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.

I've never come across smug mothers of girls in real life

Of course they're different - they're different people irrespective of their gender ! DS (5) is quite placid and gentle, a caring wee soul. DD (3) is wild, plays with slugs, worms and anything else she can get her hands on (she literally tried to strangle a snake at The Animal Man show we attended one day). She spits, eats snot like it's going out of fashion and has even been known to lick her fingers if she accidentally gets a bit of poo on them when she's wipe her bum.

Wish my two girls were as easy as my boy!

eh what ? do you really honestly think that all little girls are fluffy and quiet and all sweetness and light. seriously mine were were into everything when they were little I am not sure what you are on about tbh just needed to get my 2 pennys worth in . girls are children just the same as boys

Another dazzling insight of children's behaviour

Well, if my DD2 had been my only girl then I might have been a "smaug mum of a girl", she is an absolute angel, very very easy, sleeps well blah, blah, but after 3 DSs and a DD that definitely weren't I bloody well deserved her! Seriously OP, read your post through and then admit that it makes no sense whatever. All children are individuals and their personality has very little, if anything, to do with their gender. In fact I don't think it has anything to do with their upbringing either. Their behaviour might, but not their personality.

and id you are on about muck magnet my 15 yr old girl cant wear clothes for more than 5 minutes without something being down her front and here was me thinking most folks attitudes had changed about girls and boys oh well

You Can borrow my 2 for a nice peaceful time op - be my guest.

Seriously tho yabu - but if you are inclined to be as misguided as your post implies, the issue is with you not your kids or anyone elses.

maybe if you had treated your children the same and not expected your son to be a tornado things would have been different then you couldve been smug about both

OP, sounds like you are a bit paranoid. Why would a mum with a girl look down her nose at you purely based on the gender of her child? If she truly does look down her nose it's probably more likely due to the the silly generalisations you make.

Smug mothers of girls? What?

OP, how nice for you that your girl is so compliant. Perhaps you would like to spend some time with my DD, who is about as far from compliant as you could imagine.

not planning anymore so won't find out whether boys are easier or not, which is what my mother always told me

My DD was an absolute tornado as a toddler, and so I do agree about the smug parents bit, just not the smug parents of little girls. Smug parents of docile, well-behaved children who imagine the docility is all down to their good parenting are very annoying! So I know what you mean about hoping their second child is demanding, though I suppose one feels a little bit guilty about it.

Haha! My second child was a boy and he was a complete nightmare as a small boy - he simply did not sleep for five years and when we had dd when he was 6, our GP said 'I shouldn't say this, but I expect you are relieved you have a little girl'. Well, she has been more difficult than he ever was!! It is so awful to gender stereotype - girls sweet and compliant, boys muddy and noisy. he is now 13 and the most gentle loving lad and she is 7 and a tornado of shouting, temper and 'look at meeeeee'!!

If dd1 (now an adult) had been my only child, I would have probably been a 'smug mother of a girl'

it seems girls like women can't do right for doing wrong on here it baffles me

From the OP -

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

I bloody KNEW there was a reason I should have had another! Dammit! Now I will never understand whether or not nature blah blah blah vomit puke blah..........

There are, IMO, HUGELY different behavioural distributions between the genders and they manifest themselves very strongly during the toddler years. That is not to say that some girls are not boisterous and tomboyish and some boys are not pliable and easy going. That is how statistical distributions work; they tell you nothing about how a particular individual is going to be. You have to treat every child as an individual and deal with how they actually are and not a stereotype. It is also true, I suspect, that society reinforces gender stereotypes and magnifies the differences.

However, having watched my own two boys and the entire sample of children at my children's pre school, it is blindingly obvious that, as a population, the boys are more boisterous and random than the girls. The teachers also seem to believe that there are innate differences and they have obviously seen many boys and girls over the years.

So, it is wrong to pretend that there are no innate differences. Equally it is wrong to extrapolate from a population down to individuals.

"HUGELY different behavioural distributions between the genders and they manifest themselves very strongly during the toddler years"

So once they start to become aware of the world around them? Before they are aware of what is going on around them there are few differences? That's interesting..

It is very hard to tell before they really interact with the world. The testosterone surges that boys experience clearly alter their behaviour.

of course there is difference in genders but to say little girls are just all lovely and fluffy and quiet and compliant is a huge generalisation imo