Encouraging Strength and Sensitivity in our Boys and Girls by Dr. Sylvia Rimm

ENCOURAGING STRENGTH AND SENSITIVITY
IN OUR BOYS AND GIRLS

The gender stereotypes that encourage strength without sensitivity in our males and sensitivity without strength in our females are only gradually disappearing, and we as parents and educators still have much to do. Some suggestions follow for both parents and teachers to help raise and teach strong and sensitive children of both genders.

PRAISE

Parents’ praise statements set expectations for their children. Sensitivity and kindness still count for both girls and boys and should be praised for boys as well as girls. Girls’ typical impossibly high self-expectations are internalized translations of extreme and unrealistic praise they have often received from their parents and teachers based on beauty or perfect accomplishment. Their self-esteem suffers if they don’t accomplish what they had expected of themselves. Early praise that emphasizes girls’ initiative, good thinking, creativity, perseverance, courage, strength, and independence rather than appearance, beauty, and perfection sets more appropriate and realistic expectations for them. “Pretty as a Picture” is no longer effective praise for our daughters. We want our girls especially to be active doers, participants, organizers, and thinkers.

COMPETITION

The research reported in our new book, See Jane Win, The Rimm Report on How 1000 Girls Became Successful Women, by Rimm, Rimm, and Kaufman (New York: Crown Publishing, 1999), made clear that winning in competition was motivating and exhilarating to the successful women in the study. All children should experience the excitement of winning in competition, and all children should Bowler experience the opportunity of both taking the risk of losing and actual losing so they can learn resilience. A variety of competitive opportunities including sports, the arts, and academic competition can provide multiple opportunities for children to experience success and failure.

However, too much competition can cause children to feel pressured and withdraw. There also needs to be opportunity for children to experience self-competition and goal-setting. The concept of “personal best” as used in track events can be applied to learning mathematics facts, improving spelling performance, increasing reading speed, and improving social studies grades.

Teamwork, whether it be in classroom cooperative learning, creative problem solving extracurricular activities, or the sports field, is critical for teaching children how to cooperate as good sports. Team leadership needs to be distributed to girls as well as boys and to average students as well as to scholars.

SINGLE-GENDER SCHOOLS

A higher percentage of women attended all-girl high schools in our study of successful women than those in the total population.

Students Talking Parents should not have to send their children to private schools in order to provide single-gender education. Public schools should be permitted to experiment with single-gender classes/schools to provide appropriate education for both girls and boys. Children cannot develop self-esteem without achievement, and if single-gender classes are helpful to some children’s achievement, that should be enough reason to permit families to make that choice. Of course, many children thrive in coeducational classes.

A much higher percentage of successful women, 13 percent, attended women’s colleges compared to the proportion of the total population’s enrollment at women’s colleges. The women in both the “power broker” and traditional professions attended women’s colleges while most of the scientists, musicians, artists, and media women attended coeducational institutions. Perhaps the women’s college were most effective in giving women opportunities to develop leadership skills.

TECHNOLOGY

Boys who have handwriting problems that I describe as “pencil anxiety” and who hate to write enjoy using “alpha-smarts” or personal word processors in the classroom. By second grade, stories, compositions, and even spelling tests can be completed on computers Boy at Computer by children who struggle with handwriting skills. Those children will continue to need to learn handwriting skills, but their awkwardness withthese skills should not steal their intellectual self-confidence from them. Girls only rarely have handwriting problems, but they should be encouragedto use computers for other reasons. It’s important that they feel technologically competent to ready themselves for a world in which their careers will almost always include computer technology.

MATHEMATICS

Math is not a male subject. Teach your daughters mathematical thinking. To the extent that the future can be projected, the assumption is that the best paying jobs will involve math and science skills. Technical careers as well as the world of business expect mathematics competence. If women are to arrive at gender equity in income, more women will need to move into these higher paying fields. The only approach to giving your daughters the most possible choices is to encourage their love of and comfort with mathematics and science from early on. If parents and teachers can expect girls to be good at math, more of them are likely to select careers that will be open to them.

