Steve Biddulph: Turning Boys into Men without Violence

I saw a presentation by Steve Biddulph today at the Positive Schools Conference in Brisbane. I had heard about his book Raising Boys and have just bought his latest book called The New Manhood. He is a lovely gentle man when he speaks and very interesting. A few key points that stood out for me today was his comment abou the male problem in western civilisation. He pointed out there were always more problems with boys in school compared to girls and that a teenage boy was 3 times more likely to die than a girl. He then drew an imaginary line across the room and stated that one end was 300,000 years ago extending the line to the present time. He said imagine the width of a hand at the end of the line (2011 end) and that is how long we have lived in cities over 5,000 people. Not a long time was the point. He said if you imagine over the vast arc of time humans were hunters and gathers, very skillfull and cooperating. So humanity’s time in cities is very brief. He spoke of differences between boys and girls that boys didn’t read much, needed challenges and competition, whereas girls were good readers and they get on with it. He advised coeducational schools but from grade 6-9 the genders should be separated as they have different learning styles and didn’t behave well with the opposite gender. He suggested there was more safety in a single sex classroom. He said at Grade 10 they come back together as they are getting interested in each other. I liked that as I felt single gender schools try and stop the genders mixing, which is natural for them to be attracted, to explore sexuality and to get to know the opposite sex. If they are separated, then they don’t know how to socialise or become friends with the opposite sex. I never regretted going to a co-educational school as much of my learning about boys happened at school.

He also spoke about a program at Keilor West Primary in Melbourne called NITOR which was focussed on boys having the most difficulties. They had to apply for this class both the boys and their parents. They would get two teachers and there would be daily contact with parents about the boys and their homework. To make sure they were committed and supported. The program included studying their city in detail and learning life skills, learning to be good men. He spoke of an example of where boys where saying rude remarks to a young girl passing by. They were asked to imagine how they would feel if she was their sister or mother, would they be comfortable if they heard other boys speaking in this way. It built empathy within the boys. He spoke of a ritual along a cliff where the boys looked over the city and in a dawn ritual said goodbye to boyhood to become men. Very interesting. He mentioned that the male brain doesn’t fully form until 28. They said the program was very successful with these boys.

Later in his talk he stated that many youth don’t feel connected. He said that 39% of boys and 34% of girls use drugs between the ages of 10 and 15 years old. He said of Year 10 youth 79% (1997) consumed alcohol rising to 85% in 2007. Of those drinking, less than 11% complete Year 12. It was recommended that boys and girls don’t drink until 18. Many of course these days are drinking earlier and parents are confused about whether to allow alcohol or not. The experts say don’t but many parents are concerned about how to control alcohol consumption outside of home.

One other psychologist at this conference said alcohol should be banned. I also have deep concerns about the social problems it causes. Many sexual experiences come from alcohol rather than healthy pathways to get to know the other and develop a mutually healthy and heart based relationship. I feel that men have missed out on a great deal and I feel a deeper empathy for them as I start to learn to understand the challenges of boys, fathers and grandfathers and the importance of connection within genders and within families.

This is the beginning of change. I send love to the men reading this and encourage you to work on opening the heart, you will never return to detached living again. It is very empty and lonely. Much love and happiness to you all.

You can learn more about Steve Biddulph at his website http://web.me.com/stevebiddulph/Site_1/Articles.html.

An article of his website he explains is a good overview of his work. At the end of the day it is not about gender conflict or one gender controlling the other, it is about learning and understanding the differences as well as the similarities between the genders so that love can be fully realised. To-date their is little understanding or education about gender issues in the context of parenthood or life skills. Steve has provided a much needed service to parents and society. Very inspirational.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/7894318/Turning-boys-into-men.html

Turning boys into men

Teenage boys need fathers as role models, best-selling author and child psychologist Steve Biddulph tells Cassandra Jardine.

As my youngest boy is now 11, and the summer holidays are upon us – with all the rule-loosening that entails – I had dug out my old copy of Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys, when I learnt that Biddulph was reissuing the book with beefed-up sections on teenagers.

Even better, the eminent Australian child psychologist has been touring Britain, advising groups of parents on how to turn boys into men who are communicative, sensible and don’t suffer from “kitchen blindness” or “dyslaundria”. So, having tracked him down to Aldro, a prep school near Godalming where he was about to talk, I found myself in the headmaster’s drawing room with a gangling, shy man who seems to have a natural empathy with both children and their worried parents.

