BOYS and girls are really different. I know that’s stating the obvious, but it never fails to amaze me that at every stage of my children’s development they manage to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Nowhere is this more the case than with the whole business of growing up.

My daughter, on the other hand, just can’t wait to be grown up, the faster the better. At times it’s exhausting trying to hold the little dynamo back. Most of the time she’s acting way older than she is. She is only nine but seems more like a very small 40-year-old with a high-pitched voice.

She’s had a “boyfriend” at school since she was about six. She really likes him, though she wonders if he’s thinking enough about his career path. She has everything planned. Or at least she thinks she does. She knows the kind of house she wants. She wants to be a lawyer and then a judge. She thinks she’s settled on the university she wants to go to.

She is constantly planning. She has to do lists everywhere. They have endless rows of tick boxes. She’s happiest when organising family activities with the aid of a clipboard. Everything has to proceed with clockwork precision. If we’re going grocery shopping she always knows what groceries we’re running out of, what route we need to take, and can recite to her brother my “no chocolate Tim Tams this week” speech word perfect.

She keeps her eye on everything – whether her brother has done his homework, and where dad has left the car keys. She likes adult clothes best, would kill for really high heels, and doesn’t like leaving home without her handbag with her lippy (just lip balm). She loves homework! She wants a big whiteboard for her tenth birthday.

I know my little grown up is not alone. Many of her friends are similarly mature for their ages. Television may be part of it. When my generation was growing up we were watching Warner Brothers’ cartoons with the Road Runner and Wile E Coyote. Now our kids are watching sitcoms that tend to expose them to adult, or at least teenage, behaviour pretty early. Our girl also does a lot of sport, which sees her engage happily with much older kids.

Still, I’m struck by the contrast between my boy who is happily drifting towards adulthood and my girl who thinks she should already be there.

Is she growing up too quickly? Maybe, I don’t know. Of course the wheel will turn and after a few decades she’ll be just as keen to pretend to be younger than she is.