Do Boys Have A Harder Time Sitting Still Than Girls Do?

My 3-year-old was literally bouncing off the walls tonight. Of course, this was happening while I was trying to put him down for bed. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was “exercising.” I, on the other hand, was exhausted.

My boy can't sit through a meal for more than 15 minutes without getting up and running laps around the apartment or restaurant. When I see my friend's little girls, they sit through a meal like they are part of English royalty, sitting cross-legged and holding their juice cups with their pinkies in the air — okay, maybe I'm imagining that last part, but you get the idea.

I know it’s terrible to compare kids to each other, but sometimes I wonder: Do boys have a harder time sitting still, or is it just my child? I asked some moms and experts to chime in, and their opinions varied.

One mom Laura Morgan tells me, “I have a boy and a girl — and granted not all boys are alike and not all girls are alike — I can tell you that the boy playdates require a whistle and referee jacket, while the girls go make slime and entertain themselves independently.”

Another mother Kate has had similar experiences. She says, “All I can tell you is that I have three boys, including a hyperactive child, and they are nothing like my daughter, behavior-wise. And it really is nature, not parenting.”

“Anyone who has had a boy (especially a boy after a girl), or spent 10 minutes in a kindergarten classroom will know that there absolutely are gender differences between boys and girls in terms of 'sitting still.' This isn’t new, this isn’t controversial and this isn’t a question,” adds a third mom Allison.

When I checked in with pediatrician Dr. Nitin Gupta he laughs and tells me, “That's a question that has been asked since the dawn of time, and it’s a common concern I hear from parents. But I think the question we have to ask ourselves is, 'Why are we even questioning this?'”

Gupta points out that boys are just different and many don’t sit still as much as little girls do. He wonders if we are expecting too much from them, and says that a lot of it has to do with genetics and evolution. “What was expected out of males in past times? They were the hunters running around to provide. The females were expected to be the gatherers. We have generations expecting boys to be more active and now we are more of a sedentary society. Are we going against our own genes?”

I try not to think too far ahead, but I also wonder what it will be like for my son at school in a few years. Will he be ready to sit still at a desk by the second grade? Other parents in my neighborhood tell me that their boys struggled with this in our public school system, which is even top-rated.

Author and teacher Jessica Lahey recently wrote an article in The Atlantic, calling for parents and administrators to stop penalizing boys for not being able to sit still in school. She writes, “While I love teaching boys, many of my colleagues do not, particularly during the hormone-soaked, energetic and distracted middle- and high-school years. Teachers and school administrators lament that boys are too fidgety, too hyperactive and too disruptive, derailing the educational process for everyone while sabotaging their own intellectual development.”

Then there are other moms who strongly disagree with claims that behavior might be gender-related at all — and I get that too!

“It's a sexist stereotype reinforced by the gulf between how boys and girls are parented,” one mom tells me. To that point, a few of the little girls we know are pretty active too, so it could be a personality thing.

However, Gupta cited a statement from the Psychological Science in the Public Interest Journal that suggests there are some developmental differences between boys and girls that are at play. "The sex hormone differences between boys and girls do play a role in children's neurocognitive development," he says. "What we have to remember is that much of what young children do is revolved around learning. Young girls have an advantage at episodic learning which may explain why they can sit still for longer because they can absorb the information by observation better. Boys, on the other hand, have a visuospatial learning preference which really makes it hard to sit still. If an object catches their eyes, they want to get up close and touch it, feel it, play with it; all in an effort to process as much information as possible.”

In other words, young boys aren’t simply hyperactive, naughty or defiant — they are oftentimes just learning by play.

I finally just got my boy to crash after he turned our living room into an obstacle course and showed me how he could jump from the piano chair to the couch at least 18 times. It was adorable of course, but also tiring for me. Yes, he is a typical toddler who is filled with endorphins. But he’s also a boy, a fabulous boy with lots of incredible and dynamic energy that I will always appreciate, no matter how many laps he runs or pillows we climb together.

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