Family Challenges

Boys will be what?

Do you subscribe to the parenting model that preaches, "Big boys don't cry?"

Geoffrey Canada has some strong advice: let the boys feel their pain. Canada is a hero who talks about peace. Never forgetting his early days growing up on the tough streets of the South Bronx, he's the author of Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America (Beacon Press, 1998) and director of the Rheedlen Center for Children and Families, a haven for at-risk boys and girls in New York.

The February issue of Hope magazine asked Canada to describe the consequences of stifling young boys' tears:

"Well, I think you see this huge disconnect between boys and their feelings, which allows them to get involved in very violent activities. And you wonder, how in the world could they have done that? When adults teach boys to separate themselves from their feelings, boys also get separated from the consequences of their actions. Their empathy often extends to their closest friends, their closest relatives, and not at all to people outside of that range. So a boy will shoot up a corner where he doesn't know anyone and feel absolutely nothing."

Can we teach boys to be strong and tender? asks Hope.

"Yes. Starting very early, we need to acknowledge that little boys have feelings, that they are tender, that they are emotionally as fragile as girls are. Like girls, boys need a lot of support." Canada concludes, "Part of what I'm saying in this book is that we have to fundamentally shift the way we think about boys. We don't want the end product to be a promiscuous, tough, hard, little thing who is willing to kill or die over slights." I should say not.

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