Why is it said that girls mature earlier than boys? Girls grow up, boys “slow down”: how gender affects the development of a child

04.05.2019

If your son learns to read and write much more slowly than his older sister, poorly retells and carelessly writes letters, do not worry, this is a feature male mind

When teaching their sons to read and write before entering school, many parents are surprised to notice that boys take longer to learn to read and write than girls. Why?

When Differences Arise

They are different from the very beginning and develop in different ways. Boys are usually larger than girls at birth and have more head And more weight. Of course, there are individual differences, but now we are talking about average data. Boys start walking later by about 2–3 months, and start talking 4–6 months later.

Neuropsychologists, recording the biocurrents of the brain of newborn children, found that the brain of boys and girls works differently from the very beginning.

Until the age of 8, the hearing acuity of boys is on average higher than that of girls, but girls are more sensitive to noise, it tires them faster. Girls also have higher tactile sensitivity, they are more irritated by bodily discomfort and at the same time they are more responsive to touch and stroking.

Girls' games are more often based on near vision: girls play with dolls, rags, beads, buttons in a limited space, a small corner is enough for them. Boys' games are more often based on distant vision: they run after each other, throw objects into the distance, using all the space around them. Boys for a full mental development generally require more space than girls. If the horizontal plane is not enough for them, they master the vertical one: they climb on the cabinets, run along the backs of the sofas, hang on the door frames ... The mastered space is reflected in different ways in the children's drawings. Boys, drawing the neighborhood of their house, show more yards, squares, streets, houses than girls. The girls fill the albums with princesses and self-portraits, while the boys fill them with cars and military battles.

nature's design

Where do these differences in the psyche of boys and girls come from? Scientists believe that this is the design of nature. Two opposing tendencies always struggle in evolution: on the one hand, nature needs to preserve what has already been created, to fix in the species those features that it needs, to pass them on by inheritance and, therefore, to make descendants as similar as possible to their parents. And on the other hand, progress implies a variety of descendants, among which there will be one who will allow the species to adapt to new conditions, to expand its habitat. These two trends embody the male and female genders. The female sex retains in the genetic memory all the most valuable acquisitions of evolution, while the male sex, on the contrary, easily loses the old and acquires the new - some of these acquisitions may come in handy in the future, at the time of the occurrence of extreme conditions.

Many female representatives are needed to continue the species. Nature "protects" the female sex, and she "does not feel sorry for" the male. On males, all the novelties of evolution are worked out. From this, men have more of both beneficial and harmful genetic mutations. For example, more deaf boys are born than deaf girls. Color blindness is also more common in men. There are more boys among children with strabismus, stuttering, dyslexia, mental retardation.

The brain of a man is larger, more advanced in development, but less reliable and very vulnerable. With all the changes - both natural and social - men suffer more. But nature endowed them with search behavior: so that they could survive by finding another habitat, where it is warmer and more satisfying. Therefore, men, including boys, are prone to the development of new spaces, risky actions, they are quick-witted in difficult situations and are able to make unconventional decisions.

Who is stronger than

How do these features of the male “device” affect the education of boys? In preschool and primary school age, girls verbally “beat” boys. Their speech is better developed, but their thinking is more of the same type. Boys think outside the box and are interesting, but since they are silent, they inner world often hidden from us.
Of course, this does not mean that not a single girl will put forward a new idea, but all the same, boys and men solve fundamentally new tasks better. But they do not attach importance to the thoroughness of the decision and the accuracy of the design. The boy can find custom solution mathematical problem, but make a mistake in the calculations and as a result get a deuce. Girls, like all women, are better at performing typical, template tasks, but they carefully work out the details.

Girls have more fluent speech, they read faster and write more beautifully, but the side of speech that is associated with the search (selection of word associations, solving crossword puzzles) is better for boys. Boys are more developed spatial representation, because the performance of spatial-visual tasks requires a search. Therefore, boys are better at solving geometric problems: they mentally rotate the figures and superimpose them one on top of the other. And girls, including female teachers, designate corners and sides with letters and then operate with letter symbols and templates-theorems.

* * *

If your son learns to read and write much more slowly than his older sister did, retells poorly and writes letters carelessly, do not be upset, this is a feature of the male mind. In addition, the childhood of boys lasts longer. By the age of 7 they are in their own way biological age younger than girls of the same age by a whole year.

