What are we doing wrong with our boys?

[OhNoItsMonday]

NC for this. Mum of boys here.

I love my DC to pieces. They're too young for school yet. But I've already noticed that, whenever you hear complaints about badly behaved children in the classroom (or often outside it), it usually although not always seems to be boys who are being complained about. Just wondering why that is? What are we doing wrong with our boys?

Also, I would say keep them away from video games as long as you can! DS1 is allowed half an hour of cbeebies games at the weekend or 3 goes of race cars on alexa with grandad and even that gets him cross!

I was also very happy when the ipad broke in lockdown!

Oh, and my girls went to single sex schools after primary. Total gamechanger!

@Bickles

There’s an interesting book called Raising Boys that you might want to read. IMO boys naturally have a lot of energy and want to run, play, explore. School suppresses their natural instinct- they have to sit and concentrate for long periods of time. They also mature later and fine motor (needed for writing) is later. I say this as a mum to DS8 who is luckily doing well at school and no behavioural issues.

I've never understood this argument that school is designed for girls (which is often described as school being feminised because most teachers are female), that it involves too much sitting still, etc. If you look at the history of education there is far less expectation of silence and stillness than there ever used to be, including when schools had only boys. I'm obviously not advocating a return to rote learning, sitting in rows and corporal punishment but I can't see how people can claim that children now have less room for their natural instincts to run around and so on?

I do think that we encourage boys and girls into very different activities from very young. I've been told a few times when DS is running around the playground and climbing to the top of the frame that he's 'all boy' but I do think it can be encouraged or discouraged to a degree (of course children have their own personalities too, I'm not saying they're blank slates). We gave him a dolls house recently after seeing him play with one elsewhere and he adores it and will sit still and play with it in a detailed way for a long time (for a two year old), and I've really realised how that kind of toy encourages calm and focused play compared to, say, the big vehicle toys which encourage being pushed around all over the room etc. Seeing how differently he played with this toy than with his stereotypical 'boy' toys was an eye opener. People also seem to push crafts, painting and baking (which is DS's favourite thing, admittedly largely because he loves cake) push more on girls, all of which are also relatively still and sedate activities.

Mine are year 2 and nursery school. I can say absolutely the girls cause more problems than the boys in school. The girls bully each other, physically hurt each other, constantly talk (there’s at least 3 girls who are forever talking and drive my son to distraction) at once point we got called in because he had slammed his book shut, turned to the girl sat behind him and full on yelled in her face to “shut up talking”. The boys - there are 2 in his year group of 60 who aren’t very nice, talk too much and pick on others, but the girls are so much worse. But then I have a naturally quiet, serious and quite studious 6 year old who wants to learn and not watch the girls in his class as they Knick the teachers pens and Throw chairs around the classroom.

I do think that we encourage boys and girls into very different activities from very young.

Absolutely. It's very hard to avoid it. Marketing is extremely strong.

There's actually a huge issue in secondary schools as boys are not taking art at gcse and alevel anymore. My son has rarely been given a craft kit at birthday parties whereas my friend with the same age girl has a kitchen over flowing with them.

Can people just not accept certain behaviours are hardwired in?

Boys gravitate to more boisterous play and rough and tumble.
Not saying girls can't of course.

This is how we've been evolving from the year dot.

I've got a little 10 month old boy and this to be encouraged. Not being violent, not being a bully but being strong, confident and curious.
I'll be encouraging him to stand up for himself and those close to him.

If he wants to dress up as a princess then I (his dad) will dress up like one too 😂

The “boys will be boys” sentiment is exactly what prevented my asd/adhd DS from being diagnosed in a timely manner

Gobbycop he might well do both 😊 DS1 tells me at break "sometimes I build roads with the boys and sometimes I play mermaids with Annie and Jazmin" (he doesn't much like crafts though)

@NeurotrashWarrior

I do think that we encourage boys and girls into very different activities from very young.

Absolutely. It's very hard to avoid it. Marketing is extremely strong.

There's actually a huge issue in secondary schools as boys are not taking art at gcse and alevel anymore. My son has rarely been given a craft kit at birthday parties whereas my friend with the same age girl has a kitchen over flowing with them.