As early as the preschool years, it’s important to encourage little girls to like math and science. It is only if they can feel smart at these subjects and can observe adult women in science that doors will be open to developing these strengths. From early childhood on it’s important to talk science, read science books to girls, buy science-related toys and games, and even create scientist dolls. It’s also valuable to count and measure and describe a world full of solvable number problems. There are number toys, sports scores to count, recipes to measure, catalog prices to add up, money games, and board and card games that involve counting and comparing numbers.

Science Experiment As early as the preschool years, it’s important to encourage little girls to like math and science. It is only if they can feel smart at these subjects and can observe adult women in science that doors will be open to developing these strengths. From early childhood on it’s important to talk science, read science books to girls, buy science-related toys and games, and even create scientist dolls. It’s also valuable to count and measure and describe a world full of solvable number problems. There are number toys, sports scores to count, recipes to measure, catalog prices to add up, money games, and board and card games that involve counting and comparing numbers.

Teachers can foster math and science interest in girls by encouraging classroom competitions and selecting girls to be captains of math teams as frequently as boys. When they create cooperative science groups, they need to be certain to name as many girl team leaders as boys. Girls, as well as boys, can be encouraged to enter projects into science fairs. Women scientists can be invited to visit classrooms to talk about their research.

All women certainly do not have to be involved in math and science to achieve success. Indeed, if they all did, those fields would likely be overcrowded. It would be important that your daughters not feel dumb because their strengths are in other areas. There are many women in careers where verbal and social competence and understanding are primary. However, all these careers are more competitive and difficult to enter. Furthermore, the women in the verbal professions tend to earn less. It is important that women choose careers in which they can love their work and are good at it. Math is not for every women, or man, but your earliest expectations can provide your daughters with more options.

SOCIAL LIFE

Middle school is the first level of school at which some girls become distracted by boys, and some even think that being an “airhead” is somehow a new definition of being a girl. Here’s an interesting case example:

Chris, a sixth grader, had suddenly begun doing careless work. She seemed to be losing interest in school, although she had always been an excellent student. Chris explained that in her class, only the boys were smart and interested. The girls didn’t like to read, and they talked about clothes and boys all the time. Chris said she really preferred talking to the boys about schoolwork and books, but if she wanted to get along with the girls, she had to change her good schoolwork habit.

Children Walking Although some interest in boys is healthy and normal during the preadolescent and teen years, interest in the opposite gender should not distract your daughter from the learning process. This is the time for teachers and parents to help girls to develop interests and skills that keep them appropriately busy. In our research, winning a speech or music contest was enough to turn some girls away from their constant pursuit of boys. Because fewer boys are physically mature at this time, fewer are interested in girls. That makes the competition for the available boys fierce and nonsensical. Diverting the competitiveness, discouraging the teen magazines that dwell on makeup, fashion, and boys makes sense, and if parents and teachers take stands on these, our girls will not be tempted toward boy craziness quite so soon. Try to help preadolescent girls and boys see each other as friends and teammates instead of relationships.

Let’s change “airheads” to become smart and hardworking kids of both genders. Popularity needs to be devalued and independence given new value.

CLOTHING

Elaborate clothes should be saved for weddings and other high social events. Dress children, especially girls, in sturdy clothes that permit them to be adventurous and rough and tumble. Help them delineate when neatness is appropriate and when it will get in the way of healthy play. School clothes also need to be sturdy. Frilly dresses that attract high praise from teachers don’t belong in an active girl’s school day, although they may be fine for dining at a restaurant. By middle school and high school, you will need to be sure your daughters are not dressing in provocative ways. Uniforms are unnecessary if parents guide clothing choices and permit children to understand that peer pressured clothing is only all right when it’s sensible clothing.

