To pray that smug mothers of little girls are ...

[ReallyTired]

....sent a beautiful bouncing baby boy torando as their second child.

Those of us with two children realise that nature has a huge affect on a child's personality and ablity to behave.

I have two children and both of them are lovely now. However my son was permamently on the move as a two year old and we used to call him captain chaos. He was the sort of kid who would be into every cupboard, had the wooden spoon in the baby olympics or baby ivory league. (ie he had no desire to read Pride and Prejudice at the age of 2)

My daughter has a very different temperment. She is far more compliant, loves drawing jigsaws and isn't a muck magnet. I am sure that if she had been my first I would have been unbearably smug.

Boys take longer to grow up and my son at the age of eleven is lovely most of the time. He is still a muck magnet, but he has plenty of friends and doing well at school.

[changeforthebetter]

oh ffs there is nothing calm and demure about my girls. fart and willy jokes abound, food gets spilt constantly, their default volume setting is loud......... really, where are these calm girls of which you speak?

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHopeful]

I have a dd. I'm too exhausted to be smug. She creates chaos within minutes. Gets bored of toys within seconds, is most happy playing in a pool of mud, talks all the time and constantly challenges everything.

I've been praying boys are easier but I'm not sure they are.

[Tee2072]

Nothing like a cunty provocative post and then a disappearing OP.

Anecdote does not equal data. What your children are like does not determine how all the children in the world are. What a stupid idea.

[pommedechocolat]

Eh? Dd1 started walking at ten months and was running away from me from that point.

I would love to have a son.

Wtaf are you on about?

[kungfupannda]

YABU

I'm willing to accept that there might be some very basic gender differences evident at an early age, if you looked at a big enough sample of boys and girls, ie some sort of tendency for small boys to be more physical, and small girls to have better attention spans, for example.

But that doesn't translate into "all boys are more physical and all girls are better at sitting down playing games." Every child is an individual and they may or may not show personal traits that override or fall in with any general differences that might exist.

However, I think there is a huge amount of reinforcing that goes on - eg you see a small boy running around yelling and you assume that he always behaves like that. You see a little girl sitting down watching TV quietly and you assume that is how she always is. I suspect some behaviours are also excused on the basis of "boys will be boys" and similar sentiments.

If I am out with my 2 DSs I often get "ooh you've got your hands full" type remarks. My friends with 2 girls never get these comments. I get them even if both boys are sitting quietly eating their lunch, so it's clearly just a general assumption.

But my main problem with your post, OP, is that you sound so negative about these differences, if they exist.

I also don't like the word "compliant" when attached to little girls. We've historically expected girls and women to be compliant. I think there are other, less loaded words that could be used to describe a calm personality.

[DukeSilver]

Well as you say, they are all individuals. But then you have tarred all girls and boys with the same brush so you're not really making sense there.

FWIW I have one daughter...she is a bloody hurricane and has been since day one Maybe I am smug though, because she is amazing and I love her loud, messy, fast, frustrating behavior. Just as I would be smug if I were the mum of a quite girl/loud boy/quiet boy.

[CreatureRetorts]

OP you're stereotyping girls and boys.

I have two, boy and girl. My girl is a climber, loves messy play, loves her tea set, dolly, pushchair, likes playing football. My boy loves running about, screaming, wrestling and sitting down to read books and do puzzles.

They are people - I don't put them in boy/girl boxes - I just treat them as people with individual personalities.

[ThePowerof3]

My DD1 is intense and extremely hard work, worth it though. DD2 is boisterous and DS v laid back You are generalising wildly

[xylem8]

all I can say is wait till your DD hits puberty.

[MrsMangoBiscuit]

Guess I lucked out then. DD1 can be temperamental, is highly strung, will get more upset at the injustice of being pushed over than because she's scraped her knee. (Unless she got rugby tackled, in which case she will jump up and charge down whoever did it to return the favour, laughing wildly) When she's excited she shrieks at a pitch that's just within my hearing range and makes my teeth vibrate! She likes princesses, trains and pirates. She wears almost as much food as she eats and always returns from the garden with a selection of grass/mud stains, and a stick.

She's my little boistrous dirt-magnet diva, and I AM smug, because I think she's amazing, and I get to be her mum.

[AmandaPandtheTantrumofDoom]

You are stereotyping, and you are assuming that, because you wish it was so, all differences you see between your children are nature and not nurture.

Even if your observation was universally true (which plenty of posters have told you it isn't), it doesn't prove that it is nature and not nurture because of the incredibly gendered world we live in. It doesn't prove causation, just correlation. The most you can say is that we don't know if there are natural differences.

If you are genuinely interested in this, read Cordelia Fine.

[MurderOfGoths]

Miaow I don't think I've seen anyone agreeing with or defending the OP. Think she's been unanimously laughed at.

[Roobot]

Jesus. If boys are more work than girls, then I clearly have a mutant DD. 16mo, she is literally happy only when on the move or asleep. Maybe I will just hand my ovaries back and give up on the idea of any more... can't bear the thought of one that is even harder work, much as I love her!

[AmazingBouncingFerret]

I have one of each, they are both pains in my arse. I just want to be smug!

[KirjavaTheCat]

My DS sounds like your DD.

...Am I a smug mum of a boy?

I have a girl on the way though, maybe I can be a smug mum of both.

[Summerblaze]

What a ridiculous thing to say. I have a DD who was an angel til she started school. Now she's a bloody nightmare at age 9.

DS1 who has developmental delay was hard work when he was a toddler but not in a whirlwind tornado kind of way. He was not a tearing around the room boy but just couldn't get across what he wanted to and had meltdowns due to lack of understanding and speech problems. Now he is catching up and is at times a lot easier than DD.

DS2 is different again and although he is only 1, he is a little more rough and tumble than DS1. He will get on great with DD as she is a little tomboy at times.

I have at least 3 friends who have had boys first and then a girl and say that if they had had the girl first, they wouldn't have had anymore.

They are all individuals. Generalising is just stupid.

[Pagwatch]

Miaow,

But it isn't ok as just about every post on here proves.

And if you think the post is shite (which it is) why would you respond by wanting to start an equally stupid gender related pile of crap?
Why would that be any less pathetic?

[Tee2072]

I'm beginning to wonder what publication the OP writes for.

[maja00]

I have a lovely, gentle, compliant little boy. Maybe it's just down to parenting

[TarkaTheOtter]

I only have one child so probably not allowed an opinion, but I certainly wouldn't say SHE was compliant. My friends boys seem much more placid, but that's probably because they aren't my children.

DD likes thomas the tank engine, think she's ready for Austen yet?

[ubik]

I hate all this ''smug mothers of girls' business

What a crock of shit