[jyl]

From actual personal experience here. I have kids, a boy and a girl, and almost all of my friends have kids too. So I've watched plenty of little boys - and little girls - grow up in the educational system.

At the pre-school level, like ages 3-5 y/o, the little boys tend to do more construction/building games and the little girls tend to do more role-playing and play figure games; both seem to be equally drawn to drawing/art stuff and to running around/chasing games. The pre-schools don’t usually let kids whack on each other with sticks or play other fighting games, and I can certainly see why, considering how outraged I've seen parents get over minor (trivial) playground injuries. The kids I know can do play-fight at home all they want – wood or foam swords, nerf pistols, etc – but I didn’t actually see whacking being a favorite pastime. Sure, my daughter liked to pummel her little brother occasionally, but it got old fast for both of them.

I observe that once grade school starts, the boys tend to struggle more often with being slow learners and/or poor concentration/easily distracted, while the girls tend to struggle more often with lack of confidence, being too quiet and getting overlooked/outshouted. At the grade school level, the “playtime” seems to be more balls, sports, climbing, swinging for both – I don’t see 3rd and 4th grade boys playing much “superhero” nor do I see 3rd and 4th grade girls playing “house”, they’ve kind of outgrown that.

I don’t know any little boys who were actually put on ADHD drugs, although it was briefly suggested for my son (I refused, which turned out to be the correct decision) and I did know a couple of kids who I would’ve liked to see drugged (or better yet, kicked out) and admittedly they were all boys. I know an equal number of boys and girls who suffer from dyslexia or ADHD to the extent that they’re in actual behavioural (non-drug) therapy for it. Some of the therapies actually seem work well, in that the kid actually learns how to better focus his/her attention, to organize, and to concentrate on reading/listening.

Overall, my feeling is that, as far as the education system goes, the main difference between young boys and girls is that young boys often tend to be slower to pick up the early years of reading and writing, while little girls often tend to be self-effacing and not loud/assertive enough. I would want a teacher to be alert to this and, if the kid needs it, to give the individual boy or girl extra help. My kids’ teachers have usually been good to excellent, with a few unfortunate exceptions. This is in a couple of private schools where the teacher only has 20 kids per class and none of them are hard-core problem kids, though some come with hard-core problem parents (pushy, overbearing, BMW-flaunting, self-important types).