Dr. Michael Gurian is back! You may remember him from Episode 82 of the podcast, when he joined us to talk about the minds of boys (and why fidgeting is a good sign!).
But today he is here to chat with us about the minds of girls.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- the unique learning challenges girls face (some of these might surprise you!)
- why we need to listen differently with our girls… and how to do that
- Is there really such a thing as ‘girl drama’? (ahem)
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Listener Guide
Use the time stamps below to skip to any part of the podcast:
- 2:08 Dr. Gurian is back!
- 3:55 Challenges girls face
- 5:36 Processing differences (white matter versus gray matter)
- 9:29 3 things that affect girls’ learning
- 10:57 How girls communicate
- 14:42 We need to listen
- 17:29 Social media
- 23:15 ‘Pruning period’
- 25:12 ‘Girl drama’
- 29:47 Processing through emotional drama
- 33:03 Trusting ourselves in parenting
- 34:26 Books he read with his girls
- 38:22 Let the kids speak
More free resources and booklists
Get the best episodes and reources
from the Read-Aloud Revival
More free resources and booklists
Get the best episodes and reources
from the Read-Aloud Revival
Links from this episode:
- RAR Membership
- Get the FREE booklist and more – go to readaloudrevial.com or text BOOKS to 345345
- RAR #82: Why Fidgeting is a Good Sign (and what brain science says about reading aloud), Dr. Michael Gurian
- Gurian Institute — learn more about Dr. Gurian’s work here
- Dr. Gurian’s site
A few quotes from Dr. Gurian from this episode:
“For homeschool teachers and parents… when you’re looking at your little girls and boys, if math and science is an area you want them to do well in later, have the girls play a lot with Legos, have them move objects around, and build things so that they develop a little more of those gray matter spatial areas that a lot of boy brains are already set to develop naturally.”
“Girls really do need you to listen. They don’t need us to listen for a half hour, but they need us to listen for a few minutes. They need us to listen for a period of time, and they need us to do some amount of reflecting back in order to feel validated. Generally, once they’ve started repeating themselves, that’s when we know, ‘OK, they’ve processed and we can probably interrupt now.’”
“Part of what I think we have to do now— in the new millennium- is actually convince all of us that the way dads do things also have merit naturally. Just the way they are, they have merit.”
(Download the transcript above for more quotes and pull-outs.)
Books from this episode:
(All links are Amazon affiliate links.)
