Boys Are Good!

A mom came to see me for therapy worried about her 12 year old son. Since her husband’s death her son played basketball. Lots of basketball. Morning, noon and night! When she would try to sit down with him...

13 year old Jimmy came home and slammed his books down on the counter. Mom asked him what was up and he marched directly to his room and slammed the door.

How many times have we heard the lament, “But he never talks about his feelings.” And in many ways this lament is the truth but most people don’t have a clue why.

The book offers plenty of suggestions about how to be closer with your son. This excerpt is from the storytelling section and focuses on how to tell stories to boys where they are a character within the story. They love it!

Jason had experienced the death of his 16 year old best friend to suicide two months prior. His parents were worried about him. They hadn’t seen a tear from him and that just didn’t make sense to them. He didn’t talk

The first reason is that when boys go through puberty and get elevated testosterone levels their access to their emotional tears goes down. Basically, when boys are 12 they lose some of their connection with their emotional

I once worked with a young man whose girlfriend was killed in a car accident. The young man was distraught and crushed by her death. Shortly after the death

“My son wants to win. Nearly all the time. When he doesn’t he gets upset. He won’t quit playing his video game until he reaches level 22. Food, rest, drink, nothing stops him.”

This excerpt is from the section on “precarious manhood” that describes the latest research on the concept of manhood and how it is a moving goalpost that impacts boys and men.

Research techniques have improved and are showing us some new sides of the hormone testosterone. This excerpt is part of the section that talks about some of those discoveries.

The other thing you can do to help is to get him to connect his bodily experience with the emotion. Boys are usually very aware of their bodies and this can be a great way to help them understand their emotions.