Unique therapy with boys.
The child is the father of the man.
What do boys need to become emotionally whole men?
What is the cost to boys of a culture that suppresses their emotional life in service to rigid ideals of manhood?
Many men live an "unconscous personal life."
Anger between sons and fathers. Film "At Close Range" with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken.
Adolescent boys often "struggle with sadness and ... often ... channel that sadness into contempt for others and into self-hate."

Inflexible code of the male peer group.
I must be respected - maintain a masculine persona.
Most people only see boys' anger, not the root cause - fear of exposure and vulnerability.

Some hide behind a false bravado of drinking prowess or exploitative sex.
False belief that being strong requires them not to feel.

We look for signs that are evidence of manhood - war medals.

Do women teach men how to relax in the presence of women, how to talk to them and how to listen?

Emotional flexibility.

Some males' preferred mode of dealing with emotional pain is drowning it in a six-pack of beer.

Too many boys are steered away from their emotional lives toward silence, solitude, and distrust.

What is Luke's problem? Why is he angry?

Boys are threatened by emotional complexity.
Use the "fight or flight" response to emotions.
They lash out or withdraw emotionally.
Struggle between a need for connection and desire for autonomy.

Our culture supports emotional development for girls and discourages it for boys.
The emotional MISeducation of boys.

Emotional Literacy: Education vs Ignorance

Help them develop an emotional vocabulary for our own feelings and those of others.

1. Identify and name emotions
2. recognize the emotional content of voice and facial expression
3. understanding the situations and reactions that produce emotional states

There is a struggle with working with boys in school. They present different challenges than girls.

The pattern of a child's learning is perhaps established by the time they are in the third grade.

There is the misperception that YELLING at boys works, and it doesn't affect them in the negative ways it affects girls.

It is productive to give boys OPTIONS when directing them to work.

Boys' risk-taking engergy and enthusiasm can be used as a asset, rather than a detriment.

Boys are direct. They speak and act in simple terms.

Boys need to feel competent and empowered.
Boys are often not as capable at impulse control as are girls.
There are far more boys diagnosed with ADD than girls.
The early age at which we teach reading puts boys at a disadvantage.

Shaming boys leads them to become MORE impulsive and disruptive than they already are.

Boys benefit tremendously from the modeling of male teachers.

Matt's dilemma
Sadness under his anger
Types of harsh discipline - physical and verbal
More likely with boys
Belief we have to be harsh with boys
Trauma of these early experiences

Tyrrany of toughness
Inequality of judicial responses to males
Public schools
National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment
    legal in many states to abuse boys
Historical changes in US

How to deal with boys' activity levels
Boys develop fear and isolation
Stress and harsh parenting
    - intergenerational

Quick fix of harsh parenting
Fails to teach
Coercive power as often as not backfires
Resists rules and authority
Teaches discipline (and self-control) comes from external source

Semantic learning and Episodic learning
Episodic is emotional

Harsh discipline is a lesson in shame

What boys do is never good enough

What boys lose: empathy, conscience, connection

Effects of harsh parenting on children
    - even two year olds

Good discipline contains a boy - teaches him self-control

"Coming of age" stories
domination, humility, fear, betrayal
Self-awareness leaps forward around age 10
Competition with male peers
"Anything you DO or SAY can and will be used against you in the court of peer competition"

Desperate for role models
Older boys pick on younger
Bigger pick on smaller

Urinating on clothes or shampoo bottles
Can't tell on other boys
Adherence to the culture - the code

Tutored away from trust, empathy, and relationship
The pecking order - dominance hierarchy
Like a pack of dogs, they pick on any member who shows weakness
Piggy and the Lord of the Flies

In search of the Big Impossible
Only a group can provide a sense of inclusion - "I'm worthy of membership."
Performance-based masculine identity is impossible to achieve forever at any one time - it always has to be reinvented

Search for "bullying" on the web

Bumper sticker: "My kid beat up your honor roll student"

Being a boy or man means being NOT FEMININE

Sexual development, events, and feelings can be very confusing to boys.
Teasing about homosexuality.
Fear of homosexuality imposes a "touching" taboo
Penis size is the measure of the man

Sports
Disproportionate rewards given to coaches and athletes

Boys who develop emotional awareness and empathy are less likely to hurt others and are more resilient after experiencing cruelty

Tough to be friends with other males - to have deep friendships

The Code of Silence
Replace this with a moral code in which cruelty is neither tolerated nor ignored - fosters personal accountability and emotional awareness

Emotionally resilient and resourceful boys have fathers who are emotionally connected to them.