FAMILY FUN

Backpackers

Preserve some time for family work and play. There is bonding with your children that needs to be established early and simply shouldn’t disappear during the teen years. Teens can enjoy friends, but friends don’t have to be an exclusive part of their life. They will remember forever their family adventures. Bonding trips for a parent and one child and volunteer family opportunities to build homes, feed the poor, hike or bike for your favorite charitywill remind them forever of community responsibility. For boys and girls alike, sensitivity to the needs of others can be developed.

TEAMWORK

Team up for work and fun together, but not against each other. Children brought up with anger against their other parent learn that feelings of love and intimacy require enemies. Don’t make your spouse, parent, or siblings the enemy; surely you’ll find your child on a team against you some day. Model team leadership by teaching kids positive goal-setting instead of anger. This is especially difficult in single-parent families or after divorce. It’s worth the effort for your children. Class - Outside Some day they’ll develop better relationships as adults.

Team with your children’s teachers. Don’t blame them when your children are being irresponsible. You and your children have the responsibility with teachers for making learning exciting, interesting, and challenging. Kids who respect teachers learn more. Kids who respect teachers come from families where parents respect teachers.

MODEL OPTIMISM

The overload of two-career families can cause men and women alike to be rigid home administrators. Managing schedules and child care can eliminate spontaneity and optimism. You may feel as if you’re precariously juggling instead of balancing your life. At least every six months, stop and prioritize your activities. Think about who is doing too much and what you may have to eliminate. Busy, active lives can be fun and good training for managing complexity, but too busy lives cause families to wish for the old days where men were men and women were wives. In a world of equal partnerships, occasional meetings to equalize your life permit your children to see strong and sensitive adults of each gender in their lives. Although modeling strength and sensitivity may be hard sometimes, it is most important of all.



