Raising Cain: How to Raise a Boy

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

^^ Dan Kindlon & Michael ThompsonRaising a son is an amazing privilege and a huge responsibility, and both sides shine through in Raising Cain. I've never been more ready to raise a son, more excited for what's next, or more aware of the troubles that most boys face.

RAISING CAIN by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson

The following are excerpts taken from Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson's Raising Cain. Bold and italics are mine. Everything else is Dan and Michael's.

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Geoffrey Wolff’s remark in The Duke of Deception:“My mind is never completely empty of my father.”--They see only boys’ anger without understanding its roots in their fear of exposure and vulnerability. --I want my daughters to know men who have retained their exuberant boyishness, but not at the expense of a lost emotional life.--We believe that boys, beginning at a young age, are systematically steered away from their emotional lives toward silence, solitude, and distrust.--Perhaps because men enjoy so much power and prestige in society, there is a tendency to view boys as shoo-ins for future success and to diminish the importance of any problems they might experience in childhood. There is a tendency to presume that a boy is self-reliant, confident, and successful, not emotional and needy. People often see in boys signs of strength where there are none, and they ignore often mountainous evidence that they are hurting.--Boys need an emotional vocabulary that expands their ability to express themselves in ways other than anger or aggression.They need to experience empathy at home and at school and be encouraged to use it if they are to develop conscience.Boys, no less than girls, need to feel emotional connections.Throughout their lives, but especially during adolescence, they need close, supportive relationships that can protect them from becoming victims of their turbulent, disowned emotions.Most important, a boy needs male modeling of a rich emotional life. He needs to learn emotional literacy as much from his father and other men as from his mother and other women, because he must create a life and language for himself that speak with male identity.A boy must see and believe that emotions belong in the life of a man. --We know that mothers who explain their emotional reactions to their preschool children and who do not react negatively to a child’s vivid display of sadness, fear, or anger will have children who have a greater understanding of emotions.--... convey her own discomfort with the subject—a message that boys frequently “hear” when fathers give short shrift to questions or observations about emotions.--Studies that track children’s development through the school years suggest that, by the third grade, a child has established a pattern of learning that shapes the course of his or her entire school career.--Alan makes a simple point—that boys don’t like being yelled at and yet that makes up a large part of their lives.--In his weary review of life at school, Alan has described the nature of the problem so many boys have there. In essence, they sit all morning, and they have to keep track of those little books and not drop them in the water.--... research indicates that a boy is four times more likely to be referred to a school psychologist than is a girl.--The Waldorf Schools, with a creative arts–based curriculum, use a “pictorial introduction” to reading in the early grades.--

The most important thing to remember, the guiding principle, is to try to keep your son’s self-esteem intact while he is in school.

--If he starts to hate himself because he isn’t good at schoolwork, he’ll fall into a hole that he’ll be digging himself out of for the rest of his life.--Boys who feel feared, discounted, or unduly revered in school suffer a kind of emotional isolation that only intensifies their own fears, feelings of unworthiness, or arrogant expectations of entitlement.--“Kids pick up on how you feel about them as human beings. If they feel respected, if they feel liked and cared for, those boys are a piece of cake. These cold, angry boys melt in your hand because their basic needs are to be loved, cared for, respected."--On the ice, in our schools, and in our lives, there is a need for some moments of anarchy, for a sprint of the spirit, not only for boys but for us all.--Harsh discipline—by which we mean both physical punishment in the form of hitting or spanking and verbal intimidation, which includes belittling, denigrating, scapegoating, and threatening—is not the answer for any child. Not ever.--If you really want a tour of your own dark impulses, have children; it, too, will put you in touch with all of your most uncontrolled and regrettable impulses.--If a girl were the most annoying person in the ninth grade, everyone would want to know what was going on inside her head. If a boy is the most annoying person in the ninth grade, many people simply say: “Jesus, what an irritating kid. He needs some discipline.”--Good discipline is consistent; it provides clear and well-reasoned expectations and firm, compassionate guidance by adults who model the same standards and behavior in their daily interactions with a child and with others. Good discipline engages a child, encourages contact instead of isolation, draws him into discussion instead of sending him away. It involves the boy as a consultant. It may be with straightforward questions, such as, “What is it you don’t understand about this rule or don’t agree with?” or “What do you need in order to change this pattern of behavior?”--It takes a lot more time and effort to spend the hour with your son that he needs than it does to yell at him and then go do your own thing.--In Papua, New Guinea, the Fox Indians call manhood the “Big Impossible.”--Boys not only feel the pressure to appear masculine, but they feel that, in doing so, they must be clearly not feminine—perhaps even antifeminine—and so they consciously and deliberately attack in others and in themselves traits that might possibly be defined as feminine. This includes tenderness, empathy, compassion, and any show of emotional vulnerability.--... in pursuit of explanations instead of alibis. It is tempting for adults to take the easy route, to go along with the denial, the missed meetings, the vague answers, the assurances that everything is “okay, I guess,” when we know it isn’t, to rationalize a boy’s troubles as “growing pains” and let it go at that. Instead, we must actively pursue the Connors of the world; we must take the time and make the effort to find out what they’re feeling and track their troubles to a source. This is the legwork of parenting, teaching, counseling; there is no shortcut.--It is parents and educators who need to create a climate that clearly communicates a moral code in which cruelty is neither tolerated nor ignored. In a home or school environment that fosters emotional awareness and personal accountability, where adults give those values a voice, the silence of boys will be broken and, with it, the culture of cruelty’s silent power in boys’ lives.--Emotional distance keeps many good men from being better fathers; it doesn’t diminish a son’s desire for connection. No matter how impossible a father may be, at the deepest level of his being, a boy wants to love his father and wants to be known and loved by him.--

Sons have to be loved and well regarded by their fathers, at any age.

