(Press Release) Building language skills more critical for boys than girls, study finds

"Developing language skills appears to be more important for boys than girls in helping them to develop self-control and, ultimately, succeed in school, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher.

Thus, more emphasis should be placed on encouraging boy toddlers to 'use their words' – instead of unruly behavior – to solve problems, said Claire Vallotton, MSU assistant professor of child development.

'It shouldn’t be chalked off as boys being boys,' Vallotton said. “They need extra attention from child-care providers and teachers to help them build language skills and to use those skills to regulate their emotions and behavior.”

The study, co-authored by Catherine Ayoub from Harvard Medical School, is the first to suggest language skills have a bigger impact on boys’ self-regulation than on girls’. The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

The researchers examined data on children as they aged from 1 to 3 and their mothers who participated in the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study. As with previous research, Vallotton and Ayoub found that language skills – specifically the building of vocabulary – help children regulate their emotions and behavior and that boys lag behind girls in both language skills and self-regulation."