Do you realize that it is distinctly possible for a child to reach the age of 18 without ever having done something upon someone else depends?
—Urie Bronfenbrenner speaking to teachers and parents in 1975
In my twenties, I was a teacher and dorm-master in a boy’s boarding school. Max, one of my 14-year-old advisees, didn’t have friends and kept getting bad grades. It was obvious to the adults that he had “low self-esteem.” All the boy’s teachers and all the boy’s folks couldn’t get Max “self-acceptance” for him.
One day, I returned to the dormitory after lunch to find Max in his room. It was a school rule that all the students should be out of the dormitory in the afternoon; so, the normal thing for a dorm-master to do would have been to send him outside and give him a demerit for breaking a rule.
My instincts told me to do something different. I said, “Would you help me with something?”
A little surprised, he said, “Sure.”
“I notice that you like photography. Would you be my photographer and take slides for my next slide show? I have to give an assembly in about a month.”
“Sure,” he said.
I had several hundred miniature model soldiers of the Napoleonic period, some of them hand-painted. My vision was a slide show to go with a soundtrack of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
For the next month Max and I identified settings outside and set up the soldiers, and he took pictures. We were a production team creating a work of art to present to the entire school.
As you can imagine, he changed. The symptoms of “low self-esteem” vanished. He even started working harder on his school work.
What did I do right? What were the active ingredients in making a difference in this boy? Instead of treating his low self-esteem, I treated his boredom and loneliness. I noticed an interest and gave him an opportunity to be valuable.
Why is it typical for boys to be the ones who get in trouble in school? Beth Campbell, a great kindergarten teacher, nailed it when one day she said to me: “I see every unused ability in my class as an incipient behavior problem.”
So many boys are suffocating in their unused abilities. By the time they come to kindergarten their brains have been researching, collaborating and creating for more than 43,000 hours. Do schools give them a mission? or do they say: do this meaningless task on your own? This indignity sometimes continues for the next 13 years. Forty-years of working with children, teachers and parents has confirmed for me that learning by doing is better for the development of all brains, but girls seem to be able to get good grades without it. Most boys need to act, or they will “act out.”
Several years ago, I worked with a group of 20 single mothers who were still in high school. On my second day with them they said,
“Do you understand how boring school is…”
“…yeah, and like how worthless it makes you feel?”
“I know, right? There is nothing going on. You feel so bored and worthless. The boys have it worse. At least, we can have a baby to take care of and love.”
“Yeah. The boys have it worse.”
I have five grandsons ages 3 to 15. There is a scientist, warrior, artist, problem solver, helper and teammate in each of them. Just last summer, the youngest looked up from raking leaves in my back yard and said, “I like to work.”
Kids come into the world pre-motivated. By seven they are aware of world problems and want to get to work. They don’t worry how long it will take; they just want the respect of being on the team that is doing something about it. The way to handle this motivation is to engage it. How many boys would go out for soccer practice, if it were just drills and no game?
If your boy seems to show symptoms you don’t like, put them on the team. They need to be needed. 75% of those diagnosed with “low self-esteem,” or ADHD, or “Oppositional Defiance Disorder,” or “Couch Potato Syndrome” could be “cured” of their “dysfunction” by getting to work on something important.
How can parents help boys be successful?
- Believe in them (despite all evidence to the contrary).
- Notice boredom, loneliness and worthlessness, and address the symptoms directly. Don’t label or diagnose.
- Say “I need your help with something.” (Guys are suckers for a damsel in distress and want to apprentice to alpha males.)
- Work with his teacher and principal to increase the incidence of collaborating, creating, contributing at school—a service learning project, perhaps?
We humans are wired to love and to devote ourselves to higher purposes. These are core human abilities; failure to utilize them leads to all sorts of behavior problems and other undesirable outcomes up to and including depression, gangs, murder and suicide…as well as disappointing grades and test scores. Why wait till their 20’s to put them to work?
