So the plan is to use this as a space to write about what's going on out there in the world of sex and young people, all the many shades of craziness, all the wonderings and worryings.
A place to gather articles and research and see what I can apply/steal to make my work better and my thinking more rounded.
So I'll start with an olllld post from an olllld blog so as to get the ball rolling...
Today I found myself writing this to another youthworker and I guess it's a good starting place for wondering about boys and what's happening to them.....
"I'll pull together some stuff on boys - there's lots ideas around about social and emotional pressures on boys as to why they 'act out' in this way....I've got an article somewhere about the fact that it's not testosterone as was always presumed as boys and girls have similar levels of it pre-puberty but boys behaviour is different from much younger,
There's also stuff around the idea of 6ish and 13ish being key ages for boys emotionally as 6 is when (generally) they unattach from Mum and attach to Dad - it's a crunch time if Dad is absent or distant (physically or emotionally) as this is when they should be learning about male emotion through modelling. It's also the age when empathy develops and this is ideally learnt by directly observing your Dad care for your Mother......
Then when you're 13 you begin the same search for social and emotional markers amongst your friends but if you haven't had a strong positive role model from age 6 then this experience can be incredibly shaky and confusing. At a time when being vulnerable in any way other than anger is completely socially unacceptable.............
There's a great piece of number crunching done by the Canadian equivalent of childline showing that boys disappear as service users aged 13 and then reappear aged 17. Reports around self-esteem in teens conflict but many suggest that boys at least report a more robust self-esteem. BUT this has to be laid against our terrible suicide (greatest killer of young men in the UK) and violence and crime stats for young men......
The work I do in schools with boys is repeatedly coming up with the same issues. Emotion of any kind is completely unacceptable other than anger and humour. Any attempt to open up those issues with groups takes a lot of trust and de-sensitizing but even in the most positive groups I would say that for at least half of the boys there isn't just a reticence to deal with emotionality, there's a complete lack of language or recognition.....
When they get to year 11 it does change, the reticence breaks down quicker and there is relief to be finally able to talk about this stuff, but it's still very closely regulated by the groups and I sense an enormous amount of self-censoring...."
No conclusions or anything, just a place to start...
A place to gather articles and research and see what I can apply/steal to make my work better and my thinking more rounded.
So I'll start with an olllld post from an olllld blog so as to get the ball rolling...
Today I found myself writing this to another youthworker and I guess it's a good starting place for wondering about boys and what's happening to them.....
"I'll pull together some stuff on boys - there's lots ideas around about social and emotional pressures on boys as to why they 'act out' in this way....I've got an article somewhere about the fact that it's not testosterone as was always presumed as boys and girls have similar levels of it pre-puberty but boys behaviour is different from much younger,
There's also stuff around the idea of 6ish and 13ish being key ages for boys emotionally as 6 is when (generally) they unattach from Mum and attach to Dad - it's a crunch time if Dad is absent or distant (physically or emotionally) as this is when they should be learning about male emotion through modelling. It's also the age when empathy develops and this is ideally learnt by directly observing your Dad care for your Mother......
Then when you're 13 you begin the same search for social and emotional markers amongst your friends but if you haven't had a strong positive role model from age 6 then this experience can be incredibly shaky and confusing. At a time when being vulnerable in any way other than anger is completely socially unacceptable.............
There's a great piece of number crunching done by the Canadian equivalent of childline showing that boys disappear as service users aged 13 and then reappear aged 17. Reports around self-esteem in teens conflict but many suggest that boys at least report a more robust self-esteem. BUT this has to be laid against our terrible suicide (greatest killer of young men in the UK) and violence and crime stats for young men......
The work I do in schools with boys is repeatedly coming up with the same issues. Emotion of any kind is completely unacceptable other than anger and humour. Any attempt to open up those issues with groups takes a lot of trust and de-sensitizing but even in the most positive groups I would say that for at least half of the boys there isn't just a reticence to deal with emotionality, there's a complete lack of language or recognition.....
When they get to year 11 it does change, the reticence breaks down quicker and there is relief to be finally able to talk about this stuff, but it's still very closely regulated by the groups and I sense an enormous amount of self-censoring...."
No conclusions or anything, just a place to start...
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