You are listening to the Less Drama More Mama podcast, episode 397: Parenting Tween Boys vs Girls: What’s Different and Why It Matters
This is Less Drama More Mama, the podcast for moms who want to feel calm, in control, and confident about how to handle anything life throws their way. If you’re ready to go from feeling frazzled and disrespected to feeling calm and connected, this is the podcast for you. I’m your host, Pam Howard.
Hello, Mama! Welcome back to episode three in our tween series. If you missed the first two, we talked about the identity shift that happens during these years and about puberty, including the emotional and relational side of it. You don’t have to have listened to those to follow along today, but if you currently have tweens, they’re definitely worth going back and listening to. And if you have a friend who’s also parenting a tween right now, share this series with her.
Today we’re talking about boys and girls. Specifically, how they tend to move through the tween years differently — and what that can mean for you as their mom. Some of what I’m going to share today will feel very true for your child, and some of it might not fit at all. We’re talking about overall tendencies, not rules. There are kids who don’t fit neatly into these categories, so take what’s useful and leave what isn’t. With that said, I do think the patterns are worth talking about, because when you understand them, you can show up for your kids in a way that meets them where they are.
As you know, I have two daughters, but I spent years working closely with both tween girls and boys in my roles as a therapist and school counselor, so I had a front-row seat to how differently they move through this stage. One of the most striking differences between tween boys and girls is how they build and maintain friendships. If you have both a son and a daughter, you may have already noticed this in your own home.
Tween girl friendships are intense. They’re emotionally central to everything. Girls this age pour themselves into their close friendships — their best friends and their inner circles — and those relationships carry enormous weight. Girls share everything with their friends — the details of their day, their secrets, their feelings. And when there’s a betrayal or someone gets left out, it can feel absolutely devastating to them. What you’ll often see with tween girls is something called “relational aggression.” Instead of a physical fight or direct confrontation, conflict shows up as spreading gossip or rumors, getting left out of a group, or walking past a friend like she doesn’t even exist. It’s painful in a way that adults sometimes underestimate because from the outside, it doesn’t look dramatic. But it is. And when you understand how deeply girls this age are invested in their friendships, it becomes easier to take her seriously when she comes home upset over something that seems small to you.
When I was working as a K–8 school counselor, my office was basically the headquarters for girl friendship drama. I’m not exaggerating. I actually had to set boundaries around kids skipping class to come see me or showing up without an appointment. And it was never about a big fight. It was much more subtle than that. Someone sat with someone else at lunch. Someone got left out of something over the weekend. Someone decided someone else was their new best friend that week. It actually reminded me so much of my own childhood. I was part of a group of four girls — Allison, Beth, Rena, and me — and it felt like every week our alliances shifted. One week two of us were best friends and the other two were best friends. Then the next week the pairings would switch. It was constantly two against two. At the time it felt huge, but looking back, it was just a really normal part of how girls that age learn about relationships and social dynamics.
Boys build friendships differently. Their connections tend to happen through doing things together, not talking about the relationship itself. Sports, games, hanging out, eating together. If you’ve ever watched a group of tween boys hang out, you might notice they can sit in the same room for hours barely talking and walk away feeling like they had a great time. That’s not a lack of closeness. It’s just how a lot of boys connect. When a boy’s friendship hits a rough patch, it might show up as a physical scuffle that blows over in twenty minutes, or a period of just not hanging out as much, or a rivalry that somehow turns back into friendship without anyone ever actually talking about it. For moms of boys, this can feel baffling. You can see that something happened, but when you ask about it, you get almost no response because he may not be in the habit of putting things into words yet and he may not fully understand what he’s feeling.
This connects to something else that shows up during the tween years: how boys and girls tend to express their emotions. By the time kids hit the tween years, most girls have had lots of practice putting feelings into words. From a very young age, girls are generally encouraged to talk about their relationships and feelings. So by the time they’re ten or eleven, they’re pretty good at articulating what they feel. Boys often have a very different experience. The cultural messaging that boys receive very early on tends to discourage emotional expression. Not always overtly. Nobody has to say “boys don’t cry” for a boy to absorb the message that showing vulnerability is risky. It shows up in how adults respond to a boy who cries versus a girl who cries. It shows up in what gets labeled as weakness versus strength in the media. And by the time a boy is ten or eleven, many of them have already learned to funnel their feelings through a narrower channel — often anger, or humor, or just going quiet. Sometimes the feeling underneath what you’re seeing is disappointment, embarrassment, or hurt. This is really important for you to understand, because if you have a tween son and he seems angry, emotionally flat, or like he just doesn’t care about things he probably does care. He’s just likely expressing it in the way that feels available to him. The boy who shrugs and says “whatever” when he doesn’t make the soccer team may be just as upset as the boy who cries, and he deserves the same kind of support.
