Are boys and girls different?

As a mom of four boys and one girl, I know I don’t exactly have a balanced sample to work with. But in my limited experience, yes – or at the very least, parenting boys and girls is very different indeed. We could argue about whether that’s due to biological or societal/cultural reasons, but the end result is the same.

Jennifer Fink of BuildingBoys.net is also a mom of four and an award-winning journalist who is devoted to making schools, homes, and the world in general a friendlier place for boys to live, learn, play and grow. In our discussion we talked about everything from how current education trends can fail boys, to why and how boys and girls develop at different rates physically, mentally and emotionally, to how parents can create more boy-friendly homes.

Click here to open the show in a new window. You can also find the show on iTunes, or you can scroll to the bottom to play the episode right here in your browser.

Some things Jennifer and I discussed in this episode:

* Why school can be tough on boys.

* How important is early reading, anyway?

* The article about dads supervising sleepovers that made my jaw drop

* The story behind this picture:

Learn more about Building Boys and Jennifer Fink:

* Building Boys website

* Building Boys Facebook Page

* Follow Jennifer on Twitter

As always, thanks for listening! If you liked this show, I’d LOVE for you to subscribe or leave a rating or review on iTunes. Here’s how to do it: 

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I’d love to hear what you thought about our conversation. In your opinion, do we live in a boy-friendly world? What are you doing to help your boys succeed?