Walk into any pre-school and it becomes obvious. Girls sitting still, paying attention. Boys fidgeting, making faces and in this environment, more likely to be misbehaving.
"He wants to fight with his friends, he wants to wrestle, why wont he just sit still? His sister will sit still and color a lot, why doesn't he do that?" said family psychologist Dan Rubin.
Rubin hears that all the time.
"What's wrong is to force boys to be something that they're not," said Rubin.
He says it's important to use that "boyness," to the child's advantage.
"So if the boy wants to make towers, put letters on the towers. Talk to the kid about spelling, while you do an activity. You can't talk to him like he's a girl, girls have better verbal skills and better social skills," said Rubin.
Kindergarten teacher Shelley Simonsen couldn't agree more.
"We need to understand what boys like and are in to, so if your child is really interested in forts there are some really great books about treehouses all over the world," said Simonsen.
Turns out that not letting these boys run, learn, and play like boys can do more harm than good.
"When boys don't have appropriate rough and tumble play, they don't learn how to appropriately self regulate, they dont know the difference between play fighting and real fighting. What we want to do is teach boys good self-regulation skills so they can sit down and pay attention when they need to," said Rubin.
That's crucial because boys are far more likely to flunk or drop out of school, and five times more likely to be labeled as hyperactive.
The gender gap has been showing up in colleges since 2000, where up to 57 percent of the student population is now female.
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