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for a response instead of forging ahead. The same thing happened when another little girl said “Dolly.” As has been observed in studies, girls participate jointly in decision making, with minimal stress, conflict, or displays of status. They often express agreement with a partner’s suggestions. And when they have ideas of their own, they’ll put them in the form of questions, such as “I’ll be the teacher, okay?” Their genes and hormones have created a reality in their brains that tells them social connection is at the core of their being.
    Boys know how to employ this affiliative speech style, too, but research shows they typically don’t use it. Instead, they’ll generally use language to command others, get things done, brag, threaten, ignore a partner’s suggestion, and override each other’s attempts to speak. It was never long after Joseph’s arrival on the playground that Leila ended up in tears. At this age boys won’t hesitate to take action or grab something they desire. Joseph took Leila’s toys whenever he wanted and usually destroyed whatever Leila and the other girls were making. Boys will do this to one another—they are not concerned about the risk of conflict. Competition is part of their makeup. And they routinely ignore comments or commands given by girls.
    The testosterone-formed boy brain simply doesn’t look for social connection in the same way a girl brain does. In fact, disorders that inhibit people from picking up on social nuance—called autism spectrum disorders and Asperger’s syndrome—are eight times more common in boys. Scientists now believe that the typical male brain, with only one dose of X chromosome (there are two X’s in a girl), gets flooded with testosterone during development and somehow becomes more easily socially handicapped. Extra testosterone and the genes in people with these disorders may be killing off some of the brain’s circuits for emotional and social sensitivity.
    S HE W ANTS C OMMUNITY, BUT O NLY ON H ER T ERMS
    By age two and a half, infantile puberty ends and a girl enters the calmer pastures of the juvenile pause. The estrogen stream coming from the ovaries has been temporarily stopped; how, we don’t yet know. But we do know that the levels of estrogen and testosterone become very low during the childhood years in both boys and girls—although girls still have six to eight times more estrogen than boys. When women talk about “the girl they left behind,” this is the stage they are usually referring to. This is the quiet period before the full-volume rock ’n’ roll of puberty. It’s the time when a girl is devoted to her best friend, when she doesn’t usually enjoy playing with boys. Research shows that this is true for girls between the ages of two and six in every culture that’s been studied.
    I met my first playmate, Mikey, when I was two and a half and he was almost three. My family had moved into a house next door to Mikey’s on Quincy Street in Kansas City, and our backyards adjoined each other. The sandbox was in our yard, and the swing set straddled the invisible line that divided our properties.
    Our mothers, who soon became friends, saw the advantage of their two kids playing with each other while they chatted or took turns watching us. According to my mother, almost every time Mikey and I played in the sandbox, she would have to rescue me because he would inevitably grab my toy shovel or pail while refusing to let me touch his. I would wail in protest, and Mikey would scream and hurl sand at us as his mother tried to pry my toys away from him.
    Both our moms tried again and again, because they liked spending time together. But nothing Mikey’s mother did—scolding him, reasoning with him about the merits of sharing, taking away privileges, imposing various punishments—could persuade him to change his behavior. My mother eventually had to look beyond our block to find me other playmates, girls who sometimes grabbed