00:07:56.720And in a lot of ways, the relationships around young people can carry the strain of those changes.
00:08:03.120That's why you see things like fallouts, drama, bullying, conformity, young people choosing what parts of themselves to show and not show.
00:08:12.440There's a whole shift that's happening within the development of young people around the end of middle school.
00:08:20.140So for a grade like Logan's to not only avoid serious conflict, but to know each other deeply, that is saying something.
00:08:30.440And I'm not saying that this mythical group of children had some sort of golden standard of perfect adolescence relationships.
00:08:38.760I'm just saying that in leaving California, he was leaving something behind.
00:08:47.640At first, like, I wasn't, I wasn't that sad because I didn't really know what I was leaving behind because I couldn't, like, have anything else to compare to.
00:08:59.100Only my move to California, which, which was great.
00:09:03.760So I was expecting something of the same greatness that I was expecting to be happier here and have a better time and for it to be even better than California.
00:11:40.140that like different everyone everyone does the same thing all the girls play lacrosse and soccer
00:11:49.020all the boys play football and like i don't know but like no one's different
00:11:57.800it was definitely weird because in california i was in public school but here i'm in private school
00:12:05.440So that was a big change. We have a lot more resources here, and it's overall just really different because, you know, it's just a different type of school.
00:12:22.180bigger campus better teachers all that like what um my spanish teacher uh like a couple weeks ago
00:12:32.740she was talking about how like she wants us to move up um from spanish two to spanish three honors
00:12:42.600next year um and but she said that if you try to do that and you're not ready like she went on this
00:12:51.520whole long thing and basically it didn't end up with like like you didn't her version of you in
00:13:02.940the story she said that the worst thing was that you would end up in a bad college because you took
00:13:12.920the wrong spanish class and that kind of reflects what everyone in the school is fearing the the
00:13:20.980School really only cares about their reputation
00:13:31.560And you can really see that in her and the counselors,
00:13:38.900the guidance counselors that tell you what classes to take
00:13:45.280based on what you want your profession to be.
00:13:48.140I mean, this is the first year of high school I'm in.
00:13:50.980And I've already had, like, four or five speeches, like, the whole grade has already had four or five speeches about how we need to start now and get ready, build our resume, all that, which is way too early, in my opinion.
00:36:22.520As I said, there were maybe 50 guys in the room today, and this guy today was a senior,
00:36:30.860and I started off by having everybody that wants to say something they like about this
00:36:36.160person, and they're really wonderful at that.
00:36:38.700They talk in very real and personal ways about their relationship with that guy.
00:36:45.260And today's guy, his name was MJ, I think Michael Jr.
00:36:51.780And, you know, he's a captain of the soccer team and head of the honor council
00:36:58.120and one of the nicest guys in the school.
00:37:02.380Lots of people said wonderful things about him being funny,
00:37:04.980about him being a really good friend, about him being a real leader,
00:37:09.540a guy that tried to bring out the best in people, things like that.
00:37:14.320And then he proceeded to try to talk about where he was actually at in relation to girls.
00:37:23.980And he wound up talking about an experience with a girlfriend where it ended badly in his mind, and it left some negative effects to the point where he felt inhibited from opening himself up to that depth of feeling and connection again.
00:37:47.540and in the whole point of what we're trying to do there we call it sort of pure counseling but
00:37:53.940it's really an emotional literacy program and uh the basic idea is that in the context of their
00:38:01.220friendships with each other they can help each other um get off their chest negative emotions
00:38:08.720that interfere with their ability to function and think so what what mj was doing was in a very
00:38:15.180natural way, going to an experience that has clouded his ability to be as close and connected
00:38:23.000with girls as he would like to be. And so in talking about this experience, I just asked him
00:38:29.740to go back to what had been hurtful to him, which he did, and he teared up. And there was this really
00:38:38.740active sense, Jonathan, of the other boys in the room, both really understanding what he was saying
00:38:46.080about his experience, and holding him while he allowed himself to ache and hurt. And, you know,
00:38:55.480afterwards, we have to stop because of time, and a number of the boys come up and give him hugs,
00:39:01.780This is a big six-foot guy, soccer player, and I'm always touched by the very intuitive way that these boys understand what it means to be a brother to someone, to leave no one behind emotionally, to use the power of their relationships to kind of hold each other up and help each other through difficult things.
00:39:28.760We've had boys in those demonstrations talk about witnessing someone getting shot, you know, when they're 12 years old in a playground in Philadelphia.
00:39:39.480Or another guy talking about having lost his father at birth, having lost his mother a year or so earlier, and going from school to the cemetery and setting up a folding chair and talking to her.