--It is clear to us that the most emotionally resourceful and resilient boys are those whose fathers are part of the emotional fabric of the family, whose fathers care for them and show it in comforting, consistent ways.--In their early years, when they are rank beginners at so much, their father’s opinion of them carries enormous weight.--Simplistic as it may sound, we’ve often observed that just having a ritual activity to share can boost the odds that a father-son relationship will survive the stormy waters of adolescence.--

A boy never loses his need to be understood and loved by his mother.

--Both described a comfort level they felt with their mothers, and one finally defined what he meant: “Well, she’s pretty much right about everything.” By that, he explained, he meant that she usually understood him.--

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

^^ F. Scott Fitzgerald--Loren was depressed, and as it does in many boys, his depression presented, not as a sad, down mood, but as irritability.--Symptoms of depression in boys may be hard to read or be missed because the boys often don’t look sad or “depressed.” They look edgy or angry, hostile or defiant. A boy’s depression is often ignored because he is meeting cultural expectations of masculinity. Stoicism, emotional reserve, or even a withdrawal into his fortress of solitude are accepted and sometimes admired male behaviors. Depressive behavior in boys often only comes to our attention when it finally costs them performance points in school or on the playing field, or when it gets them into trouble with the law.--Like a Clint Eastwood character, a boy imagines himself to be willing to take the bullet—take the emotional pain—and act as if it doesn’t matter. They believe that, if they’re brave and strong enough, they can steel themselves and go on.--

What is the normal child like? Does he just eat and grow and smile sweetly?No, that is not what he is like.The normal child, if he has confidence in mother and father, pulls out all the stops. In the course of time he tries out his power to disrupt, to destroy, to frighten, to wear down, to waste, to wangle, and to appropriate.…At the start he absolutely needs to live in a circle of love and strength (with consequent tolerance) if he is not to be too fearful of his own thoughts and of his imaginings to make progress in his emotional development.

^^ Donald W. Winnicott, The Child--What boys need, first and foremost, is to be seen through a different lens than tradition prescribes. Individually, and as a culture, we must discard the distorted view of boys that ignores or denies their capacity for feeling, the view that colors even boys’ perceptions of themselves as above or outside a life of emotions. We must recognize the harm in asking “too much and not enough” of them—in demanding more at times than they are developmentally able to give while unnecessarily lowering expectations of self-control, empathy, emotional honesty, and moral responsibility.--Give boys permission to have an internal life, approval for the full range of human emotions, and help in developing an emotional vocabulary so that they may better understand themselves and communicate more effectively with others.--Boys may talk about the Red Sox with their fathers, and years later they may remember fondly going to Fenway Park, but what they tell us about in therapy are the times when the parental curtain parted, when they saw their mother’s courage, or their father’s tenderness or tears, or the time that their father shared the story of some terrifying struggle with them, acknowledging fear as a “real man” emotion.--

Tips for raising boys

1. Recognize and accept the high activity level of boys and give them safe boy places to express it.

Boys are tremendously sensitive to adults who do not have a reasonable tolerance level for boy energy, and when they do sense that a person has a low threshold of boy tolerance, they usually respond to it as a challenge. 4889

2. Talk to boys in their language—in a way that honors their pride and their masculinity.

Be direct with them; use them as consultants and problem solvers.For example, if a boy describes a situation that seems terrifying or full of grief, we will say, “I don’t know you well enough to know how you felt, but it seems to me that you were in a pretty scary situation there. I would have been frightened had I been in your shoes.” A boy can always say, “No, that’s not true of me,” at which point he is also likely to correct our misimpression with additional thoughts we can then explore....If you want to know something about your son’s emotional responses, ask him about how his friends feel, whether it was an unnerving situation for someone else:

• How did he help his friend?
• Could he have used help in that situation?
• What does he think of the way the adults handled the situation?
• What would he have liked to see you do had you been in a position of authority?
• Does he think that a woman might have handled the situation differently than a man?

The problem with boy-adult conversation is that adults get exasperated because they expect a different kind of communication. Adults expect much of adolescent boys because boys look big and want adult privileges. But if they haven’t had much practice talking, or they think it isn’t manly to talk, berating them or being disappointed in them won’t help. It only discredits the adult in the eyes of the boy.

3. Teach boys that emotional courage is courage, and that courage and empathy are the sources of real strength in life.

Mark Twain’s description of courage, which we quoted in chapter 5, bears repeating: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” Boys need to learn that it is part and parcel of true emotional courage in a man to accept fear and other feelings of vulnerability in himself and others....Charlie appreciated the effort to reassure him, but he couldn’t take comfort in Jeff’s words because it wasn’t the sound in the room that had frightened him; it was the sound of the fear in his heart, and his thoughts were not so much about killer winds as about loving friends he worried were in the path of danger. The father heard the friend’s effort to calm Charlie and realized that his own efforts to persuade had been pointless.So he asked, “Would it help if I lay down with you and put my arm around you?”“Yes, Dad, but you have to stay.”The father stretched out beside his son and put an arm around his shoulder.“I will stay until I’m sure you are asleep. Will that be okay?”“Yes, Dad. Can you hug me tighter?”

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

5. Model a manhood of emotional attachment.

6. Teach boys that there are many ways to be a man.

--You can buy the book here. :)