The key to understanding teenagers is simple, he says: “When puberty comes, they recycle their babyhood. Their prefrontal cortexes become like jelly, so a 13-year-old is like a one-year-old: passive, disorganised, and unable to make good choices. Parents have to provide structure, as they can’t organise themselves.”

Is a 14-year-old, then, the equivalent of the “terrible twos”? “Yes. You have to make limits for them, insist that they are back home at 10pm. At 14, they will argue with a road sign. They get worked up, so you have to keep your sense of humour and don’t give up, any more than you would with a toddler. If you know what to expect, you will think, ‘Ah-ha, exactly on schedule’, and won’t get so stressed.”

That kind of pithy, informed wisdom is the reason why Biddulph has sold more than four million books. But his understanding of the teenage male didn’t come naturally, he explains. “When I was nine years old, my parents moved from Yorkshire to Australia. Because I was tall, and English education had served me well, I was put in a class two years above my age. The other boys were at least a year-and-a-half older than me, and I never knew what they were talking about. I felt then that I couldn’t really ‘do’ people. I suspect I had a touch of Asperger’s syndrome.”

His first career plan was to be a physicist, so he wouldn’t have to deal with people. “Then, aged 18, I thought: ‘What is my goal in life?’ To talk to girls. So I started studying psychology and I found I could develop people skills by thinking them through.”

Biddulph is a little awkward one to one, but his study of girl chat has led to a long and happy marriage to Shaaron, who co-writes his books, while his teenage drive to understand his contemporaries has led to a spectacularly successful career.

Now 56, he became a child psychologist in the Seventies, the pioneering days of family therapy, and wrote his first book, Raising Happy Children (1983), “because it was stuff that everyone should know before they got into strife”. Boys became his focus because, as he wrote in the original edition of Raising Boys, 17 years ago, “the ethics of my work is to go where there is a catastrophe going on”.

Boys then were in trouble: five times more likely to have problems at school, and three times more likely to die before the age of 21. His diagnosis of the cause was the retreat of fathers from child-rearing, along with a generalised negativity towards parenting. But, far from being gloomy about bringing up well-balanced children, he believes that parenting has vastly improved in recent years, and many children are turning out as satisfactory as his own son and daughter, aged 26 and 19.

“Women are, on the whole, getting it right,” he says. “But the main change is that fathers are once again playing their part. Since the early Nineties, when Western society was the most underfathered there’s ever been, men have become three times more involved in bringing up their children.”

Personally, he resisted the lure of better paid work and travel to live in Tasmania, where his children were surrounded by relatives, and he had time not just to fetch them from school, but to stop off for an ice cream and a chat on the way home.

Fathers, he says, are boys’ security and role models. Much ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is, he believes, DDD – Dad Deficiency Disorder – because “to become a good man, you have to know good men”. With daughters, fathers provide the “self-esteem department”, a practice ground for future relationships, just as mothers are for boys.

While Biddulph is not advocating different approaches to bringing up the two sexes, there are physical distinctions worth noting. Infant girls, for example, have 80 per cent better hearing for sounds in the range of the human voice than boys – a difference that holds into adulthood. In relation to sight, boys’ retinas are more sensitive to movement, but less sensitive to colour than girls’.

Boys are also more prone to separation anxiety, so he advises against putting young boys in day care. As boys are slower developers, he also believes it can be wise to start their schooling a year later than girls. That way, not only would they be easier to teach in primary school but, when starting secondary school, they would not feel so puny beside the taller, more mature girls – an insecurity that leads to “desperation and unloveability”.

Parents at his talks tend to worry about very young boys and then about teenagers, when the 80 per cent rise in testosterone levels that heralds puberty turns them into “cactuses”. Everyone wants to know, as I do, about issues such as drinking and driving (not together, of course). In his view, “no alcohol before 18” is a better policy than a gentle introduction. On driving, he cites research which shows that a teenage driver who has a male passenger is at vastly greater risk of an accident. For his thoughts on other issues – including homosexuality and single motherhood – he tells me I shall have to refer to the book, because the time has come for his talk.

Though nervous off the podium, in front of an audience, he is electrifying. Give children understanding and time, he tells parents, not criticism and money. “You may be busy at work, but every event you share with a child – whether the game you play when stuck in traffic, or the kite you fly together – is like a diamond on a necklace.”

At the end, like a modern-day vicar, he shakes each of 300 departing parents by the hand. Several fathers told me afterwards that they had cancelled other engagements to spend more time with their sons.

• The 2010 edition of ‘Raising Boys’ by Steve Biddulph is published by HarperCollins, £9.99

Buy ‘Raising Boys’ by Steve Biddulph from Telegraph Books