boys are like dogs?!!

[waitingforsomething]

Text a mum friend today who had a 2 DS one the same age as my dd (3) to see if they wanted to pop over for a play. She text me back to say she thought she would go to the playground because 'boys are like dogs and need to run'. I said Dd loves and needs a run around too (true) but it was Raining...she then said I didn't understand because Dd is a girl and she doesn't need it and I don't know how hard it is to have boys only. I am so lucky that DD will so quiet stuff sometimes and I will apparently understand when my DS learns to walk....
Aibu to think she's being a bit silly? Are boys really so different to girls? She is right that my DS is still a baby so perhaps I don't know but as far as I can tell all young children need a good airing....for some reason I'm dwelling on this and not sure why ...

I have always said that ds is half boy half Labrador for this reason.
Having says that, dd is similar, but ds's temperament is a lot more dependent on excercise. He can keep going for hours too.

tobysmum77, apologies if that's how it sounded. That isn't what I meant at all. I don't think lively is naughty.

I have two boys and two girls. All of them have liked LEGO, drawing, playing a boardgame type stuff. All of them have liked running around outside. Overall, I would say the boys have had a greater tendency to go stir crazy then the girls if they didn't get a run around. However four kids is not a very big sample.

I do think boys in primary school are more fidgety but I suspect it is because they tend to be less mature and able to concentrate for long periods than girls.

Anecdotally, friends who have had girls then boys tend to be a bit taken aback by how much more physical their boys are. People like us, who have had boys then girls, perhaps have more expectations that their girls will be physical too, and just let them get on with it.

Boys are deffo like boys, my little boy can barely sit still for more than half an hour whereas a friend down the road has a girl the same age who will sit still for hours on end and rarely moves about

I don't think that you can take how they are at school as 'proof' as they've had 4/5 years of conscious or unconscious conditioning by then.

It is very hard to 100% not socially condition your child. I hate hate hate the idea of it but try as I might I know I'm guilty of it. Though DD is very physically active, and that may have something to do with me very much encouraging this as I didn't want her to grow up to be hopeless at sport and a couch potato like me.

What do people think happens in boy toddlers that explains this inability to sit still/need to run around/lack of concentration? Do people believe it's some hardwired difference in their brains? Or some kind of hormone related thing?

DD1 was a relatively quiet, easy baby, and is perfectly happy to sit around reading or colouring or making a house out of Lego. She has been like this pretty much since she was born, barring a few months of colic.

DD2 has never been quiet, has never been easy and doesn't like to sit in once place. Occasionally I catch her reading a book quietly, but this is the exceptional rather than the rule.

Same sex, different personalities. And IMO it's the personality that decides how energetic the child is, not the sex.

(We're having another girl so I won't get to see what one of our children of the different sex will be like, alas.)

I'm a child minder and I tend to observe that boys, in general, go a bit doolalee if they don't get a chance to burn their energy whereas girls, generally, can deal with it better. And if I think about the children I am looking after right now, one boy would be happy to play with a pingpong ball and bat, a football, a plastic baseball bat, a hoop and basketball all day, every single day, whereas one of my little girls will be happy to play pretend vet, pretend princess, pretend castle all day, every single day.

I am very conscious of this and have set up objectives for the little girl to learn to kick a football and throw underarm, and her parents looked at me with a very sceptical look. Not that they don't want to, but she has absolutely no interest.

However, I have two boys and they are not 'boisterous' and could easily sit and draw quietly when they were little. They did enjoy more to be outdoors running around though.

All children are different!

I have 3 boys and a girl. My daughter and one of my sons needed to get out, rain or shine. The other two boys, less so.

Isn't there a testosterone surge in little boys around that age?

The testosterone surge is a myth, it's mentioned in a book by Steve Biddulph, and it's the only mention of it that there is. All medical sources show that testosterone remains stable at a low level until puberty.

All dc are different and there will be loads of examples of dc that don't fit in to the generalisation, but it's my experience that a far higher % of boys do need a daily run in the fresh air to get themselves sorted every day, than girls.
I used to use this phrase a lot when ds was little, but never did with either dd. That's not through my stereotyping before I had my dc, that's with my experience after I had my dc (and all the other small dc I knew at the same time.)

Like a pp said, I don't think my DD got this memo... We have had little girls and little boys over to play and ime it is so random as to what they like to do. We have had one quiet little boy who sat and played quietly with my DD's (usually untouched) kitchen and dolly pushchair, and one raucous little girl who even made my DD look quiet and retiring... most other a mix in between.

I do hate that phrase 'playing nicely' though as it strikes me as an implied criticism of any playing that isn't quiet and non-adult-bothering as the only tolerabel way. I think my DD plays fabulously but she never sits still and colours/plays silently with dollies/hosts an impeccable teddy's tea-party. NEVER.

Some children do do that and it's nice to see but I think it's just as 'nice' to see other children running around going berserk in the park or stirring puddles with sticks or whatever.

My mum constantly uses the phrase 'playing nicely' and it drives me nuts.

tolerable not tolerabel...

