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I wish I had the knowledge and experience of raising a young boy and girl when I was younger myself.  I think it would have helped me better understand gender differences experienced later on in adult life. The natural differences in boys and girls are astounding and very distinct, especially at a young age.  We all know the stereotypes as adults: women are more emotional, better communicators and team players.  Men are more about action than words, and doing it themselves etc..  Toddlers playing with big trucks, smashing toys and wrestling with each other often contrast with girls playing with dolls, putting on pretend shows and playing tea party.  But are we teaching them to reflect our own gender preferences, or is there a natural inclination towards seemingly boyish or girly activities?

Let’s start with physical differences.  Medical researchers have seen that at birth, girls are slightly shorter and weigh slightly less than boys. Girls’ skeletal systems are also more mature, making them slightly more resistant to skeletal injuries. Boys are not only more physically vulnerable during the first year of life, they are more physically active with behaviors like squirming, kicking and wiggling, which may lead to more accidents. Further to this increased likelihood of boys ending up in the emergency room, girls are generally healthier than boys overall in early infancy and childhood.

Sight is also different between the sexes. Girl babies are better able to perceive differences in color and texture. This perception may be one reason why girls will typically prefer toys with patterns and textures, such as dolls with clothing, hair, etc.. Girls can also differentiate individual faces, and may actually prefer to examine the human face over other activities. Additionally, within the first six months of development, girls tend to become more sociable and more inclined to ‘coo’ at people and recognize familiar faces.

Boy babies are better able to discern location, direction and speed of moving objects. Boys will typically prefer toys that move such as trains and trucks. By 2 months of age, boys are able to see greater distances than girls, but are less able to distinguish specific details. However, boys are better able to keep track of motion, and may prefer mechanical motion over human motion. Recent research supports that boys are able to figure out the laws of motion about two months faster than girls. Generally speaking, boys also tend to walk sooner than girls and start working on their motor coordination and skills.  In girls, the language areas of the brain develop far before the areas used for spatial relations and for geometry. In boys, it’s the other way around. A curriculum which ignores those differences will produce boys who can’t write and girls who think they’re “dumb at math”.

Boys also don’t hear nearly as well as girls their same age.  As a possible result, they often learn to verbally communicate as much as 6 months to a year later developmentally than girls.  Written skills for boys also lag behind girls. That said, boys are more physical beings at a younger age than girls, and can take more readily to sign language. Boys can also show preferences for parallel play (individually playing next to someone, but not necessarily with them) vs interactive play in which girls appear to prefer. Clinical research shows that boys are also much more likely to develop attention deficit hyperactive disorders than girls.

In girls, emotion is processed in the same area of the brain that processes language. So, it’s not too difficult for most young girls to talk about their emotions. In boys, the brain regions involved in talking are separate from the regions involved in feeling. The hardest question for many boys to answer is: “Tell me how you feel.” As much research from child development experts shows, regardless of gender, children under the age of 4 are governed predominantly by their right brain (the emotional side).  So, young girls as a result can be very mood-driven and emotional, even as compared to boys.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Georgia State University,  confirms that boys are less interested in 1 on 1 social interactions than girls, and are more likely to want to compete among larger groups.  Girls, by contrast, show more brain activity (and interest so the theory goes) when they are approached with 1 on 1 personal social interactions.   The study begins with a premise that every parent of a tween knows: as kids emerge into puberty, their focus changes dramatically. They care less about their families and more about their peers.  But as Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Mate and other child development experts know, children who are raised by their peers vs parents encounter many more issues later on in life.

Teaching your baby sign language takes time, but it is worth it, and has been show to actually acelerate spoken language skills rather than delay them.  Babies first need to develop sufficient motor skills in order to coordinate their limbs and fingers to put together decipherable signs.  Often a child can start to be taught signing by as early as 6 months.  You must be patient, however, since it often takes 2 to 3 months for your baby to play their first sign back to you.

It’s also important to focus on the most basic and simple signs first.  The sign for “more” (two hands touching in front with fingers together) is quite an easy, and often used sign.  Others like “drink” (suck on index or any finger and then pull it out) is also a common one, and easy for any 1 year old to handle.  Sleep (two hands flat together beside head) is a favourite for both kids and more importantly parents, and again simple to learn.  Parents can also customize their own signs based on their child’s likes and preferences, rather than just going “by the book”.  Our sign for “poo” was simply patting a bum.

Written By: Chris Charlwood

One parenting technique is the use of consequences for managing behaviour. “If you hit your brother again, then you won’t get a popsicle”. The reality is that a toddler may only grasp the idea that there is a popsicle up for grabs, and they need to get it right now! Children also don’t have a sense of time… Telling them you will be with them in a minute, or that they have to leave for playground in half an hour is meaningless to them.

The cause and effect concept is something that only a child with more fully developed learning (and a connected left and right brain, which happens sometime between age 3 and 4) skills can grasp. The practise of using time-outs is something that applies consequences, and should not be used with young children, if at all.

Sharing is another adult idea that parents often force onto children at too young an age. A young child or toddler sees everything around them as theirs. The concept of ownership must first be understood before the idea of sharing can be introduced. Empathy is an adult emotion that is foreign to younger children.  Parenting with siblings often requires sharing of toys, food and playing together.  At younger ages, distraction can be used as a method to help reduce conflict (although often inevitable).