00:39:57.760You know, boys talking about really difficult, traumatic events in their lives and using the support and the space, the opportunity to, you know, to get those things off their chest and to be real with each other.
00:40:12.640So I'm always struck by the intuitive, you know, instinctual way that boys, given the opportunity, will both offer that kind of support to each other and take advantage of it.
00:40:23.760I do believe that what happened today with MJ, what happens in that room each time we get together, is in fact what is natural for boys.
00:40:35.520I think bonds of empathy, caring, support, understanding, I actually think that's who people are generally, boys as well as girls.
00:40:44.820And that what happens to boys is, you know, this sort of dominance training that is forced upon them by the boyhoods that we create for them and that they then enact in peer policing and bullying and competition and so forth.
00:41:03.860And what they're really looking for, I think what allows this to happen is simply that a couple of adults in their community, in this case it's a school, invite them to come together and treat each other well in this mode.
00:41:23.780It's kind of like if we build it, they'll come.
00:41:25.760And I can say that with confidence. It's not just in this particular school, because I've actually used this model in many other contexts, including in a youth violence prevention program that I designed and directed in Philadelphia for about 10 years.
00:41:43.160And we organized it in some of the most impoverished and violence-stricken communities in and around Philadelphia.
00:41:54.360We targeted it towards middle-year boys, early adolescent boys, middle school boys.
00:42:02.420And we had one adult, and the rest were these, you know, maybe 10, 12, you know, young boys.
00:42:12.420And we just simply invited them to use the space, the opportunity to talk about their experiences of violence, street violence, domestic violence, school violence, and essentially try to help them debrief and work through the tensions that otherwise put them at risk for reenacting violence in their relationships down the road.
00:42:42.420It was a youth violence intervention project, and the whole idea was that if we can help boys talk out what they felt, what they experienced, what they've absorbed, they're at less risk for perpetuating that pattern.
00:43:00.620I mean, you know, I just find that, again, if we build it, they'll come.
00:43:03.520you know there's a there's a there's a lot of talk these days in this me too time
00:43:10.120about teaching boys this that or the other thing you know this virtue that virtue virtues of respect
00:43:16.920or virtues of empathy or whatnot and my experience has really been that that boys already have those
00:43:23.940values, those virtues in their hearts, we just have to remove some of the forces, the structures
00:43:35.620that push them in other directions, more toxic directions, and create opportunities for them
00:43:43.660to be themselves with each other. And they're right there. Like I said, they fully rise to
00:43:51.660the occasion. I'm not making this happen. I'm simply almost fronting for it to happen in the
00:43:57.440natural way that it would. That's really the question, isn't it? If we know that this culture
00:44:04.880shift is possible, and we know that boys will take the opportunity if it is given to them,
00:44:11.000how do we create relationships with our children, with students, that foster those opportunities
00:44:16.380for openness. It's really easy to say, but what does it look like in real life?
00:44:25.240You know, I'm sorry that Logan could only find one teacher that he experienced as authentic,
00:44:32.320as a person. And, you know, I think boys have pretty finely attuned radar for hypocrisy and
00:44:43.880pretense. What enables a boy to really invest himself in a relationship with a teacher is how
00:44:50.140real that teacher is, seems to be. So for example, one of the qualities that boys said in our
00:44:55.480learning studies, one of the qualities they said they really, really could trust is a teacher who
00:45:03.640had a passion for the thing that they were teaching or coaching. You know, a transparent
00:45:10.060kind of investment in the subject, that was a precondition for the boy taking up an invitation
00:45:17.180to join that teacher or that coach in learning that activity. So again, that's the transparency,
00:45:24.240the authenticity, or the honesty. In addition, you know, we found that these relationships
00:45:31.320are forged, in a sense, outside of the activity itself. You know, it's how well the teacher
00:45:39.500knows me as a person and connects with me independent of my productivity in that particular
00:45:46.220activity. So you want me to learn math. Do you know me as a person? You know, I think is sort of
00:45:53.520the negotiation there. Or you want me to play soccer and really work at developing my foot
00:46:00.240skills. How well do you know, can we find common ground as lovers of the Chelsea football club or,
00:46:09.040you know, music or, you know, nature or whatever it might be. So a lot of the stories that we heard
00:46:16.060from boys and teachers about the kinds of relational, we call them gestures that invite
00:46:21.300boys to connect with a teacher, a lot of them had to do with common experiences or common
00:46:29.960identities or common interests, some way of knowing the person outside of the context of
00:46:36.240the particular demand. Um, so that's one, one thought in response to your question. Um, you
00:46:44.800know, asking a boy to engage with something is essentially asking him to be vulnerable because
00:46:52.940what we're doing is we're, we're, we're, we're seeking to work with that boy at the very edge
00:47:01.540of what they're able to do, they have to go to a place where they don't know how to do something
00:47:07.180very well. And they have to reveal themselves in that place to us, their coach or their mentor
00:47:15.260or their teacher, and put themselves in our hands to help them, you know, develop themselves further.