Home Sylvia's Bio Family Achievement Clinic Speaking Schedule Testimonials Letters from Educators Articles for Parents and Teachers Ask A Family or Teaching Question Books, DVD's, Misc. Products Dr. Rimm's Newsletters See Jane Win How Jane Won Sylvia's Favorite Links Underachievement/Creativity Measures: Underachievement Identification Instruments Creativity Identification Instruments Underachievement Quiz Parenting for Achievement Course For More Information, Contact: Educational Assessment Service, Inc. W6050 Apple Road Watertown, WI 53098 Phone: 1.800.795.7466 Fax: 1.920.261.6622 e-mail: srimm@sylviarimm.com	ENCOURAGING STRENGTH AND SENSITIVITY IN OUR BOYS AND GIRLS The gender stereotypes that encourage strength without sensitivity in our males and sensitivity without strength in our females are only gradually disappearing, and we as parents and educators still have much to do. Some suggestions follow for both parents and teachers to help raise and teach strong and sensitive children of both genders. PRAISE Parents’ praise statements set expectations for their children. Sensitivity and kindness still count for both girls and boys and should be praised for boys as well as girls. Girls’ typical impossibly high self-expectations are internalized translations of extreme and unrealistic praise they have often received from their parents and teachers based on beauty or perfect accomplishment. Their self-esteem suffers if they don’t accomplish what they had expected of themselves. Early praise that emphasizes girls’ initiative, good thinking, creativity, perseverance, courage, strength, and independence rather than appearance, beauty, and perfection sets more appropriate and realistic expectations for them. “Pretty as a Picture” is no longer effective praise for our daughters. We want our girls especially to be active doers, participants, organizers, and thinkers. COMPETITION The research reported in our new book, See Jane Win, The Rimm Report on How 1000 Girls Became Successful Women, by Rimm, Rimm, and Kaufman (New York: Crown Publishing, 1999), made clear that winning in competition was motivating and exhilarating to the successful women in the study. All children should experience the excitement of winning in competition, and all children should experience the opportunity of both taking the risk of losing and actual losing so they can learn resilience. A variety of competitive opportunities including sports, the arts, and academic competition can provide multiple opportunities for children to experience success and failure. However, too much competition can cause children to feel pressured and withdraw. There also needs to be opportunity for children to experience self-competition and goal-setting. The concept of “personal best” as used in track events can be applied to learning mathematics facts, improving spelling performance, increasing reading speed, and improving social studies grades. Teamwork, whether it be in classroom cooperative learning, creative problem solving extracurricular activities, or the sports field, is critical for teaching children how to cooperate as good sports. Team leadership needs to be distributed to girls as well as boys and to average students as well as to scholars. SINGLE-GENDER SCHOOLS A higher percentage of women attended all-girl high schools in our study of successful women than those in the total population. Parents should not have to send their children to private schools in order to provide single-gender education. Public schools should be permitted to experiment with single-gender classes/schools to provide appropriate education for both girls and boys. Children cannot develop self-esteem without achievement, and if single-gender classes are helpful to some children’s achievement, that should be enough reason to permit families to make that choice. Of course, many children thrive in coeducational classes. A much higher percentage of successful women, 13 percent, attended women’s colleges compared to the proportion of the total population’s enrollment at women’s colleges. The women in both the “power broker” and traditional professions attended women’s colleges while most of the scientists, musicians, artists, and media women attended coeducational institutions. Perhaps the women’s college were most effective in giving women opportunities to develop leadership skills. TECHNOLOGY Boys who have handwriting problems that I describe as “pencil anxiety” and who hate to write enjoy using “alpha-smarts” or personal word processors in the classroom. By second grade, stories, compositions, and even spelling tests can be completed on computers by children who struggle with handwriting skills. Those children will continue to need to learn handwriting skills, but their awkwardness withthese skills should not steal their intellectual self-confidence from them. Girls only rarely have handwriting problems, but they should be encouragedto use computers for other reasons. It’s important that they feel technologically competent to ready themselves for a world in which their careers will almost always include computer technology. MATHEMATICS Math is not a male subject. Teach your daughters mathematical thinking. To the extent that the future can be projected, the assumption is that the best paying jobs will involve math and science skills. Technical careers as well as the world of business expect mathematics competence. If women are to arrive at gender equity in income, more women will need to move into these higher paying fields. The only approach to giving your daughters the most possible choices is to encourage their love of and comfort with mathematics and science from early on. If parents and teachers can expect girls to be good at math, more of them are likely to select careers that will be open to them. As early as the preschool years, it’s important to encourage little girls to like math and science. It is only if they can feel smart at these subjects and can observe adult women in science that doors will be open to developing these strengths. From early childhood on it’s important to talk science, read science books to girls, buy science-related toys and games, and even create scientist dolls. It’s also valuable to count and measure and describe a world full of solvable number problems. There are number toys, sports scores to count, recipes to measure, catalog prices to add up, money games, and board and card games that involve counting and comparing numbers. As early as the preschool years, it’s important to encourage little girls to like math and science. It is only if they can feel smart at these subjects and can observe adult