Mark Twain: around age 12, a boy picks a man to admire and imitates him for the rest of his life.

father absence: "the single biggest social problem in the U.S. today"

Research on the effects of father's attendance at PTA meetings.

Longitudinal study of emotional education and empathy
 - effect on capacity for empathy

Study of executives:  wished they had been closer to their fathers, and their fathers had expressed more emotion and feeling.

Many women feel unsure about trusting their infants with the father.

Fathers serve as important play partners for sons.
Show the son how to accept frustration, winning and losing, and control temper.

Courage is not absence of fear.

Teenager still needs his father, but is afraid to look dependent upon him.

Beeper study: 50% of time, fathers and sons reported completely different experiences of the same shared moment.

Fathers often respond with anger and control when an adolescent son asserts his autonomy.

Adolescent boys are LEAST likely to confide their true feelings to their father.

There are issues of competition between father and son.

Chapter 6 - Mothers and Sons: Connection and Change

Mothers are described as being more responsive to sons in a synchronous fashion, adapting to the child as he changes.

At some point, most believe a son must shift his central attachment from his mother to his father.

Many mothers resist the boy's efforts to cut the apron strings.

Toddlerhood represents the first "detachment" phase for boys and mothers.

During adolescence, sons often move farther away, emotionally, from mothers. Mothers are faced with the challenge of letting go.

Adolescent bid for autonomy; represents another major phase of detachment.

Mothers can have difficulty understanding boys BECAUSE MOM IS NOT MALE.
They can misread silence as meaning a lack of feeling.

Mothers and sons sometimes (often?) have to deal with feelings of sexuality as the son progresses through adolescence.

Boys / Teens can often go to their mothers to talk about issues they can't go to their fathers about. like being teased at school. Perhaps they don't want to appear weak in their father's eyes.

Males want their mothers to approve of their girlfriends.

Chapter 7 : Inside the Fortress of Solitude

Movie images of the solitude of males (Superman, Batman).

Troubled boys are more likely to find a scapegoat for their problems.

Males often feel cutoff; they don't want to appear weak to their fathers, and they don't want to appear to "need" their mothers.

An adolescent male's natural desire for time alone can mask feelings of sadness or inadequacy. (Females want time alone, but they're more likely to use that time talking on the phone or in their room with a best friend.)

Darker mood, withdrawal from friends and cherished activities, declining grades, can signify problems.

The VERY LAST THING an adolescent boy needs to feel is SHAME ABOUT HIMSELF. Too often, boys will keep these feelings inside, and not tell others.

Feelings of inadequacy are often OVERCOMPENSATED for; turned into anger, sarcasm, hostility toward others.

Often hide their emotions with irritation with others, sarcasm, nonchalance, stoicism - hiding their fears with exaggerated images of strength.

Therapy can provide a safe environment for talking about difficult things.

Depression in boys often looks different than females: edgy, angry, hostile or defiant; and that's the EXPECTATION of what males will be like in many cultures.

Boys are expected to "get over it" on their own.

More boys are committing suicide at younger ages in U.S. than in the past.

Secular trend: puberty now starts earlier than in the previous century, but emotional development doesn't start earlier.

Depression is often accompanied by a sense of guilt, shame, or unworthiness.

About 7% of adolescents suffer from each type of depression: major depression, and dysthymia.

Males may be more likely to lie about attempts, but also more likely to use harsher methods (guns, auto "accidents")

Depression hides THEM.

Chapter 9: Drinking and Drugs

Most teens and college students have tried drugs and alcohol or use regularly.