Boys have their own way of growing up, but since they are more information-oriented than girls, for them intellectual development you don't have to worry.

Important

When a woman teaches a boy, her own children's experience, comparing yourself in childhood with him is wrong and useless. Scolding the boy, state briefly and precisely what you are unhappy with. He cannot bear the emotional stress for long. His brain turns off the auditory canal and the child stops hearing you.

Boys, even very young ones, are less likely to be picked up by their parents and more often scolded than girls. In relation to them, the speech of adults contains mostly direct instructions: "Go away, bring it, give it, do it, stop it ...". And with girls, even one-year-olds, parents talk about sensory states: “I like ... Do you love? Who is this sad…”

Marina Kirina

sz.aif.ru

How often do you hear the "facts" that psychological age girls are 2 years older than the guy's age. And it seems like so what? But that's why, and that's why, it's because of this kind of misinformation that we are saddened to see how girls fall into the illusion of choosing a partner, succumbing to own ambitions: "The guy must be older!" and that's it.
In our schools, thank the gods, mixed education: boys and girls of the same age study together, absolutely on an equal footing. And what? Yes, we have heard about fairy tales about "excellent girls" and "losers" boys. If you take a closer look, there are a lot of excellent students among boys, there are girls who are poor students, and this is not at all a reason to call such boys “accelerators”. In general, there are gender differences in IQ (the very way of determining which is very, very doubtful: a very large spread of results for one person with different conditions), in general academic performance, in the "humanitarian / techie" ratio (which in itself is also doubtful, since it follows rather not from abilities, but from personal preferences: someone likes mathematics, someone likes foreign languages, the difference in results on these subjects will not keep you waiting). But these differences are so insignificant (less than 10%) that one can hardly speak of a genetic predisposition to the "intellectual superiority" of girls over boys of their own age.
Let's leave the intellect alone. After all, they often appeal to psychological maturity, and this is a more subtle issue. It is very, very difficult to make any calculations here using sociometric methods. Human psychology is very vague, manifesting itself in different ways from person to person. IN this case If we talk about the psychological demorphism of groups identified by gender, then we cannot ignore social factors.
So, the notorious "maturity" has a very simple explanation. The reason lies in the different social standards adopted for men and women. It's no secret that the traditional requirements for men are much higher than for women. A man should be better in everything: smarter, stronger, more successful, richer. When it comes to marriage, it is assumed, as it were, by default that the husband older than wife at least a few no. An 18 year old bride is the norm. An 18-year-old groom is a significant rarity. As a rule, both boys and girls, at the age of 18, do not have a higher education (or rather, they always do not have it at 18, with extremely rare exceptions that do not make sense to take into account), do not have a job that can feed them, financially dependent on their parents. A couple in which both are 18 years old usually has no prospects of becoming a couple in the near future. Even if this happens, it is often due to unforeseen circumstances and is accompanied by various conflicts, for the reason that, as a rule, this newly-minted couple continues to depend entirely and completely on their parents.
Another thing is if an 18-year-old girl marries a guy, for example, 23 years old. By this time, the guy has already managed to graduate from the university, get a more or less prestigious job that allows him to feed at least himself, roughly speaking, "get on his feet", and in scientific terms - become a person with t. sociology. At the same time, his young bride is not yet a person. She cannot support herself, but she knows how to cook, look after the house, wants to have children (at least in the future). But it is not a person (from the point of view of sociology), since it does not contain itself independently. Passing into marriage, the girl is transferred from the hands of her parents to the hands of her husband, whose duties include not only protecting her physically, but also providing financially, while the girl herself traditional society should not provide for themselves.
The ambitions that girls show are very depressing, stating that they "do not date guys less than 3 years older", motivating this by the fact that guys of her age, and even more so - younger, have not yet "grown up" to her. In fact, they just grew up! But they haven't outgrown either, so they can't yet cope with the position of a "real man", which includes being one step higher than a "real woman".
At school, rather smart young people do not enjoy success with their peers, who usually prefer guys older than themselves, and are very proud of it, it happens almost to the point of boasting on the topic "Who has a boyfriend older." At the same time, such individuals have the audacity to claim that their peers are "still children compared to them." It is a pity that girls do not realize that they themselves are children! According to their "observations", it is easier for them to find " mutual language" with a guy older than them in age and there is absolutely nothing to talk about with peers who are supposedly only interested in war games, computer games and other "boyish things." But, unfortunately, their "observations" have one interesting feature, more precisely - the error, which allows us to write this word in quotation marks. Girls communicate with their peers within the school class, academic group, that is, they do not actually choose their own objects for observation. At the same time, according to the total mass, they make average judgments about the "average guy of my age", which are "by default" hung on any guy of the same age. On the other hand, it is easier for them to communicate with the "older ones". And the point is not at all that the "older ones" know how to care, know how to treat a girl, know what the girl wants, and not even that they do not show shyness when they meet. Girls often attract the attention of the “older ones” themselves, and often get to know them themselves, completely ignoring their peers, perceiving them as people of a lower grade. So it turns out that the "older ones" are smarter, stronger, more mature. And the point is just in the selection: the “older ones” are chosen by themselves, and peers are pushed together by fate at school and university.