I have DTSs. DTS2 was definitely like a dog and pretend he was one, even down to bringing me sticks in his mouth and would literally bounce off the walls/bolt off down the street. DTS1 was very placid and it would be a struggle to get him to walk anywhere.

Now they are teens they both spend most of their time lying prostrate glued to a screen.

DD was the same as DTS2 so I don't think it is particularly a boy thing. DS3 is like DTS1.

I have 2 boys. I wasn't very physical as a girl myself. Liked drawing & colouring in, reading, chatting with friends at playtime at school. I was convinced that whatever sex child I had that they would "take after me" with regards to Their interests. I disagreed with the "boys do play fighting" and said I wouldn't have toy guns and swords in the house. Ha. (They seemed drawn to them when I let them have free reign to choose eg a fairground prize) I didn't discourage them from choosing that and wouldn't have discouraged a girl either. I'm all about letting them develop their own interests but after making sure I expose them to what society views as "gender specific" toys and Interests too.

None of them showed ANY interest in colouring in or drawing or any craft beyond play dough really. I really did try. they would say "I've finished now, mummy" after 10 mins, "can I go into the garden and play football?" Leaving me to finish off their drawing! Now they are older the only drawing they do is cartoons where characters fight with each other or have special powers. Or they design a set of top trumps style cards with aliens or monsters.

They have both enjoyed gender-neutral (in my opinion) toys as toddlers such as toy vacuum cleaners and toy kitchen as well as "stereotypical boys toys" like cars and trains (trains were massive in our house). I bought them a baby doll but interest lasted 5 mins - mainly they wondered how it worked (it cried when you pressed a button etc) - showed now interest in play acting with it despite me pretending to comfort it etc and just threw it in a wardrobe so they didn't have to hear it.

There hasn't been any social conditioning in our house. There really hasn't. It pissed me off royally when a great aunt bought DS2 a blow up punch bag, telling me "boys love that type of thing". He wasn't that bothered by it actually so I gave it away.

However...They just can't sit still or quiet for long without an "aim" in mind. Eh ds1 likes Lego and will spend hours on building an item. But it's so that he and DS2 can play with it racing them against each other or bashing them together to see which one lasts longest. Not much imaginary play with them AT ALL (they did that a lot with Thomas trains when much younger though).

I think people that recognise a difference generally between how girls and boys play (therr are obviously some individual differences) are talking about a specific age group. Say, 7-11.

After that the physical thing seems to still be there (they jump on each other all the time and are quite touchy feely if they aren't pretending to scrap with each other and jumping on each others' backs as they walk around at break time) - an eye opener for me when I started working in a boys' secondary). But from my casual observation they start to get physically lazy unless they're stand-out great at sport and then they become gaming couch potatoes, a lot of them. But 7-11. I would say, yes, puppies.

With my two, (12 and 9) - leave them in a room seemingly occupied in something calm. You will come back 20 mins later and find them literally rolling round on the floor wrestling . Every time.

There is something in it. You can try and deny it, like I did. But there is.

There is something in it - it's pervasive social conditioning! Unless you raised your boys on an island with no TV, no books, no magazines, plain clothes with no characters/motifs on, with no interaction with anyone else at all, they have been exposed to the kind of gender stereotyping and conditioning that is so widespread and accepted that most people don't even recognise it. It's in daily language that people use, it's in books, TV shows, at nursery and school, it's inescapable.

Cocktail - the thing about social conditioning is you are mostly unaware of it. Your own experiences of socialisation mean you have particular expectations of what a girl is like and what a boy is like, even if it's not conscious.

I don't think so! I was aware of this with the dc and tried to make sure we treated them the same. Interesting, though.

So do you mean that my expectations could have created a quiet, reading, writing girl and a running around, footballing boy???

I've got one of each and they'd both stay indoors all weekend if I let them. Lego, Minecraft, reading, TV, imaginary games together.

I'd say ds is not typical compared to friends though. Pink brain, Blue brain is an interesting read.

Even if it is just due to socialisation it doesnt change the fact that there are differences in school age boy/girl behaviour as a v general rule.

I have 2 brothers and 2 sons.
I clearly remember being stuck indoors on rainy days with my brothers, I'd be colouring in and they'd just chase each other around the kitchen table.

I definitely think boys do need to get outdoors and burn off energy.

Look at the physical differences, the body types, the muscle mass ....and yes, the hormones.
What, in newborns?

Cocktail, yes your belief, and society's very strong belief, the belief of all your friends and relatives and TV and magazines and people at playgroup and on the bus and in the street that boys are xyz and girls are abc. Right from the moment they are born parents and wider society treat boys and girls differently.

My dd has more energy than every boy on this thread and I can tell you that for sure without even meeting any of them.

I have a boy, and I'd like to think I'm not thick... I'm not saying that boy and girls babies are the same. There are obviously sex-based differences e.g. the obvious difference in genitalia, and boys being on average a bit larger. But before puberty, there are no real other differences. Nothing physical that would mean boys need more exercise and can't sit still. Why do you think there is, beyond calling people thick and ridiculous?