This is the pre-marital advice my mother should have given me!
From the age of four, boys process sounds slowly, a phenomenon that inhibits their performance at school, a leading education researcher has claimed.

Australian Council for Education Research principal research fellow Ken Rowe said yesterday that compared with girls, boys heard less efficiently.

Dr Rowe said this resulted in many boys spending their early and middle years of schooling "bobbing up and down like corks in a sea of classroom- and teacher-generated blah".

"That funny old story that men have selective hearing is actually true," he said.

"It's different from hearing. It's the ability to hold sequence and to hold accurately what is heard."

Based on recent clinical trials conducted with about 2500 children, Dr Rowe said he found 20per cent of five-year-olds "can't handle anything more than an eight-word sentence".

And all these years I’ve been feeling guilty about applying a technique that Embot’s pre-school teacher taught me for talking to inattentive little boys to my spousal unit.
1. Make eye contact
2. Hold the listeners face in your hands if necessary.
3. Speak slowly, clearly and never more than about 8 words at a time.

My husband is technically a genius. (let’s think Absent Minded - not Nutty - Professor in this instance) I must use this technique when giving him instructions about simple household chores or errands. All this time I’ve resented him as an idiot in disguise - now I know it’s just a typical man thing. He spent the better part of yesterday doing all sorts of techno stuff for a friend’s computer. So I know he can think. But last week-end I told him to transport the two bags and a box of baby supplies at the base of the stairs to another location for the Respect Life Committee Lenten diaper drive. He took care of the stuff at the bottom of the stairs at Church but totally overlooked the two bags and a box at the base of his own stairs that he has been walking past several times a day for over a month!