A little about physiological maturation. An 18-year-old girl is already a woman. Her physical development almost completed. She is able to fulfill her biological function: bear and give birth to a child. As for the 18-year-old guy, he will have to change significantly over the next few years - to “mature”. This does not mean at all that the guy is physically behind the girl in development for these few years. On the contrary, physical development female body ends in over early stage than the development of the male. male body accumulates more muscle mass, is generally stronger and more physically developed, and this, as you know, takes more time. It turns out that at 20, a guy looks older than at 18, and a girl at 20 is practically indistinguishable from an 18-year-old.

For some reason, in our society, it is normal for a girl not only to show weakness, but also to want protection and patronage, and sometimes even demand it. Abstracting from the judgments of morality, we may well notice that the same desire is inherent in guys, only they do not discuss it so actively and, of course, do not even dare to hope for its fulfillment. A 16-year-old guy falls in love not so much with 14-year-old "coevals" (with bitter irony ...), but with 16-18-year-old girls, or even older. And which of the guys of 16 years of age would be against having serious relationship with an adult 20-year-old girl with whom there is something to talk about, with whom it is interesting, and who is an order of magnitude more experienced in all aspects of life? Yes, but 20-year-old girls do not look at high school students, except perhaps only down, alas!
And let me tell you, there is often a lot to lose by considering age as a primary factor. No matter how much they say: "For me, age is not the main thing!" ... "How old are you". It should be noted that depending on the answer to this question the tone of all subsequent communication may depend. If a guy understates his age, he will fall in the eyes of a girl, she will look down on him and pay more attention to his inexperience in some matters than to his dignity and experience in others, in order to once again strengthen the stereotype we criticize (we have such a property - to convince ourselves of our own rightness, or rather, of the rightness of the one who imposed this "rightness" on us). But if a guy overestimates his age (especially if appearance allows), then it will be much easier for him to achieve the location of a girl. Some tell how they managed to drag an older girl into bed in this way. Note that we are talking about an overestimated or underestimated age, which changes attitude on the very first day of meeting, in the very first minutes. What can be said here about social position guy, about his maturity, adulthood? Is it really that important, like such a trifle as age?

It seems that girls are more prepared for sexual life. This is facilitated primarily by the offensive menstrual cycle and the need to explain this phenomenon. If a girl is not prepared, she may be frightened, which will undoubtedly affect her sexual socialization in the future.

The main role in such preparation historically belongs to the mother. Since the arrival of menstruation crowns the crisis of the girl's development, it is necessary to help her experience the physiological changes that have occurred to her less painfully. It must be understood that the child experiences discomfort, expressed in a change of mood, in depression, or, conversely, in hyperactivity.

There is a huge hormonal shift, which undoubtedly affects the psyche of the child. With the advent of menstruation, the girl switches to a qualitatively new social level, she forms a new type of sexual-role relations with her peers. She begins to feel like a "little woman." It is not for nothing that researchers notice a significant maturation of girls compared to boys at the border of primary school and adolescence.

The girl is already more mature at birth. She, as a rule, begins to walk earlier than a boy, and by the period of puberty, the difference in biological maturation reaches two years. Let's remember the initial, and high school. Tall, feminine, developed girls and slender, basically short boys. The difference is felt not only in the physical, but also in the behavioral aspects. Girls are already older, they are easier to socialize, especially since schools are replete with female teacher influence.

