Boys will be boys—and should be, to become true men

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I get where you’re coming from. Ultimately I think the goal should be to channel this tendency and to be able to tune into it when the timing is right. I’m not sure if that could be something that therapy could accomplish or if a new type of medication would allow for it or not. But I also dislike how we all have to be the same…I hate all these tests and things that measure your ability to do XYZ. It just seems like in this society, we value certain types of personalities or abilities and vilify all others.
 
F_Marturana said:
Some things in your list I don’t agree with. Falling out of trees for one. Boys don’t come with extra hard skulls or thicker brains.

My son has a brain injury due to an aneurysm. I see what that’s like.

Head trauma is a major cause of brain injuries that can be prevented. Falling, skateboard injuries, bike injuries, pool injuries. Why would we encourage sons to not be careful?

And also as a former girl (I’m middle aged), we don’t like being teased. Why can’t we teach boys to be nice to girls and other boys?

It’s not so far from teasing to harassing. A girl should think being mistreated means a boy likes her.
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I’m sorry, but you are taking my post out of context.

I didn’t say falling of trees is something to condone. I’m saying it’s not sinful to fall out of a tree.

Now it might be a sin to climb a tree if the kid was forbidden to climb and did anyway. But it’s not objectively a sin to climb a tree. Same with the other accidents. OF COURSE you do everything to keep them safe. But we can’t encase then bubble wrap or a bubble. Accidents are going to happen.

This is my favorite “boys will be boys” sports moment of all time.


I also was NOT condoning hurtful teasing. As I have said MULTIPLE times, there are some kinds of playful teasing which does not hurt feelings.

I’m not condoning bulling or hurting people’s feelings. Also, that kind of teasing could arguably be considered a venial sin.

I’m talking about sinless, playful teasing.

God bless
 
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At about the onset of puberty, I shot up my GI Joes with a .22 rifle. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
 
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phil19034 said:
This is my favorite “boys will be boys” sports moment of all time.
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Doesn’t sound like he’s an “everybody gets a participation trophy” advocate, lol!
And “team,” yes. I like to use that concept in the classroom. Team effort—> rewards for the whole team. See a teammate slacking? Remind them (nicely) about the potential rewards!
 
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Angel_Gabriel said:
I get where you’re coming from. Ultimately I think the goal should be to channel this tendency and to be able to tune into it when the timing is right. I’m not sure if that could be something that therapy could accomplish or if a new type of medication would allow for it or not. But I also dislike how we all have to be the same…I hate all these tests and things that measure your ability to do XYZ. It just seems like in this society, we value certain types of personalities or abilities and vilify all others.
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I’ve always hated standardized tests. I’m glad I didn’t go to school at a time when those were being pushed.

But as for channeling hyperfocus, it just can’t be done. It’s impossible for someone with ADHD to hyperfocus on something that doesn’t interest them and let’s face it, a lot of the things we have to do in life both in our jobs and at home are pretty boring and not very interesting. And as for medication, I haven’t found that it prevents me from hyperfocusing on things that interest me. But it does make it easier for me to start, stay focused on and complete tasks that don’t interest me. And it makes me into a much safer driver.
 
Thorolfr said:
And as for medication, I haven’t found that it prevents me from hyperfocusing on things that interest me. But it does make it easier for me to start, stay focused on and complete tasks that don’t interest me. And it makes me into a much safer driver.
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I’m glad it’s helping you 🙂 I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD but after having my daughter I can definitely see similar traits in me. I tend to be flighty with things that disinterest me…certain school subjects for instance.
 
prayerrider said:
But as challenging as they can be, I will not be a party to psychologically and emotionally emasculating them.
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Exactly what is it that you think is being done in our classrooms to psychologically and emotionally emasculate boys?
 
He was like a little pit bull. When his grandmother picked him up I commended his play to her.
 
prayerrider said:
I won’t be a party to the pansification of boys. No mas!
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From the dictionary:
pan·sy
NOUN
an effeminate or homosexual man
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Boys don’t get turned into homosexuals because they got “pansified” in school. But I know that in the past, boys who were gay sometimes got called “pansies”. I still remember someone shouting at me when I was a kid, “Don’t be such a pansy!”
 
Ok, fair enough.

Boys will be boys, but be careful don’t fall out of a tree.
 
I did. Branches mostly broke my fall.
Years later I got into solo mountaineering. Took a big fall there, too. Scraped my elbow.
Most boys love having a substitute teacher who has engaged in high risk adventure sports and still throws a football. I use that to my advantage.

When little boys come to me in tears on the playground because of a squabble I tell them to sort it out, or the principal can. Works every time. If they’re sniffling because they took a hard knock or tumble, but don’t want to go to the nurse I give them a fist bump and say “strength and honor.” Amazing how they respond to that!
 
By the way JimG, thanks for posting the article. Great stuff. Take home message: women cannot teach boys how to be men. Corollary message: every child needs a female mother and a male father. Deus vult!
 
F_Marturana said:
Head trauma is a major cause of brain injuries that can be prevented. Falling, skateboard injuries, bike injuries, pool injuries. Why would we encourage sons to not be careful?
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And don’t forget playing football:
In the journal Radiology today, an imaging study shows that players ages 8 to 13 who have had no concussion symptoms still show changes associated with traumatic brain injury.

Christopher Whitlow, chief of neuroradiology at Wake Forest School of Medicine, wanted to see how head impact affects developing brains. His team studied male football players between ages 8 and 13 over the course of a season, recording “head impact data” using a Head Impact Telemetry System to measure force, which was correlated with video of games and practices.

Before and after the season, the players also underwent elaborate brain imaging. Diffusion tensor imaging is a type of MRI that’s used to identify tiny changes in the structure of white matter (the neurons in the brain that are coated in myelin). The image measures fractional anisotropy (FA) of the movement of water molecules along axons. In healthy white matter, the direction of water movement tends to be uniform, but FA values decrease as movement becomes less ordered, and that process has been associated with head trauma. And in this case, the images of the boys’ brains at the end of the season showed a significant relationship between head impact and decreased FA in white-matter tracts. Boys who experienced more head impact had more changes.

“These decreases in FA caught our attention,” Whitlow said in a press statement, “because similar changes in FA have been reported in the setting of mild traumatic brain injury.”

Last year researchers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that NFL players who had begun playing football before age 12 had a higher risk of altered brain development, as compared to players who started later. And this August, Ann McKee, director of the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center, said that kids under 14 shouldn’t play football, reminding The Washington Post that kids’ heads are “a larger part of their body, and their necks are not as strong as adults’ necks. So kids may be at a greater risk of head and brain injuries than adults.”
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www.theatlantic.com

New Evidence That Football Alters the Brains of Kids as Young as 8

It may be time to end youth football.
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
My son was hospitalized for almost half a year. His brain injury was due to a congenital anomaly. Brain injuries due to trauma can be prevented.
 
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Yawn.
Youth football is being made safer all the time with increased training of coaches, increased attention to proper technique, increased knowledge of concussion and other injury, and continuous equipment improvement. There are also improvements in football practice planning. High school federations are increasingly banning full contact practices for most of the preseason.

All sports have risks, particularly contact and collision sports. They can never be made completely injury free. The unicorn / Eloi world where everyone just plays with a big round bouncy ball, and everyone gets a participation trophy? 🤣

Boys scorn flag, if they can play tackle instead.Youth tackle football isn’t going away. Neither are real men, teaching boys to become real men. Deus vult!
 
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