The dolls house thing shocked me a bit because I had thought we were reasonably gender neutral, we think of ourselves as a feminist family etc, but it made me realise that all of our toys with a couple of exceptions (he does also love his toy kitchen) are very stereotypical boy and that this is clearly driven by us and by other people giving him presents, not actually by his interests. I'm going to try to be more mindful of it, especially because I'm now expecting a second son and while I'm generally very delighted about this I do think it'll make it easier for the house to slip into 'boy zone' where we don't actually have others options to give them if I don't watch it.

I once read this amazing book, the name of which escapes me.

But it stated the number of negative stereotypes and names that can be applied to girls who exhibit bad behaviour, from “diva”, “madam”, “shrew”, to “bitch”. Even the supposed compliment “feisty” is backhanded. With girls there is often an assumed malevolence to their bad behaviour. We are far more likely to attribute manipulative traits to girls than boys.

For boys there are far fewer tropes to call upon to bring them back into line. We see them (as a PP alluded to) that they are like puppies: simple, boisterous and even when violent, sincere. “at least boys have a fist fight and get it all over with. Girls hold onto things forever” is a comment I’ve heard often.

In fact keeping boys “in line” is often seen as emasculating them, feminising them, holding them back from their true nature and complaints about the feminisation of education abound.

Girls who act in a similarly exuberant manner are not seen as normal. They may be the protagonist of many a fictional book but the struggle to tame them is part of the plot.

So in short we have far more negative stereotypes to call upon to keep girls well behaved than we do for boys.

[quote TheRuleofStix]@Feelingconfused2020 I hope you’re joking .

I’m a mother of 2 boys and a teacher.. My boys couldn’t be more different from each other if they tried - and the boys (and girls) I have taught are the same. The 3 most challenging children in my Y5 class this year are without doubt girls. Two of them are very aggressive.

Raising children has changed completely - parents (as a total generalisation) are much less keen to instil discipline, much less likely to say no, much more keen to excuse bad behaviour, much too reliant on electronic babysitters, much too prepared to allow kids to do very little exercise, and much too lax about the shockingly inappropriate games and programmes that their children watch. It’s raising a generation of confused, aggressive and mixed up children and it’s desperately sad.

The general dislike of boys driven by sites like this certainly doesn’t help.[/quote]
That’s really interesting about electronics. I’ve observed - on here and in real life - that people think boys HAVE to have computer games / consoles because otherwise they will have no friends. There’s less pressure for girls (who are more pressured over TikTok). Maybe that’s part of what causes a difference in behaviour?

There’s also some huge cognitive dissonance. Somehow my dd doing 10 hours of ballet a week proved how she was a typical quiet girl. What it actually proved was that, given 1-2 hours intense exercise each day, she was able to sit quietly and concentrate at school.

I think it's a mix of boys being naturally more energetic / less attentive at that age, less parental discipline for rowdy behaviour, and confirmation bias in teachers - teachers expect boys to be rowdy so are more likely to perceive behaviours in that way, and report that that's what they see.

So nature as well as bias both in favour of and against boys all play a part, imo. I remember reading that boys generally struggle in school compared to girls and may be less suited to the school environment, which may contribute to undesirable behaviour.

Are you serious @eatsleepread??? You haven’t encountered badly behaved girls??? I suspect there’s major confirmation bias going on in your thread. Having been a teacher for 20 years I simply don’t believe you. Girls are just as capable of vile behaviour as boys - I think you don’t see it because you don’t want to.

I find amongst my friends there are lots of feelings around things boys do and things girls do. I've introduced hobbies that I enjoyed when younger and dh has done the same. When ds 6yo has friends over it's nice to see them gravitate towards sewing, colouring and necklace making! The parents are amazed when I say they sat down crafting for an hour!

Had to send my DD to private school because she was being bullied by other girls. The final straw came when she ended up in A&E and it was the boys who rescued her. Nothing was done about it.

My DS is 20 months and all his toys are quite generic at the moment. He loves his cuddly elephant and stacking blocks or anything musical!

