Are boys lazier than girls?

I'm wondering if boys are lazier than girls. I've had no problems teaching my girl. She loves learning and she soaks up information like a sponge. She has a photographic memory and can often remember shows or books that she reads word for word. Its amazing.

She learned her ABCs almost by herself. I taught her a couple of times and then she would practise by herself and soon she knew them all. We have the whole set of Peter and Jane books and when I teach her to read using them, we would go through book after book till she completed all in the series almost without turning back.

Even now that she is older, she loves home lessons. I can give her some instructions and she would do the work eagerly. All she needs is some reward stickers to make her happy.

Its a different story with my boy though. Whenever I teach him, sometimes he would grumble and say "Tired...." He's learning to read the Peter and Jane books but we can't move on. We keep on going back to books 1 and 2 over and over again because he can't remember.

Last night he threw two of the books that we were currently reading down the bed when I was not looking. I found them because he and his sister were looking under the bed at the numerous toys and other stuff that he threw in there.

When I asked him why he threw the book under his bed, he said he didn't want to read them. So he threw them in there so I couldn't find them! When I told his dad about that, his dad said "Smart boy". Hmmm...... and he is the one who is always asking me to give more attention to the boy and make sure that he is not left behind in his lessons compared to his sister.

What to do now? I don't want to turn him off learning. His dad said he should be pushed a little so that he doesn't take it easy all the time. He hasn't outgrown his mirror image writing so we want to make sure that we spend time teaching him but he is lazy to learn. He is going to be 5 in April 2009. To me he is still a baby and I shouldn't be worried but his paeditrician had wanted to have him screened for dyslexia some months ago when we visited her. Eventually she agreed to wait a few months till he starts school to see his progress. I guess that is why his dad is always asking me to push him a little but I don't want to punish or scold him if he is lazy to learn. I don't want him to learn because he HAS to, I want him to learn because he WANTS to.