7 years of parenting I've never seen a mum play fight with her kid or play football for a sustained length of time. Seen plenty of dads do it though.

I truly believe boys and girls are on the whole different and have different needs, whether through socialisation or genetics I don't know. And I'm not sure we meet boys needs massively well as women or really know how to respond to "boys being boys". Isn't that why they say boys needs plenty of time with male role models?

Usual caveats apply.... not all boys, not all girls, not all parents, are like that.