Sorry but this is pretty pathetic. If you have KIDS, you, the parent, needs to be their advocate at all times while they are in school. Not depend on some "power" program to make your kid hopeful of have self esteem. Seriously, how about parents actually parent. What a shocking idea.

My son was and is a wiggler. Teachers pretty much know that boys at seven are equivalent to girls at 5. it isn't exactly a secret.

I have an 8 year old squirmy boy and this is less about boys versus girls than the increasing standards required of children and being able to manage "girls" - the quiet ones who sit and "boys" who'd rather run around than sit and listen. In second grade, my son has homework every night, is learning fractions, multiplication, and starting on pre-algebra. He's in a local public school.

It's just almost impossible for a teacher to give the wiggly boys the attention they need and get enough work done to meet their standards. So, they are ostracized. If you have a problem, send the boys to a different school. That's the beauty of living in America.

If you have a problem, send the boys to a different school. That's the beauty of living in America.

Unless you can afford to send them to a private school or are willing to relocate, there generally is no school choice. You're stuck with the one your children are assigned.

The Good Mangina Project is palaverous pap. Any site that publishes Amanda Marcotte's vitriolic spew is not one I would consider "good".

NikkiG said: "...this is less about boys versus girls than the increasing standards required of children..."

I agree with this wholeheartedly. The idea that a 7 year old of any gender should be able to sit still and quiet for 7 hours a day is ridiculous. These are children; they learn mostly through doing. Increasingly, schools are nixing Elementary PE and recess; lunchrooms are sentenced as Silent Time and everything is drill and test. Its an unrealistic expectation, and it punishes active children. (It also makes teachers and parents more prone to label kids as ADHD early on, when what's really happening is normal, just not desirable.).

Like there are no squirmy litle girls? they probably get mistreated the same way. And I'm not inclined to blame teachers as too lazy to deal with the kids competently because from the workload someone upthread mentioned, that's where the problem is. It's like a bunch of over-achieving parents are trying to get the schools to be the Tiger Mothers they don't have the stomach to be.

It's like a bunch of over-achieving parents are trying to get the schools to be the Tiger Mothers they don't have the stomach to be.

That's very well said.

Little girls have their own problems in school. ADD is under-treated in girls because it presents as spaciness rather than hyperactivity, so it's merely annoying rather than disruptive. Boys are more likely to get help.

Not only are kids not equipped to sit still for 7 hours a day, minus an hour or so for lunch, but neither are adults. I don't know anyone who can do 7 hours of mental work, learning new things, without regular breaks.

"Little girls have their own problems in school. ADD is under-treated in girls because it presents as spaciness rather than hyperactivity,"

This is absolutely true. we were taught to watch for it in girls and in the very first sememster I taught I had one girl who vegged at the back of the class. And about two weeks into the next semster I ran across a astrategy that would have worked wonder swith her. (It was first year French, and this stratgey had to do with gettng the kid to write verse. Huge vocabulary builder. And she wrote verse all the time. Goddammit. I found out too late.)

"so it's merely annoying rather than disruptive. Boys are more likely to get help."

In the form of clinical meth. Terrifc.

Hi Amy, and all.

Thanks for mentioning my piece here and linking back.

I liked what you had to say here, and am especially interested in the ways in which ADD is under diagnosed in girls because of the differences in presentation. Because I'm deep in boy-world with my boys, my two male writing partners, and my work at Good Men Project, I just don't know those sorts of things. Though my original piece did address the exceptions to both generalizations. I work in the classrooms of my boys quite often and find that there are wiggly girls, but once you said that about the "spaciness" it made perfect sense to me, and I could picture a particular girl in my mind... Very intriguing.

Aside from that, I don't think that recognizing the ways in which we are all different allotted base assumptions because of sex/race/gender/etc is the same as self-loathing PC-ness. We can't see what others are thinking or feeling until we can truly see ourselves. I don't think I'm perfect, I see my faults, and I also see what myself and my kids get that others don't, simply because of uncontrollable attributes.

And thank you for the stance that you don't have to agree with everything a publication puts out there to read it... I think you literally could not agree with everything we put out, we actively look for opposing positions on a lot of issues.

Also, anyone that says the word "mangina" which somehow happens to be both misandrist and misogynist at the same time loses some cred in my book.

I also want to address this:

If you have KIDS, you, the parent, needs to be their advocate at all times while they are in school. Not depend on some "power" program to make your kid hopeful of have self esteem. Seriously, how about parents actually parent. What a shocking idea.

Nowhere did I say that schools should adopt a "kid power" movement, but I don't think schools ever adopted a "girl power" movement. However, study after study after study is showing a disenfranchisement of boys in our educational systems.

And while there is a utopian fantasy that all parents would have the time/resources/support to go to their school and make changes, or to make up for gaps in education and opportunities in the home that are not afforded to boys in the school system, it's awfully presumptuous to think that all families are able to do this. Most parents have no clue that this discrepancy exists based upon gender, and they are doing their best to support their families.

In those cases, the rest of us need to step in and say, "this isn't right," and demand change on behalf of all children. So my kids (and probably yours) get the special attention and focus they need at home. That's great for us and our kids, but not all parents can do that, and this is, after all, a public school system. We, as a society, are responsible for making that system fair.

But I should stop here... I could go seriously crazy talking about the discrepancies in public education based upon socioeconomics here...

Anyway, thanks again, Amy.