One thing I learned pretty quickly when working with tween boys is that sitting across from each other and asking, “How do you feel?” almost never worked. What did work was doing something together. Sometimes we’d go for a walk around the school. Sometimes we’d play a board game in my office or just toss a ball back and forth. It was amazing how often the conversation would start once we were moving. The pressure was off. There was little eye contact. No sense that they were supposed to perform emotionally. And suddenly they’d start talking. Not always about their feelings directly, but about something that happened at school or something that bothered them. So if you have a son who’s clearly going through something, invite him to do something with you — shoot hoops, take a drive, watch something together — and let the conversation happen if and when it does.
For girls, the emotional intensity of these years can be challenging. If you have a tween daughter, you may already know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of feelings that seem wildly disproportionate to the situation. Last week we talked about how hormones, sleep disruption, and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex are all contributing to her mood. Her feelings are real, though, and your job isn’t to fix them or talk her out of them. It’s just to be a safe person she can go to when the feelings are big.
Now let’s talk about school, because the tween years are when some of the academic differences between boys and girls start to become more noticeable. Research consistently shows that girls, on average, tend to outperform boys academically during the middle school years. They tend to have stronger reading and writing skills, and they’re often more comfortable meeting adult expectations. Many boys this age are highly active and wired for movement in ways that don’t always fit well with a traditional classroom. The developmental research suggests that boys at nine and ten are engaging in a lot of rough-and-tumble physical play and are strongly motivated by activity and doing — and then we place them in classrooms where they’re expected to sit still for long stretches of the day. That’s not always the best fit.
You also start to see differences in executive functioning during these years. Skills like organization, planning ahead, managing time, and keeping track of assignments are still developing for all kids, but they often develop a little later for boys. So you may have a daughter who’s keeping track of her homework, writing things down, and generally staying on top of things, while a boy the same age is still struggling to remember what he’s supposed to bring home. That difference isn’t about intelligence or motivation. It’s about brain development. What looks like a boy not caring about school is sometimes a boy who hasn’t figured out how to function in an environment that isn’t designed for the way his brain works right now. And what he often needs isn’t more pressure. It’s help finding an entry point. A subject that interests him. A teacher who likes him. A project where he can move around or build something. When boys find that entry point, they can be deeply engaged. They’re often motivated by concrete tasks, by understanding the reasons for things, by being able to create something, or by competition. So the question with a boy who seems checked out at school isn’t “what’s wrong with him?” It’s “what would help him find his way in?”
And you see some of these same developmental differences show up at home, too. In episode one of this series I talked about how tweens start separating from their parents as part of figuring out who they are. That’s normal and expected. It doesn’t mean they’re pushing you out of their lives. It usually just means they’re practicing independence. With girls, one day she’s telling you everything about her life, and then you notice she starts sharing a little less. She becomes more private, more guarded. The conversations get shorter. She may push you away verbally in ways that hurt. The eye rolls, the “you don’t understand,” moments where she suddenly acts like you’re embarrassing her. But at the same time, she still really needs connection with you. She’s just less likely to ask for it directly, so it shows up in small moments like sitting next to you on the couch, showing you something on her phone, or hanging out in the kitchen while you’re cooking. With boys, the pulling away can look more like just… going quiet. Less dramatic, but sometimes more confusing, because it can feel like you suddenly know less about what’s going on in his world. One thing I want you to know is that tween boys still very much need their moms. The developmental research is clear that boys this age continue to need warmth, emotional connection, and maternal support even as they’re becoming more independent. The best thing you can do is follow his lead on when and how much he wants to share. Show up for the things that matter to him — his games, his interests, whatever he’s into right now — without making it about getting information out of him. Boys at this age often feel close to their moms through shared activity, even if no meaningful conversation ever happens. And for both boys and girls, it really matters that they feel like they can come to you when they need to, without you overreacting or turning it into a big deal. Your tween is navigating a lot right now. They’re going to make some questionable choices. They’re going to have some confusing experiences. And whether or not they bring those things to you is going to depend almost entirely on how safe they feel doing it.
So here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re parenting through these years. If you have a tween daughter, watch for emotional intensity and constantly shifting friendship dynamics. She needs you to stay steady when her emotions feel overwhelming, take her feelings seriously without amplifying them, and keep showing up for her even when she pushes you away. If you have a tween son, pay attention to what doesn’t get said. He needs you to keep showing up in his life. Spend time together. Create opportunities for connection without forcing it. And take his feelings seriously, even when he doesn’t know how to express them. When you understand what’s underneath your child’s behavior, it becomes much easier to respond in ways that help your child and support your relationship. Hopefully this episode gave you a little more insight into what might be going on with your tween. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll talk with you again next time. Bye.
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