36（英）Should you parent boys and girls differently

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你好！Himalaya’s subscribers,this is Dr. Jane Nelsen, and I feel very honored to be able to share more positivediscipline tools with you, with the hope that learning these skills will helpyou enjoy parenting while helping your children learn to feel a strong sense oflove and responsibility. Today I will be addressing the question, should you parent boys and girls differently. To begin this discussion, I want to share abasic principle top by Alfred Adler that everyone should be treated withdignity and respect.

Everyone includes children and children include both boys and girls. Inboth the United States and China, we have histories of treating boys and girlsdifferently. In the United States, girls were once taught that it was their jobto stay home, and cook, and clean, and take care of the children. I am nowalmost 82 years old. And I remember a time when many girls did not even go touniversity except to meet a man to take care of them. One of my Chinese friendsshared with me that not too long ago, many people in China followed thephilosophy that boy should be “qiong yang”. And girls should be “fu yang”,meaning that boys should be treated more harshly to become stronger to takecare of girls. And that girls should be treated like a princess to attract aboy to take care of her.

This means that the boy can't be spoiled because he is a man who has astrong responsibility for his future family. She shared that another old sayingin China that is consistent with the idea that boys should be “qiong yang” andgirls “fu yang” is that the girl is China Merchants Bank and the boys is ChinaConstruction Bank. This means the girl can attract investment. In other words,attract boy to pay for her. And the boy must work hard to build. Then came theone child policy which limited each family to have only one child. Onlychildren, both boys and girls were precious.

So many urban families who gave birth to a girl still believed that thegirl could be a princess. However, the family that raised the boy did not wantto raise him poorly, even though the girl's family treated their daughter likea princess. Another Chinese friend shared with me that she was raised like aprincess. And it was not helpful when she got married because her husbanddidn't want to treat her like a princess. And then she didn't feel loved. Also,she said she had trouble at work because her coworkers did not want to treather like she was a princess. This invited her to believe she wasn't goodenough.

Because she was raised to believe she was special and didn't know what todo when others didn't treat her the way her parents did. Sometimes boys weremore likely to be spoiled because of a preference for sons. So in that era,this belief help the families who had a girl feel happier and to love the girlmore. This even helped the girls to love themselves more and to look down uponboys. Now today in school and in business, girls and women are beginning to outdo boys and men.

This is not helpful for adult relationships. When boys grow up, they may bedisappointed if their wives don't spoil them and instead have wives who aretrying to prove they are even better.

Treating boys and girls equally and teaching them to treat each other withdignity and respect is very important for them to have good marriagerelationships and good working relationships in the future. Now that China hasended the one child policy, more and more families have several children andthey do not set different parenting conditions for boys and girls. However,It's really easy for parents and teachers to say, you're a boy, you should benice to a girl when there's conflict between boys and girls, they are morelikely to punish the boys.

But this is not because of the belief of “qiong yang” and “fu yang”, butbecause they think boys are more naughty than girls. There are many exceptions,but boys usually are more rambunctious than girls. Doctor Michael Gurian sharesinformation about gender brain differences. In his book, boys and girls learndifferently. He emphasizes that boys need more space for learning and movingthan girls do. When boys are allowed to move without disrupting during learningcircle time, they are more likely to focus and retained the information thanwhen they are asked to sit still.

This is due to a brain that structured for movement and not as structuredas girl's brains for verbal expression. Girls have verbal centers on both sidesof the brain. Boys have verbal centers only on the left side. On their rightside, they have a larger area designated for visual, spatial, mechanicalthinking. When parents and teachers don't understand these differences, theymay be punishing boys for doing things that are natural part of their brainwiring. So while some boys are successful in sitting still and behaving, manyare not.

And parents and teachers think they are being bad when they're being a boy,the way they are wired to be. For this reason, they may be treated moreharshly. Instead, parents can use positive discipline tools, such as askingwhat and how questions about his behavior. This invites children to feelrespected and to stop and think about their behavior and what they can doinstead. Instead of punishing，all children can be invited to find solutions that arerespectful to everyone.

When boys are treated more harshly because something they are more naughty,could be one of the reasons boys are conditioned to stop their feelings. Theymay be told, toughen up! Big boys don't cry. And may be taught to believe thatexpressing emotions is a sign of weakness. Yet most women I made wish theirhusbands were more vulnerable and capable of expressing emotions and talkingabout how they feel. Positive discipline believes in treating all children withdignity and mutual respect.

All children want to feel belonging and significant. They all needunconditional love, and they all need to develop responsibility. They need tolearn skills to feel capable and to contribute. Family meetings help them learnto notice and appreciate other members in the family through compliments, andto focus on solutions to challenges. They both need to learn self regulationthrough creating and voluntarily using positive time out. All of the positivediscipline tools help both boys and girls to become capable and self reliantchildren and adults. Many cultures are moving in the direction of treating boysand girls equally with dignity and respect.

We still have a long way to go, but it is an important goal of positivediscipline. So children should be treated the same both boys and girls whilealso respecting their differences and to be encouraging to help them learn theskills they need for life. Throughout this series, we have taught you manypositive discipline tools for treating children with dignity and respect andfor helping them to learn the skills that they need to be happy contributingmembers of society. So love them all and treat them all the same. Thank you.