Boys and Girls

My 6 year old daughter climbed into the car after school the other day and announced with a sigh, "Another boy fell in love with me today." (It's so wearisome to have so many guys in love with her, apparently.)

Me: "How do you know that?"

LittleGiggles: "He told me. I think I'm going to tell G that another boy is in love with me." (G is her kindergarten crush.)

Me: "Um, you know, most boys don't like being told that another guy is in love with you. Besides, how do you know that G still likes you."

LG: "He told J (one of her girl friends) and J told me."

Me (thinking this sounds way too much like Jr. High for my tastes): "..."

Her 8 year old brother: "No one ever falls in love with me at recess."

Me (thinking it's probably because he spends recess pretending to shoot things): "..."

I took several human development classes in college and I was fascinated with the studies about very young children and gender differences. I remember being assigned to a group of three for a presentation: me, another girl, and a guy. We decided we were going to do a demonstration of the types of play discussed in the article and, so we would have equal groups, convinced our professor to be the other boy.

The other girl and I tried to build a house out of Legos (the toddler girls in the study tended to build structures that were enclosing and would bring things together). It was difficult to build the house because the "boys" kept stealing our Legos for their battle. When our professor started throwing the Legos at us, we were both laughing to hard to keep explaining things.

I don't know how many of you had professors throwing Legos at you, but it's an experience, let me tell you.

Even after these classes, I was still surprised to see the differences between my sons and my daughter from a very young age. Yes, there is a lot of variation within genders and a lot of cross over, but there are still some differences. And those differences should be evident in your characters.

For example, a girl would never say to her friend, "I think I might like this guy," and have her friend respond by saying, "Okay," before the conversation went on to a different topic (unless they were 6 years old). Most girls like to talk--a lot (rather like I'm doing here)--and would have quite a bit to say to their friends on this topic. I remember as a teenager talking the topic of boys we liked to death. Seriously. Analyzing it from every possible angle and then doing it again. Of course, in writing you wouldn't want to have a three hour conversation bogging down the story, but they would definitely have to talk about it.

So go look around you,see what you notice, and then try to reflect that in your writing.