10 Things Each of Us Can Do to Help Our Adolescent Boys
Published: March 8, 1999
by: Michael Gurian, Ph.D.
Educate ourselves on how emotionally fragile adolescent boys are, how they hide their fragility in bravado, aggression, or silence. Notice that adolescent boys often express fragility by hurting others or in slighter verbal signs of need and pain.
Understand boy-specific ways our adolescent male talks, thinks, feels, and acts. Learn how testosterone, male brain structures, and male socialization differ from a girl's brain, biochemistry, and socialization.
Understand that male adolescence can begin as early as age nine and last through age twenty-one, and the support he needs at each stage.
Provide him with a father or father-figure during adolescence; if father is absolutely not available, mother might consider adapting her parenting and discipline style to become more "paternal."
Provide him with mentors. Often, single moms need to be very creative in finding mentors for sons, and can gain by talking to the boy about who they are and the value of seeking them out.
Provide him with a clan-like extended family, if not filled with blood relatives, then with close family friends who become a developmental clan the boy can rely on during his second decade.
Commit to providing two or three times the amount of emotional nurturing to our adolescent boy than we may provide now-which means spending more time with him, developing family rituals with him, and giving him new freedoms and responsibilities.
Remove the television from his room and restrict his time with TV, videogames, and movies—perhaps to 1 1/2 hours of TV or videogames in the home per day—until about age 17, when his brain can handle overstimulating media.
Make sure a parent or trusted elder caregiver is with the adolescent male, or is guiding his time during the "latch-key" hours (3:00 pm to 6:00 pm), the time-period when most adolescent male mischief and danger occurs.
Do not assume that an adolescent boy having trouble in the school or home is defective—the problem may very well be that the school, home or other community misunderstands the boy's developmental and emotional needs, or is unable to spend the time and effort fulfilling them.
Subscribe to
