The main behavioral and cognitive differences between boys and girls (middle childhood)

There have always been many stereotypes about the behavior and the way of thinking of boys and girls, now I want to go deeper than general knowledge and investigate about these facts.

There has always been the idea that boys generate more problems that girls, this has been proved in the recent year through studies, those studies state that boy are more likely to create problems, the studies were conducted on a large amount of children so the reports of their behavior was given by the caregivers. These results reflect the average of a large amount of children.

At the age of two and three the boys begin to show a higher rate of behavioral problems, they show the "externalizing behaviors" which in most of the cases are destructiveness and aggressiveness. The girls on the other hand tend to internalize whatever they are feeling, this is called "internalizing problems" an examples is anxiety, however the girls appear to be better at following the rules or care-giving behavior.

There are different situations that can lead to the development of behavior problems, some of them are; having no siblings, having three or four siblings, being in not so good social groups, and also living in metropolitan areas can increase the risk for behavior problems for both boys and girls.

At the age of four and five the boys, presented problems of hyperactivity, emotional problems and peer problems, moreover some of them presented extreme symptoms that indicated clinical disorders. Girls of these ages show some emotional problems, however they got higher scores, than boys, in measures of "competence", such as being kind or helpful.

As my personal conclusion, I believe that the idea that boys tend to generate more problems that girls is correct, however, there are some situations that can lead to both boys and girls develop behavior problems, so we need to pay special attention to the children to identify if these situations are happening to them, because by doing this we could take measures against the problems.


Resources: Theconversation.com