It seems to me that the important question is not who exactly matures earlier: girls or boys, but how we, adults, prepare children for the development of sex roles. In this regard, I would like to cite as an example, and perhaps the goal of sexual education, a certain code of sexual balance, compiled by the American pediatrician Allan Fromm. The text is abbreviated. (Alan Fromm. ABC for parents, Leningrad, 1991. S. 200-201):

1. Normal person enjoys sexual intimacy. This means that he does not experience any shame or fear, or disgust or hostility. He looks at sexual life like absolutely natural phenomenon, as a manifestation of healthy life, from which he receives satisfaction.

2. He is able to sexually express his love. This means that he is content not only with romantic performances and tender feelings but also uses his body to show love.

3. He understands his sexual function in life. Although there are some feminine traits in every man, and masculine features in every woman, a person who is well adapted to life is distinguished by his pronounced gender identity and does not change it.

4. He behaves differently with men and women. Doesn't treat men like women and vice versa. Sexual adaptation is an essential part of general adaptation, adaptation to the conditions of life, so we cannot count on sexual balance if we do not learn to love our neighbor and live in harmony with him.

5. He does not need special information about the biological structure of the genital organs, even if often, especially before reaching adulthood, he is not sufficiently aware in this sense. This means that the theoretical concept of sexuality or practical experience not so essential for our general sexual balance. Something else is much more important - what we imagine about it and how we relate to this side of life.

They are different from the very beginning and develop in different ways. Boys at birth are usually larger than girls, they have a larger head and more weight. Of course, there are individual differences, but now we are talking about average data. Boys start walking later by about 2–3 months, and start talking 4–6 months later.

Neuropsychologists, recording the biocurrents of the brain of newborn children, found that the brain of boys and girls works differently from the very beginning.

Girls' games are more often based on near vision: girls play with dolls, rags, beads, buttons in a limited space, a small corner is enough for them. Boys' games are more often based on distant vision: they run after each other, throw objects into the distance, using all the space around them. Boys generally require more space than girls for full mental development. If the horizontal plane is not enough for them, they master the vertical one: they climb on the cabinets, run along the backs of the sofas, hang on the architraves of the doors ... The mastered space is reflected in different ways in the children's drawings. Boys, drawing the neighborhood of their house, show more yards, squares, streets, houses than girls. The girls fill the albums with princesses and self-portraits, while the boys fill them with cars and military battles.

nature's design

The brain of a man is larger, more advanced in development, but less reliable and very vulnerable. With all the changes - both natural and social - men suffer more. But nature endowed them with search behavior: so that they could survive by finding another habitat, where it is warmer and more satisfying. Therefore, men, including boys, are prone to exploring new spaces, risky actions, they are quick-witted in difficult situations and are able to make unconventional decisions.

Who is stronger than

How do these features of the male “device” affect the education of boys? In preschool and primary school age, girls verbally “beat” boys. Their speech is better developed, but their thinking is more of the same type. Boys think outside the box and are interesting, but because they are silent, their inner world is often hidden from us.

Of course, this does not mean that not a single girl will put forward a new idea, but all the same, boys and men solve fundamentally new tasks better. But they do not attach importance to the thoroughness of the decision and the accuracy of the design. A boy can find a non-standard solution to a mathematical problem, but make a mistake in the calculations and get a deuce as a result. Girls, like all women, are better at performing typical, template tasks, but they carefully work out the details.

Girls have more fluent speech, they read faster and write more beautifully, but the side of speech that is associated with the search (selection of word associations, solving crossword puzzles) is better for boys. Boys have a more developed spatial representation, because the performance of spatial-visual tasks requires a search. Therefore, boys are better at solving geometric problems: they mentally rotate the figures and superimpose them one on top of the other. And girls, including female teachers, designate corners and sides with letters and then operate with letter symbols and templates-theorems.

* * *

If your son learns to read and write much more slowly than his older sister did, retells poorly and writes letters carelessly, do not be upset, this is a feature of the male mind. In addition, the childhood of boys lasts longer. By the age of 7, they are younger than girls of the same age by a whole year in their biological age.

Boys have their own way of growing up, but since they are more information-oriented than girls, you don’t have to worry about their intellectual development.

Important

When a woman teaches a boy, her own childhood experience is of little use; comparing herself in childhood with him is wrong and useless. Scolding the boy, state briefly and precisely what you are unhappy with. He cannot bear the emotional stress for long. His brain turns off the auditory canal and the child stops hearing you.