00:47:22.960And that's a very vulnerable place for a boy to be. And he's willing to be there. You know,
00:47:29.900I think, I think the, you know, the, the instinct or the urge to mastery is, is, is inborn. I think
00:47:36.740it's, it's profound and it's a real motivation. I think boys want to get better at soccer and want
00:47:42.840to learn how to do math problems. So their, their, their, their, their motivation is there,
00:47:47.620but they have to find somebody that they can trust and put themselves in that person's hands.
00:47:53.340Um, so the qualities of the teacher and the skill of the teacher in, in, in engendering that kind of, uh, trust is really important. Um, and I'll say one more thing about that. Uh, you know, many boys come to the project of learning or, um, uh, playing a sport having been disappointed or even hurt badly, uh, in some prior, uh, dependency relationship.
00:48:22.000It might have been with their parents. It might have been with a previous teacher or coach, and they've developed some degree of mistrust.
00:48:30.840It's not so easy for them to kind of, you know, partner with with you in that activity.
00:48:38.780You know, and many parents, teachers, coaches, they find boys off putting because it seems like the boy is going to be rejecting or is completely disinterested.
00:48:52.000in that kind of partnership. They can't find a way to earn the boy's trust. And, you know,
00:49:02.020one of the really most thrilling things about our research on this subject of relational learning,
00:49:07.380relational teaching, was that every kind of boy, even the boys that were most, you know, hurt or
00:49:16.220even impaired, every kind of boy was being reached by some teacher or some coach.
00:49:24.460And what it told us was it was more about the approach than the boy himself.
00:49:31.460And then the second thing to say about that is that, you know, where a teacher found themselves
00:49:37.480unable to achieve that breakthrough or that connection, you know, the onus our research
00:49:45.500told us, the onus was on the adult, the professional, to keep trying and to come up
00:49:53.320with the correct strategy that actually enabled that boy to take that step toward vulnerability.
00:50:02.500And sometimes for teachers, you know, they just reach the end of their rope. They exhaust their
00:50:07.860repertoire and they just don't know what else to do. And that's a very stressful and difficult
00:50:14.820place for a teacher or a coach, particularly when there's, you know, all these other students or all
00:50:20.220these other athletes, you know, needing the same thing from them. And so what often will teachers
00:50:25.600will do consciously and unconsciously is they'll write that boy, that difficult boy off. I did
00:50:30.680everything I could. I can't do more. The problem is his. And, you know, so I'm in the position
00:50:37.820where I'm just going back to schools like Lynn Brooker, you know, many, many others. And I'm
00:50:42.920saying actually the job of the teacher, the coach, is to be the relationship manager and to assume
00:50:51.300full responsibility to fix a relationship if it's not working. Teachers often will reach,
00:51:00.040you know, they'll go so far and they'll say the next step is the boys. He has to put in,
00:51:05.380he has to buy in. And our research tells us that that simply is not likely to happen.
00:51:11.880And I say to audiences of teachers in workshops I do, you know, if you're waiting for a boy to take that step, don't hold your breath.
00:51:26.580You're the one who at least theoretically is in the better position to be dispassionate and to not take the boy's rejection or indifference or his stonewall personally.
00:51:40.640But to recognize that you can get through to him. There's a human being in there behind that mask or that wall. And this is a chance for you to stretch and grow and expand your relational repertoire.
00:51:54.280are. One of the last things to talk about is the distinction of a relationship between an educator
00:52:01.160and a learner and a relationship between peers. Because again, we're talking about Logan's peer
00:52:10.020culture and we talked about how that is shaped by young people themselves. So this is like,
00:52:18.200not invalidating relational learning, but adding to it the lens of friendship.
00:52:24.280We've talked on this podcast about the expectations of the man box, right?
00:52:28.800That whole thing to be tough, strong, dominant,
00:52:32.340and those qualities that are sort of associated with stereotypes about masculinity.
00:52:38.160I don't know if I've actually talked about it,
00:52:40.360but in an article that I wrote for Breaking the Boycott,
00:52:42.680I talk about a report by the Men's Project that compared different outcomes.
00:52:48.480And also for the record, I should have said this,
00:52:49.920but for record, put a pin in friendship.
