Pink is just for girls and blue is only for boys. Does this sound familiar? This is just one of the many conventional notions that affect the way we all do parenting. Neuroscientist Lise Eliot has a new book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can do About It, in it she dispels the notion that parents should just accept the fact that boys and girls are wired differently and there's nothing they can do about it.
In an interview with Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune, Eliot revealed that in reality the differences between boys and girls are relatively small. The generalization that boys are visual learners and girls are auditory is actually detrimental to the development of kids. Not all boys learn well by seeing and not all girls learn particularly well by hearing so to use this stereotype as the only basis for helping kids develop would be a total mistake.
Eliot tells parents to expose their daughters to activities that will help develop their mathematical abilities, and to make greater effort in reading, talking and singing to their sons to develop their reading and writing skills. In short, she wants parents to stop labeling their sons as warriors and girls as princesses. They have to understand that gender differences are not hard wired at birth.
