Steve Biddulph raising boys wtaf?

[monkeymamma]

I just started reading this last night. 'Daycare before your child is 3 won't turn him into a psychopath, but it does raise his chances'. My jaw literally dropped at this.

I didn't want to write off the rest of the book in case it was a case of raw nerve being hit on my part, so kept reading. I've lost patience now as the whole thing seems predicated on the idea that boys are 'a problem', that young men nowadays are somehow out of control. I found all the stuff about them being more likely to die in an accident etc very negative and upsetting (yes, this is based on statistics, but I don't think it helps mums of boys to dwell on it.)

In other words I think the book sees boys as proto-men, in training to be 'handsome, sensible, heroic' etc. I don't see DS as anything other than a PERSON. Who can grow up to be who he wants to be. And I'll love him whatever his personality.

The book was bought for me as a (very thoughtful) present from someone very dear to me, alongside Toddler Taming which is excellent (I think Raising Boys was an Amazon suggestion to go with it), and I was keen to read it in case it helped me be a better mum to ds. But I'm actually very surprised by it. Am I being too harsh? Does it suddenly get helpful later on? I'd be very interested to hear thoughts from anyone who has read it.

I wouldn't pay any attention to what Steve Biddulph says, personally, as I think he's a sexist prat with an agenda.

This.

I have been doing quite a bit of research recently about infants and daycare, and just reading some studies from America in the 90s is really heartbreaking - it bears no relevance for UK nurseries today though, totally different in terms of regulation, staffing, qualifications, attitudes. So if Biddulph is basing his ideas about how damaging nursery is on outdated Australian research then I wouldn't find it useful if you are deciding whether or not to send your child to a UK nursery in 2013.

We had 2 girls for 20 years before our little boy came along and my experience is that boys and girls are most definitely different. Our 2 girls are as different as chalk and cheese but these are still both girls. As a recent example, we have held birthday parties at home for all our children through the years. We held a birthday party this year for our ds 6ths birthday and it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the parties we had for our dds. They didn't sit still for a minute and every party game turned into some rough and tumble - it took 2 of us watching them full time every minute to keep control and we only invited 6! For the first time we are seriously thinking about having his party at the leisure centre next year. I like the Raising Boys book although I don't agree with what he says about nursery. I definitely agree that boys needs a good male role model and I think not having one is more damaging than whether or not they go to nursery.

A friend recommended it. I got to about page five where he says boys should be at home, not at nursery, and had to put the book down.

My DS is so different to my DD. Gender, yes, but their personalities are chalk-and-cheese. DD will sit down and look at a book or draw a picture. However toddler DS is a ball of energy who needs constant physical activity, is always climbing on me and all over the house, and I have limits to what I can do physically for medical reasons. DH works long hours and can't be home to help me. So sending DS to nursery to get that fix of physical exercise on days when it's just me at home are absolutely essential to me!

Really interesting to read this thread as I have been having the major guilts about increasing his nursery time from September, and what a friend said about this book hasn't helped.

Has anyone read the one about girls? I haven't yet but am obv more familiar with girls (used to be one myself!).

I loved that book and have heard him lecture. I agreed with the vast majority of what he said.

He's Australian. I read the Raising Girls one, which I had mixed views on. Some of it is sensible, some of it hippy claptrap and some of it surprisingly conservative (funny how quite often very traditional attitudes to parenting and male/female roles use the hippy ethos as a figleaf, but don't get me started on this.)

I think, based on his views on nursery, that its basically a new take on attachment parenting, which dates back to the 50s and has been largely discredited since. Haven't read Raising Boys and I gather some of it is quite sensible but I would take anything he says about nursery with a hefty pinch of salt.

I found it really helpful. My DS was in a nursery unit attached to a school and they seemed to want all the children to behave like girls (yes, I know that's sexist), sitting colouring, playing quietly, co-operating etc. DS really could not do that. Reading the book helped me realise I wasn't mad and that the nursery were expecting things of him that he just wasn't capable of. We took him away and sent him to a much more realistic playgroup.
Have passed my copy to my DiL though and although it is on the bookshelf I'm pretty sure it hasn't been read!
I think staying at home and then going part time to playgroup/nursery at around 3 is my ideal FWIW.

I quite liked it, esp the stuff about older boys/teens. Was a bit on the fence over the childcare sections. Tbh there is childcare and childcare - I have seen (non-UK) daycare settings where I wouldn't leave a dog so any kind of research is going to depend on demographics and time period (my mum tells stories about the nursery she went to in the 1950s that would curl your hair). Equally I don't think all children are suited to large settings from a young age, whilst others will thrive. On the other hand Mr Biddulph does go on and on about the need for 1-1 care which makes you wonder how and second or subsequent children survive.

I am put off by the title of the books, despite having two girls and one boy.

My two girls are as different to each other as they are to my boy.

As for childcare - they all went to child care from about the age of 6-10 months, dd1 and ds were fine; dd2 hated it. All of them are very well behaved in social situations.

Dd1 is, and always has been, the most sporty and competative of all three of them.

Reading a book about the differences between boys and girls just doesn't seem relevant to me and my family.

I think I read something about daycare in Australia being much more basic at the time he was writing than it was in the UK. But I have to say that bit did put me off. I did read it-but my baby boy is 21 now, so my memory is faulty!

I didn't realise I'd revived a 10 year old thread!

Aren't these books over 20 years old now? I thought he was a very annoying man.
I never trust childcare books written by people like him.

I'm not particularly convinced about the boys are naturally more rough and tumble and girls are quieter.

We send our child to a preschool which is age 1 to 7 (many classes and not in the UK) and in the week we had a big family picnic for the entire cohort and parents. Around 60 children and parents in a nature centre where all play equipment is pretty natural (think forest school).

There didn't appear to be from what I could see any differentiation in how loud, mud covered, fast moving and prone to hurling themselves off things between the two sexes.

I see a bigger difference between my son and my nephew who are the same ages. My son is never still, wants to play rough and tumble at every opportunity and can't see a flight of stairs without seeing how high he can jump from it. I have no idea if he can do jigsaws as he just uses the pieces as frisbees. His cousin will get out a jigsaw, sit down, complete it and then put it away.