women in science that doors will be open to developing these strengths. From early childhood on it’s important to talk science, read science books to girls, buy science-related toys and games, and even create scientist dolls. It’s also valuable to count and measure and describe a world full of solvable number problems. There are number toys, sports scores to count, recipes to measure, catalog prices to add up, money games, and board and card games that involve counting and comparing numbers. Teachers can foster math and science interest in girls by encouraging classroom competitions and selecting girls to be captains of math teams as frequently as boys. When they create cooperative science groups, they need to be certain to name as many girl team leaders as boys. Girls, as well as boys, can be encouraged to enter projects into science fairs. Women scientists can be invited to visit classrooms to talk about their research. All women certainly do not have to be involved in math and science to achieve success. Indeed, if they all did, those fields would likely be overcrowded. It would be important that your daughters not feel dumb because their strengths are in other areas. There are many women in careers where verbal and social competence and understanding are primary. However, all these careers are more competitive and difficult to enter. Furthermore, the women in the verbal professions tend to earn less. It is important that women choose careers in which they can love their work and are good at it. Math is not for every women, or man, but your earliest expectations can provide your daughters with more options. SOCIAL LIFE Middle school is the first level of school at which some girls become distracted by boys, and some even think that being an “airhead” is somehow a new definition of being a girl. Here’s an interesting case example: Chris, a sixth grader, had suddenly begun doing careless work. She seemed to be losing interest in school, although she had always been an excellent student. Chris explained that in her class, only the boys were smart and interested. The girls didn’t like to read, and they talked about clothes and boys all the time. Chris said she really preferred talking to the boys about schoolwork and books, but if she wanted to get along with the girls, she had to change her good schoolwork habit. Although some interest in boys is healthy and normal during the preadolescent and teen years, interest in the opposite gender should not distract your daughter from the learning process. This is the time for teachers and parents to help girls to develop interests and skills that keep them appropriately busy. In our research, winning a speech or music contest was enough to turn some girls away from their constant pursuit of boys. Because fewer boys are physically mature at this time, fewer are interested in girls. That makes the competition for the available boys fierce and nonsensical. Diverting the competitiveness, discouraging the teen magazines that dwell on makeup, fashion, and boys makes sense, and if parents and teachers take stands on these, our girls will not be tempted toward boy craziness quite so soon. Try to help preadolescent girls and boys see each other as friends and teammates instead of relationships. Let’s change “airheads” to become smart and hardworking kids of both genders. Popularity needs to be devalued and independence given new value. CLOTHING Elaborate clothes should be saved for weddings and other high social events. Dress children, especially girls, in sturdy clothes that permit them to be adventurous and rough and tumble. Help them delineate when neatness is appropriate and when it will get in the way of healthy play. School clothes also need to be sturdy. Frilly dresses that attract high praise from teachers don’t belong in an active girl’s school day, although they may be fine for dining at a restaurant. By middle school and high school, you will need to be sure your daughters are not dressing in provocative ways. Uniforms are unnecessary if parents guide clothing choices and permit children to understand that peer pressured clothing is only all right when it’s sensible clothing. FAMILY FUN Preserve some time for family work and play. There is bonding with your children that needs to be established early and simply shouldn’t disappear during the teen years. Teens can enjoy friends, but friends don’t have to be an exclusive part of their life. They will remember forever their family adventures. Bonding trips for a parent and one child and volunteer family opportunities to build homes, feed the poor, hike or bike for your favorite charitywill remind them forever of community responsibility. For boys and girls alike, sensitivity to the needs of others can be developed. TEAMWORK Team up for work and fun together, but not against each other. Children brought up with anger against their other parent learn that feelings of love and intimacy require enemies. Don’t make your spouse, parent, or siblings the enemy; surely you’ll find your child on a team against you some day. Model team leadership by teaching kids positive goal-setting instead of anger. This is especially difficult in single-parent families or after divorce. It’s worth the effort for your children. Some day they’ll develop better relationships as adults. Team with your children’s teachers. Don’t blame them when your children are being irresponsible. You and your children have the responsibility with teachers for making learning exciting, interesting, and challenging. Kids who respect teachers learn more. Kids who respect teachers come from families where parents respect teachers. MODEL OPTIMISM The overload of two-career families can cause men and women alike to be rigid home administrators. Managing schedules and child care can eliminate spontaneity and optimism. You may feel as if you’re precariously juggling instead of balancing your life. At least every six months, stop and prioritize your activities. Think about who is doing too much and what you may have to eliminate. Busy, active lives can be fun and good training for managing complexity, but too busy lives cause families to wish for the old days where men were men and women were wives. In a world of equal partnerships, occasional meetings to equalize your life permit your children to see strong and sensitive adults of each gender in their lives. Although modeling strength and sensitivity may be hard sometimes, it is most important of all. ©2001 by Sylvia B. Rimm. All rights reserved. This publication, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author.
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