Boys are more likely to use than girls.

Connection between sports and alcohol.

Relieves anxiety - lots of anxiety in being an adolescent.

Drinking as a rite of passage - similar to other cultures' killing or eating prey
A sign of one's courage, manhood
Stories of bravado in surviving drinking episodes, taming the beast
Bragging about throwing up.

The journey from the simplicity of sex to the complexity of relationships.

Adolescent moments of desire and anxiety.

Wants to be manly, doesn't want to be rejected or hurt.

Has to make the transition from FANTASY to reality in relations with girls.

Fears dependence on girls - connected to the developmental necessity of NOT being dependent on mom.

First sexual encounter usually happens before there is advanced emotional maturity.

Hooking up. What are the ramifications of these kinds of superficial sexual encounters?

Most males don't know the rules of the game of intimacy in the first 5 or so years that they are IN the game.

Females often have very different conceptions of what happens AFTER an intimate encounter than do males.

Males naturally transfer some of their love for their mother onto their female partner(s). Perhaps that's why so many males demonstrate that they need to be taken care of by their female partners.

Dating is filled with anxiety for most males.

Males' experience with sexual arousal and feelings usually take place out of the context of relationships - in the context of autostimulation (masturbation).

The male is in CONTROL of his fantasy life. Perhaps this is transferred onto the male's need to CONTROL sexual encounters with real females.

A male normally has a lot of experience NOT being in control of his sexuality during adolescence. Erections just HAPPEN. Nocturnal emissions just HAPPEN.

Aura of pride and macho-ness surrounding developing male sexuality. College-age males are not immune to this pressure to be a DON JUAN, to succeed sexually through by CONQUERING women.

They feel they have to talk about conquests; this is in many ways the same as talkign about succeeding in a fight with another male.

Exploitation of women by male athletes. Common but not necessarily true of all athletes.

Little is known, compared to females, about males who were sexually abused as children and adolescents. But what is known is that they often struggle with the same issues that female victims suffer from.

Chapter 11: Anger and Violence

Lots of influences on violent behavior in males. Many experiential factors (poverty, violent images in media, violent parents, inadequate supervision and teaching of morals, rights of others).

Our culture doesn't do very well to teach our males to control their anger.

Lessons we should teach:

life isn't always fair - deal with it
you can't hurt others just because you get angry
you need to understand how your actions affect others
don't see threats where they don't exist
controlling your anger doesn't mean you are a sissy

Males are primed to look for threats, and to respond with aggression.

Males often don't know or admit what it is that makes them angry.

Violence is a male's way of protecting himself.

They're trying to live up to the "Big Impossible."
One can't feel inferior.

Tremblay's research shows it is the rejected, unpopular boy who is most likely to be aggressive. They have LOWER levels of testosterone than other boys.

Ken Dodge's research shows that aggressive boys MISINTERPRET the intentions of others. They see threats and slights where none exist.

Clear relationship between anger and alcohol.

For some males, alcohol lights a "fuse" of anger. This kind of behavior seems to be inherited.

Defusing: Talking about feelings can interrupt the connection between anger and violence.

Chapter 12: What Boys Need.

We should discard the view of boys that they can't understand themselves and their feelings, and use their feelings to their advantage. This is the damaging nature of believing that "boys will be boys".

1. Teach boys that they have a rich internal life, and teach them the vocabulary they need to label their inner feelings.

2. Recognize the high activity level of boys and give them outlets for it.

3. Talk to boys in ways they can understand. Tap into their directness and ability to problem-solve.

"How are you feeling" may be too vague. "How angry are you right now" is a better question for a boy.

4. Teach boys that EMOTIONAL courage IS courage, and that this kind of courage and empathy are sources of real strength and power.

5. Use discipline to build character and conscience, not to build enemies.

Discipline needs to be clear and consistent, NOT harsh.

Remember, the LAST thing a boy needs to feel is SHAME.

Most discipline is GUIDANCE not punishment.

6. Model a manhood of emotional attachment.

7. Teach boys there are many ways to be a man.

Give him powerful experiences that speak to his inner life.