Here's a thread about the way we label boys as trouble.

We literally label boys as loud, troublesome, naughty from the moment they're born, before they can lift up their heads, before their eyes can even focus.

The high street shops peddle this message, pushing it at parents.

It's an international message too. Ubiquitous, hard to escape.

It's promoted as pre-manly, a behaviour that's hard-wired into little boys.

And because boys are 'born' to be troublemakers, the logic must be that they can't help it.

So therefore adults (and little girls) need to indulge this bad behaviour, excuse it, put up with it.

Boys will be boys. (As long as they're told that they have to behave that way, have it hammered into them throughout their childhood, yeah.)

There's something proud about such slogans. 'Here I am, you'll just have to put up with me because I ain't gonna change.'

So boys get this message very early on: they're expected to misbehave.

If they don't misbehave, maybe the're 'not a proper boy'.

In many environments, it's not seen as cool for boys to behave. This creates all kinds of problems, both for them and for those around them.

If they play up in the classroom, you'll find some adults who'll excuse this. 'Boys need more stimulus. Boys aren't designed to sit still. Boys need more bells and whistles.' Etc.

Even if it *were* the case that boys are 'born naughty' - and I have two sons of my own and I can assure you it's not - then the way we handle them should be less indulgent of bad behaviour, not more!

I know you can get these T shirts for girls, but almost always they're in the boys' section of the shop, or modelled on boys. That's because we expect girls to be more passive and compliant.

It's not helping anyone, least of all boys.

Boys do worse in schools, and are vastly more likely to go to prison later on in life.

Can we not have a serious re-think about the way we brand boy-children, and the way we deal with disruptive behaviour from boys early on?