What are the differences in parenting boys and girls?

Having parented only girls, I don’t really know…but am interested in finding out : )

Me too. My oldest is a girl and the younger two are boys. I know where the differences are in my house, but I’m wondering what others have experienced.

Boys are a pain in the ass.

Girls, on the other hand, are a pain in the ass.

@Pup, girls are a bigger pain in the ass.

The only difference..

One has a penis and the other a vagina!

There are differences between boys and girls—but as far as being a parent to them, I think it all requires patience, respect of who they are, a sense of humor—so all in all, not that much difference.

Girls:
Need more help with self-esteem
Have crazy mood swings
Tend to be pleasers, then rebels

Boys:
Try to blow things up in the microwave. That’s it.

@ gimme: I’ve done both, they’re both assy in their own special way. :)

I have a girl close to 15 and a boy that is 5.

The girl, great…until the onset of PMS. Very scary. The boy, well…we’re in the poo jokes phase and wow…....they just never end! I don’t remember poo jokes from my daughter – but I’m sure they were there, somewhere.

I’m not far enough along with the boy to really comment, I think. I’m just hoping that eventually, we’ll move from poo to at least farts. I hate discussing poo!

The simplest way it’s ever been explained to me is that boys are built, girls are cultivated. So I guess girls require more finesse and fewer lashings.

Depends on the birth order I think. My son is my baby and tends to be (at 24) more needy than my daughters. he also caused me more headaches growing up. He also was (is) surprisingly heart melting. (Not only to mom, but to all the girls as well.)
Every since he was little a “You’re pretty mommy,” meant more to me than coming from any other man. I have to work really hard not to be charmed into babying him and letting him fall sometimes. It’s hard for this mommy to accept that he’s a grown up sometimes.

Someone told me a while back that boys start hard and get a bit easier and girls start easy and get a bit harder. I have certainly seen that play out in my sister’s case. I must point out however, that my niece is a wonderful girl, she does well in school, gets good grades, doesn’t get in trouble and is a very happy well-adjusted young lady. She just drives her mom nuts.

Girls can get pregnant.

Guys can get girls pregnant.

Pretty much the same thing in my mind…

My daughter was pretty easy until about 13, then she started to get rebellious, started being a smart ass talking back and dressing like and listening to punk rock.

Now I don’t have a boy, but I do remember how I was…easy until about 13, then I started to get rebellious, started being a smart ass talking back and dressing like and listening to punk rock.

Boys never (ever) outgrow their inner nine-year-old.

girls tend to be more patient, on average. They can sit still longer.

Boys seem to need to be more active. Schools don’t like boys running around, getting into everything, and making a lot of noise.

Boys are experimentalists. Girls understand people.

Boys tend to have fewer friends, and making friends is harder. Girls seem to naturally have a ton of friends.

Boys resist more. Boys have smarter mouths.

Girls are more compliant, and polite.

Of course, my sample is terribly small. I only have one of each.

Hmm. By your inventory, @Daloon, I have one son who is a patient, understanding, resistant smart-mouth with few friends and one who is active, experimental, compliant, polite, and loaded with friends. Both are (by my standards) thoroughly masculine.

@Jeruba, on average. On average. Anyway, these are generalizations made in the spirit of the question. Everyone knows that individuals are different.

I mean, if individual experience counted equally to a broad range of experience, we could disprove every proposition every made.

In any case, that’s my experience, and you can’t take it away from me. At least, not without doing a hell of a lot of research, and knowing some very shady characters on the Newark waterfront.

Besides which. I didn’t even understand what you meant when you said “by your inventory.” Didn’t stop me from shooting my mouth off, though. Well…. fingers.

@Daloon, “by your inventory” I just meant by going down your list. I thought it curious that I had such a split, and yet I don’t consider either son more or less typical than the other. On the same list, I am about 6 points girl and 4 points boy. I don’t challenge your experience—of course not. Personally, I don’t find any of these traits especially masculine or feminine. I find them all in both sexes.

Of course we find the traits in both sexes. The issue is whether there are traits we find more often in one sex compared to the other. Generalizations, as always, do not apply to individual cases.

I’m sorry that I’m getting testy. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just that I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know, so I’m making some assumptions that you know some things and that may not be true.