Viewed as too difficult to teach and too disruptive to control, the less help the male 'problem' pupil gets – especially in language skills and reading – the worse he does. Part 4 of a six-part series.
For most her eldest son's school career, Nicole Stamos has made so many trips to the principal's office she felt like she was getting a detention herself.
And although his math and science marks weren't bad, he was steadily falling behind his grade level in reading; his parents worried about his future and blamed themselves. They were hard on him, too. “You are so busy getting upset with your child not learning, and all of a sudden he's in Grade 5.”
This is the all too-common tale of the boisterous, restless boy “red-flagged” as the problem pupil that nobody wants in their class. Viewed as too difficult to teach and too disruptive to control, the less help this boy gets – especially in language skills and reading – the worse he does.
For his parents, it was one complaint after another from the school: Noah was ripping up erasers at his desk, making a mess. Noah interrupted the teacher. Noah wouldn't sit still. Noah had to stay in at recess. One teacher put his desk in the front so he was facing the rest of the class.
Another teacher parked him in the back. While the rest of the pupils worked as a group, Noah worked alone. He would come home and tell his mom that the teachers had yelled at him – again. “He would just suck it up, and go,” she says. “But when he was sick he was so happy to stay home.”
Ms. Stamos read books and made suggestions. Maybe Noah could walk around when he gets restless, or the teacher could ease up on the shredded erasers. But the school was reluctant to accommodate one child. At home, he'd get the same lectures about listening and behaving in class.
Nature is certainly a player in these stories – boys tend to be more active than girls, and mature later – but studies have found relatively small overall brain differences between girls and boys. The bigger player may be environment – the nurture side of a boy's life, where parents and teachers have a major influence to either help him reach his full potential, or box him into a role that holds him back.
To boost math scores among girls, the youngster had to get the message that their hardwired brains weren't holding them back. “Now we are doing the opposite to boys: Boys are immature, boys can't sit still, boys can't read and write. That can't help them,” says Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist studying gender difference. So in large part, the solution for boys may be changing that message.
Whether parents want to admit it or not, they treat sons differently than daughters, right from birth. Parents, especially fathers, are more physical with baby boys. Early on, boys get the message that certain “girly” toys aren't the best choice. Boy babies tend to be fussier than girls, but studies have shown that parents respond more gently to their infant daughters, while shushing their infant sons – a trend that continues into preschool and beyond. Barry MacDonald, a parenting expert in British Columbia and the author of the coming book Boys on Target, watched it happen at the door to a kindergarten class last week – an embarrassed father pushing his sobbing son into the room. “If it's a girl, parents bend down and support her, sometimes even taking her home.” Boys, he says, are subtly told to “buck up.” A world of Superman and sports ambition outlines the male image early: “What is everyone going to think?” the father asked, when Mr. MacDonald counselled him to accept how his son was feeling.