00:52:54.280But this report compared the outcomes for boys who adhered to the man box, so who really bought
00:52:59.120into that stereotypical narrative, and boys who were free from the man box. And what they found
00:53:05.820was significantly lower rates of violence for the boys that were free from the man box. So lower
00:53:12.680rates, it was like verbal bullying decreased by more than half. Physical bullying decreased by
00:53:19.500like 90% or something like that. Um, being free of the man box was related to less risk-taking,
00:53:25.160better mental health, less substance abuse, um, less suicide ideation. It was thing after thing
00:53:29.660after thing. Um, and this corroborates like other research, but to take that pain out of friendship,
00:53:37.700um, if that makes sense as a metaphor, according to research done by Judy Chu, that's connected0.71
00:53:43.780to Michael Kimmel and Niobe Way, resistance to masculine norms only has a protective nature
00:53:50.300if it is combined with having a close friendship.
00:53:57.640And there's a chance that's part of what Logan is experiencing.
00:54:01.960Well, you know, I really appreciate Logan's insight and self-awareness, you know, that
00:54:09.540that in a certain sense, he's being defined by the possibilities that he's finding in his current
00:54:18.620relationships. What's that saying? You know, we are the company we keep. You know, we are the key
00:54:26.480insight of my educational research, the insight I have in my work in clinical context with boys
00:54:34.220is that we are relational creatures, you know, we are wired to connect, and we grow and extend
00:54:43.780ourselves in the context of those connections. So if Logan's experience of who he is,
00:54:53.900if what's being reflected back to him in his experience in those relationships is more
00:55:00.740blunted and shallow superficial um yeah he's going to find himself in in an unconscious way
00:55:09.280just kind of pulling back and you know adopting more um you know sort of uh uh um i don't know
00:55:20.160more formal kind of role playing you know the the we talk about uh boys living behind a mask
00:55:29.460And some of what researchers have found is that the older a boy becomes, the more typical it is for boys to live behind those masks because the culture that they find themselves in reinforces the necessity to wear a mask, to act the part.
00:55:48.580So all the boys know, all boys know kind of what the script requires of them.
00:55:53.700And if they're not able to kind of penetrate those masks and make real connections with each other, they're going to live more and more behind their own masks.
00:56:05.260You know, that notion of a mask, in part, it comes from George Orwell in this wonderful essay, Shooting an Elephant.
00:56:16.660And he was a, George Orwell himself was a policeman in Burma.
00:56:21.520And in that particular essay, it's a it's a fictional essay. He talks about a policeman having to dispatch a sort of runaway elephant. And he talks about the British soldier having to do that with absolute dispassion, you know, to be seeming almost mechanical and robotic about how he goes about it.
00:56:44.680And the line in the story is, he wears a mask and he grows to fit it. And it's that grows to fit it part that as a developmental psychologist most worries me, most troubles me.
00:56:55.640The boys that conform too much, who take on the identity too much, are the ones that have the worst outcomes, developmental outcomes.
00:57:11.460They're the most anxious, the most depressed, the most prone to bullying, and the most prone to sexual harassment.
00:57:20.040They're also the boys, by the way, that are most prone to suicidal thoughts.
00:57:23.900It's a very unhappy place, living in the man box.
00:57:30.200And the idea essentially is that there's all these pressures on boys to fit themselves into the conventional definitions of what a man should be, even if those definitions are, you know, really, really at odds with who they are.
00:57:50.300Um, and, uh, what enables a boy to take a stand against those pressures to resist, uh, absolute conformity, um, uh, what, what enables that kind of resistance is some sense that somebody knows and cares about him.
00:58:08.580And the more of that kind of resource a boy has in his life, one psychologist calls those relationships relational anchors.
00:58:23.580The more, though, that that kind of ballast exists in a boy's development, the better able he is to take a stand and to resist those kinds of pressures.
00:58:32.760I hope Logan finds boys, friends, people that he can be genuine with and can grow, you know, can come out from behind the mask and grow into those relationships.
00:58:47.100I hope that teachers offer that kind of opportunity for him as a learner.
00:58:51.360I hope coaches offer him that opportunity on athletic fields, and I hope he finds it in his friendships.
00:58:56.900As much as I could listen to Michael talk about his research for another hour, I couldn't ask for a better way to end this episode than with a positive hope for Logan.
00:59:09.420And if you've been listening to this with a particular boy on your mind, then we'll send him some positive vibes as well.
00:59:15.700you know this might seem like a small conversation in the grand scheme of things
00:59:22.780to talk about belonging and friendship or the experience of a single boy moving to a new state
00:59:28.440but when you look at the outcomes and we talk about a generation having different
00:59:33.260opportunities than any other generation well you know it's no manicured lawn lying at our feet