I have seen Mars and Venus at play.

I was never one to promote gender stereotypes, yet I am now raising a 5-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl who are different from each other not just as individuals, but in ways you could ascribe to being a boy and being a girl.

As I type this, my boy is running around the house with a friend, battling “aliens” with zooming spaceships. The boys are loud and make the floor shake. There’s a lot of testosterone-fuelled, competitive rocket firing.

My little girl just wants to “stay near mama” while I work. She is an earshot away pretending to read a book. She says, “you’re my best friend Charlie Bucket” and “Mister Willy Wonka… Veruca is not so very nice!” She goes on for some time entertaining herself this way. So there. I have a girly-girl and a boyish-boy. This actually has some science behind it.

Did you know that we all begin life with a female brain? At around eight weeks, the male fetus gets a wave of testosterone that changes how his brain will develop in the next months. This testosterone wave alters centers for communication and emotional processing while boosting cells for sex and aggression in the male fetus. Consider this in light of a study that shows the average woman uses about 20,000 words a day to express her thoughts and feelings. The average man? About 7,000 words.

Of course, there are exceptions. There are boys who can express themselves quite eloquently and there are girls who are not the chatty, giggly types.

Still, compelling data shows that males and females are different in ways beyond basic body parts. These gender differences have a bearing on how young people learn and develop. US Virginia Tech researchers found that areas in the brain involved in language and fine motor skills mature about 6 years earlier in girls. But when it comes to areas of visual-spatial memory, boys are ahead by about 4 years.

So this is probably why boys are often the ones who like working on blocks, mazes and puzzles. The girls usually like dramatic play and tend to talk and read earlier. Boys are supposed to be good with numbers and girls are good with words and handwriting.

This is not to say boys can’t grow up to be great poets and girls can’t become great engineers. What the data tells us is that the understanding of math versus language doesn’t progress at the same rate for boys and girls – not that one gender is smarter than the other, or that one is better at a certain skill set. Boys and girls just take different paths to learning, but both will reach a common threshold.

I come to realize that acknowledging these gender differences does not make one sexist. Far from it. We need to embrace these differences so we can put our children’s behavior, learning and development in proper perspective. Acknowledging them can actually stop us from passing unfair judgment on our kids. How many times have we heard, “our girl is so much better in school, our boy can’t even sit still.” The subtext being, girl is smarter than boy. But little Ms. Wordsmith is not necessarily smarter than Mr. Antsy. His brain is just hardwired differently.

Findings on male and female brain disparities have even pushed advocates for single-sex classrooms to better cater to the needs of both genders – particularly boys whose hardwiring are often at odds with traditional school set-ups.

But I wouldn’t go that far. I think gender differences only emphasize the importance of teaching and caring for children as unique individuals with varied learning styles, interests and traits. They can still sit inside the same class, just don’t put everyone in the same mold.

So I appreciate our little girl loving pink and our little boy digging blue. When I introduce longer books to them, I’ll hand her Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and maybe get him Jon Sciezsca’s See you Later, Gladiator.

We have different parts, proclivities, balance of hormones and now science tells us – different brain processes. One day my kids may be interested in understanding all this Mars and Venus stuff. But I would like to send them the message that no one is better than the other and we don’t have to be limited to gender stereotypes. Actually, bucking the norm can be cool, if that’s what they choose to do.

The visiting playmate is gone and the “aliens” have been defeated. My 5-year-old boy has joined his sister in her play kitchen. He is quiet and serious about what he’s doing. Later, he presents me a carefully arranged plate of play food that would impress Martha Stewart. He says sweetly: “Ma take a break, I know you love sashimi.” My 3-year-old competitively pipes in: “My sashimi tastes better!” Which is when I smelled a bit of testosterone from my dainty little girl in pink.

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