- Women communicate to bond and build rapport
- Men communicate to convey information (share data) and report (my husband leaned over and asked if that's why so many men were software engineers, which he is)
- Women talk to create feelings and create bonding
- Men "act" to create bonding (Townsend felt that perhaps men hold the priesthood to "act" in God's name because of this trait: it creates bonding; if they just talk, it won't work. This concept would be a very interesting discussion to continue.
- Because fathers tend to "rough house" kids more than moms do, it gets kids' emotions really high, then they settle; this leads to their ability to better stabilize their emotions as adults; they're finding adults raised without fathers have a more difficult time controlling their emotions
- When men speak, only one side of the brain is used, the side that conveys data
- When women speak, both sides of the brain are used, the data side AND the emotion side
- When a little girl is about to do something naughty, she looks to her caregiver first, almost asking permission before she does it
- When a little boy is about to do something naughty, he just does it
- Men tend to look at life through a hierarchy; they don't like to communicate anything that may decrease their sense of hierarchy (that actually explains a lot)
- Little boys and little girls are 98% the same (or was it 98.5%?)
- Men's brains are 11% bigger than women's (so are men on average 11% bigger than women?), but men and women have the same amount of activity in their brains
- Women's brains do shrink during pregnancy, but return to their normal size after
He also talked a bit about the Mind, Body, Spirit connection and how we need to be aware of what is driving us. Is it our mind that creates shame, competition, body image problems..., our body that makes us hungry or tired..., or our spirit influencing us to act and feel certain ways? I thought it was an interesting concept. It seemed that Townsend suggested our mind drives us to some negative feelings, but our Spirit led us to more positive feelings and actions. I question, though, can't our mind lead us to compassion and other good traits, or would that always be the spirit and our light of Christ? Would that fall into spirit?
