Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Gender and Stereotypes I appear to be quite fascinated by gender differences and stereotypes. Why? Well, it is a topic I find myself repeating. The first time I blogged about gender was way back in 2009 when I was trying to figure out how come boys become boys. Then I pointed out the differences between my husband's reading shelf and mine in 2012 and most recently when I talked about the boys' and girls' soccer team names in 2013. More Gender Stereotypes Well, I recently visited my son's class to help with a writing assignment - the assignment was to write a "how-to" report: procedural writing. It is always enjoyable to see how they think, and the things that are top-of-mind for them. Here are some of the topics the kids chose - HTML Tables Topic Gender How to braid your hair Girl How to do the highschool cheer Girl How to do the crow (a yoga) pose Girl How to lace your ice-skates Girl How to tie your laces Girl, but f...

Rainbows Superstars Pixies Hello Kitties Shooting Stars Unicorns Lady Dragon Dolphins Orange Crushers Lady Bugs Red Hot Chili Peppers Water Lilies Super Spys Fireballs Storm Troopers Ninjas Wildcats Sidewinders Firebirds Speedy Sharks Secret Agents Speeders These are the names of the soccer teams in the boys U-6 and girls U-6 league that my son played in over spring. The colour scheme is meant to confuse, but from the names I bet you guessed that the first list is the girls teams and the second, the boys.

My husband's book shelf - all non-fiction, and I didn't even include the economic treatises he favours.  And then there's my bookshelf

I came across some short articles on the differences between boys and girls and raising them, that I thought might be interesting. In the books I had read about raising boys, they mention some of the points raised in the links below - different expectations for boys/girls, different language is used with both, the difference in physical and emotional maturity. Although these online articles are not very detailed, it certainly gives you a flavour for some of the current thinking on this. For me, it is enlightening to learn more about how what I do, what I say and how their experiences affect how they behave and interact with the world around them. From TVs to Toys:What shapes boys into boys and girls into girls Differences in raising boys and girls As a further example to the different messages that boys get to girls and how in turn it affects their behaviour (circular reinforcement), check out this lemonade experiment. Difference between boys and girls When Lucas was born,...