I shall be mindful as he gets older to not only buy ‘boys’ toys.

I think it helps we try not to buy plastic crap, most of our toys are wooden which seem to be generic and not marketed at a particular sex.

As the mother of 3 sons (now 14, 18 & 21) and having worked in education for the past 10 years here are my thoughts...... There is a bias towards girls with some staff in schools. I have seen it and it shouldn't happen but it does. Teachers should not make assumptions about children because of their gender but some do. Examples of this include believing a girls version of events over a boy's. I actually heard a teacher say 'because girls don't lie'. Asking all the boys to stay behind when no one owns up yet the 'crime' could equally have been committed by a girl. All of my sons experienced situations like this at some time or other and were very aware the girls were favoured.

Some boys (and girls) are naturally more boisterous as young children, that cannot be denied, and unfortunately means they will get into a few scrapes while they are learning. Those children (be they boys or girls) need their energy channelled and firm but fair boundaries while they learn and mature. They need understanding and support not excuses or discrimination simply because of their gender.

I don't think I am doing anything wrong. I've done my best to innoculate them against the bullshit idea that boys are naturally naughty and aggressive, I've tried to encourage them to be kind. I asked them to clean etc just as my parents asked me.

So I reject the term 'we'.

The dolls house thing shocked me a bit because I had thought we were reasonably gender neutral

Oh my, I remember when my son wanted a dolls house. I had to pretend it was for me because he was too embarrassed.

Boys are taught that girl things are beneath them. Girls are taught that boy things are aspirational.

Agree with PPs -- computer games and being handed ipads and smartphones from toddler years, boys being given Wimpy Kid and David Walliams and Horrid Henry as their culture inputs, a real lack of empathy-based education in the UK (both Early Years and later), and parents who excuse everything a boy might do to express frustration/boredom/cabin fever (hitting, pushing, etc) with 'boys will be boys' just because actually having to be Bad Cop and go through with a sanction is too difficult.

My DS struggles because it's hard to find many other boys to hang out with who don't only play computer games, hate girls, and make loads of depressing sexist jokes. There are some, but they seem horribly rare.

The ‘boys will be boys’ comment is as annoying as the comment from another mother that my DD was a tomboy. She isn’t a tomboy but a girl with plenty of energy and can run faster and climb higher than most boys. The gender stereotyping is awful. People need to stop thinking it’s normal to buy boys toy cars and girls the toy kitchen.

My children have had more issues with boys in pre-teen years in terms of deliberately being spiteful and of far too many personal comments being made. Once they were teenagers it evened up a bit. Where we live, boy behaviour seems to go more unchecked in terms of them being allowed out to roam freely for hours in large groups during which time they can be a nuisance. The girls don't do this. They are in smaller groups or indoors more so I wonder if on average they are given more freedom.

Mum of boys here! I expect my boys to have good manners, say please, thank you, apologise etc.. Bullying is an absolute no, as is playing physically if the other person doesn't like it. Proud to say my older DS recently got a prize in school for being the fairest, kindest classmate to others 😍

But.. This hasn't come without a bit of a struggle. He found it hard to read others, understand boundaries etc.. Some just mature later with these things. Little boys are not bad. They just need guidance, lots of love and lots of activities to burn off their energy. They play a lot of rough and tumble with their dad and each other. It is actually very good for development, so allowing that in a safe and fun way is really important.

Oh and in our house there's no bullshit 'girls do x, boys do y' talk either.

@RomeoLikedCapuletGirls

The dolls house thing shocked me a bit because I had thought we were reasonably gender neutral

Oh my, I remember when my son wanted a dolls house. I had to pretend it was for me because he was too embarrassed.

Boys are taught that girl things are beneath them. Girls are taught that boy things are aspirational.

Luckily he's still little enough that he doesn't know what's for boys and what's for girls - though I suspect he's starting to learn from nursery (and clearly me, too, for all my airy pronouncements on how I wouldn't be raising my children differently according to gender!), sadly. I heard one of the older children at nursery comment on the fact that DS's water cup he takes in is pink, and I suspect that the day will come quite soon when DS learns that he's not 'supposed' to have pink things.