special for every kid – a tall order. Today we mostly get mothering right, and fathering is undergoing a great resurgence. Finding good mentors for the kids in our community is the next big hurdle.
STORIES FROM THE HEART
A LAKOTA INITIATION
The Native American people known as the Lakota were a vigorous and successful society, characterised by especially equal relationships between men and women.
At around the age of fourteen, Lakota boys were sent on a ‘vision quest’, or initiation test. This involved sitting and fasting on a mountain peak to await a vision or hallucination brought on by hunger. This vision would include a being who would bring messages from the spirit world to guide the boy’s life. As the boy sat alone on the peak, he would hear mountain lions snarl and move in the darkness below him. In fact the sounds were made by the men of the tribe, keeping watch to ensure the boy’s safety. A young person was too precious to the Lakota to endanger needlessly.
Eventually, when the young man returned to the tribe, his achievement was celebrated. But from that day, for two whole years, he was not permitted to speak directly to his mother.
Lakota mothers, like the women of all hunter-gatherer groups, are very close and affectionate with their children, and the children often sleep alongside them in the women’s huts and tents. The Lakota believed that if the boy spoke to his mother immediately following his entry into manhood, the pull back into boyhood would be so great that he would ‘fall’ back into the world of childhood and never grow up.
After the two years had passed, a ceremonial rejoining of the mother and son took place, but by this time he was a man and able to relate to her as such. The reward that Lakota mothers gained from this ‘letting go’ is that they were assured their sons would return as respectful and close adult friends.
STORIES FROM THE HEART
THE STORY OF NAT, STAN AND THE MOTORBIKE
Nat was fifteen, and his life was not going well. He had always hated school and found writing difficult, and things were just mounting up. The school he went to was a caring school, and his parents, the counsellor and the principal knew each other and could talk comfortably. They met and decided that if Nat could find a job, they would arrange an exemption. Perhaps he was one of those boys who would be happier in the adult world than the in-between world of high school.
Luckily Nat got a job in a one-man pizza shop, Stan’s Pizza, and left school. Stan, who was about thirty-five, was doing a good trade and needed help. Nat went to work there and loved it: his voice deepened, he stood taller, his bank balance grew. His parents, though, began to worry for a new reason. Nat planned to buy a motorbike – a big bike – to get to work. Their home was up a winding, slippery road in the mountains. They watched in horror as his savings got closer to the price of the motorcycle. They suggested a car, to no avail. Time passed.
One day Nat came home and, in the way of teenage boys, muttered something sideways as he walked past the dinner table. Something about a car. They asked him to repeat it, not sure if they should. ‘Oh, I’m not going to get a bike. I was talking to Stan. Stan reckons a bloke’d be an idiot to buy a motorbike living up here. He reckons I should wait an’ get a car.’
‘Thank God for Stan!’ thought his parents, but outwardly they just smiled and went on eating their meal.
PRACTICAL HELP
BOYS AND HEARING
Colin is ten. He is in trouble at school because he doesn’t pay attention. He gets bored, starts to mess around, and gets sent to the principal’s office. Is he stupid? Bad? Does he have ADHD or ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) or OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) or any of the other Ds? Perhaps, but there’s another possibility. What if he just can’t hear? What if his teacher’s voice is too soft and he gets bored with its faintness, and at home he misses half of what is being said to him? Many parents joke that their son seems deaf when told to clean up his room. And school nurses have long noted that boys get blocked ears more frequently than girls. But there may be more serious factors at play.
Psychologist Leonard Sax, in his book, Why Gender Matters,12 makes some extreme claims about boys’ hearing. He presents research to show that boys do not hear as well as girls, and argues that boys need teachers who speak louder. He cites Janel Caine, a postgraduate student in Florida, who studied the effects of music on premature babies.13 These babies lie in their incubators all day, and Caine felt that perhaps some gentle music might help their growth and development. And boy, was she was right! In her astonishing findings, girl babies receiving music ‘therapy’ were discharged from the hospital on average nine days sooner than those who didn’t have the music. It really perked them up! But here’s the thing: boy babies did not show any such benefit. They either didn’t hear the music, or it didn’t affect them.
It’s actually hard to know what tiny babies hear – we can’t just ask them, ‘Did you hear that?’ But lately, some methods have been discovered that can tell if the brain is receiving the message that goes into the ears. Dr Sax claims that, in studies of ‘acoustic brain response’, girl babies have an 80 per cent greater brain response to sounds than baby boys do. And guess what frequency this is in? The frequency of speech.
The difference continues into adolescence and adulthood. This might explain that terrible syndrome – complained about by teenage girls worldwide – that Dad is always yelling at them, when Dad thinks he is using a gentle voice!
In a number of recent commentaries, however, Dr Sax has been accused of exaggerating or misrepresenting the research.14 And it does stand to reason that if a huge gender hearing difference was the norm, audiologists would have told us about it earlier.
Nonetheless, there is no harm in being more hearing-aware around boys. And dads, if your daughters wince when you talk to them, maybe talk a little softer.
It’s more likely that the problem of boys in school is not so much to do with hearing as with understanding. Australian audiologists Jan Pollard and Dr Kathy Rowe found that about a quarter of children aged six have poor auditory processing (separating what they hear into meaningful words). And most of these children (70 per cent) turn out to be boys. These children have trouble understanding a sentence if it has more than eight words in it! Because teachers often use much longer sentences when teaching, these kids are stuck trying to understand the first part while the teacher (or parent) is going full-steam ahead with the rest of the message. The researchers recommend that teachers use short sentences, and only go on speaking when they see that ‘lights-on’ effect in children’s eyes.15 And Dr Sax adds that perhaps boys should sit at the front of the class, not the back.
PRACTICAL HELP
OVERCOMING BOYS’ TENDENCY TO ARROGANCE
It’s possible that boys are naturally prone to a certain degree of arrogance. Until recently, boys were often raised expecting to be waited on by women. In some cultures, boys are still treated like little gods. In today’s world, the result can be an obnoxious boy that no one wants to be around.
It’s therefore very important that boys are taught humility – through experiences such as having to apologise, having to do work to help others, and always having to be respectful
