Just For Boys hits the nail on the head—especially in terms of busting myths about masculinity, social networks, conflict and anger, creating safety and 'Do No Harm.' I wish I had such a resource when I was in elementary school or as part of my extra-curricular activity in scouts.
Paul Gallant
eating disorders clinician and researcher
with a focus on males with eating disorders
Vancouver, BC
I think that Just For Boys effectively brings together a good chunk of the data on boys and body image and transforms the research into action. This is a very well done manual and program—holistic, comprehensive, evidence-based and boy-centred.
Derek Roelofson
Public Health Nursing
Vancouver Coastal Health, BC
JUST FOR BOYS
Facilitator’s manual for a program to help boys develop resilience and learn skills to deal with the stressors and health risks of adolescence.
by Sandra Susan Friedman, BA, BSW, MA
Published by Salal Books at Smashwords
ebook ISBN# 978-0-9698883-8-3
© 2007, 2010 Salal Communications Ltd.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
First ebook edition: November 2010
INTRODUCTION
I am an educator, counsellor and consultant. My early professional career was as a school teacher in Montreal, Quebec. After I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia and received an MA in psychology, I set up in private counselling practice to work with women who had issues concerning their weight. As I began to see more and more young women with anorexia and bulimia (which was a shameful secret in those days) I slowly evolved into an eating disorder specialist. In 1992, I shifted a good part of my focus to eating disorder prevention and developed JUST FOR GIRLS —a group discussion program that addresses what happens to girls in the process of growing up female that encourages them to define themselves by the numbers on the scale. The program was based on the relational theory of Carol Gilligan, Jean Baker Miller and Janet Surrey and on the newly emerging field of brain sex. I believed then as I do now that prevention programs must be gender-based in order to address the specific and often different concerns and needs of girls and boys.
JUST FOR GIRLS was followed by my book WHEN GIRLS FEEL FAT—Helping Girls through Adolescence which was published in 1997 and revised in 2000. It is also published in separate editions in the US, Italy and Israel. NURTURING GIRLPOWER—Integrating Eating Disorder Prevention and Intervention Skills into Your Practice (2000, revised 2003) evolved out of professional training workshops on prevention and on intervention that I developed and facilitated for Eating Disorder Project North in British Columbia. BODY THIEVES—Help Girls Become Physically Active and Reclaim Their Natural Bodies (2002) brought together prevention, health promotion and physical activity.
Although my focus in prevention has mainly been girls, I have always been interested in male development and in the stressors on men and boys in today’s society. I have seen men with eating disorders in my practice, and have worked with men and boys who have come to see me with other issues. While I included a section for boys when I updated the JUST FOR GIRLS manual in 2003, I was not yet ready at that time to delve deeper into the world of boys.
This changed in 2003 when my husband Dan and I moved from the densely-populated urban West End of Vancouver to the rural Sunshine Coast of British Columbia—a 95 km strip of land 40 minutes away from West Vancouver by ferry and with a population of roughly 27,000 people. Our street of 12 houses has no sidewalks and ends at a ravine, making it a safe playground for kids—most of whom are preadolescent and adolescent boys. I became immersed in boy culture watching and dodging the ongoing road hockey game in front of my house, returning endless soccer balls that were trying to root in my garden, seeing the daredevil antics of boys on bikes and getting to know all my young neighbours. And so JUST FOR BOYS was born.
Developing this program and writing this book has been an exciting experience as I’ve tried to see the world through male eyes. I’ve met and talked with boys of all ages, with parents of boys and with teachers and youth workers. One morning in August I went to Dolphin Gym (where I work out) to talk to a grade 11 boy who was also a member. Ten minutes into our talk, we noticed that the rest of the room had gone quiet. Then it erupted into an intense discussion amongst all the men present (who ranged in age from 17 to 68) about muscularity, steroids and the pressures on adolescent boys.
It’s not that easy to grow up as a boy today. Boys are more likely than girls to have learning disabilities, to be put into special education classes and to drop out of school. More and more boys are being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and are on behavior-modifying medication. Since 1990, prescriptions for Ritalin have increased 500% in Canada. Boys make up the majority of people with schizophrenia and the majority of developmentally challenged children. Emotionally-disturbed boys outnumber girls four to one. Rates of depression in boys are increasing, as are disordered eating, eating disorders and the use of steroids and body-manipulating supplements. Boys are twice as likely as girls to be victims of physical abuse, three times as likely to be the victim of a violent crime and four times as likely to commit suicide. Not as many boys complete high school or take their places in university classes. They are also more likely than girls to use drugs and alcohol, to deal with situations through violence, and to end up in jail. Along with conforming to the rigid and traditional definition of masculinity, boys today are also expected to be more emotionally present, to show more empathy and to take on more relational responsibilities without role models to show them the way.
JUST FOR BOYS is a group program that addresses societal pressures on boys and the health risks to which they are vulnerable. It is based upon a belief that eating disorders, body image disturbances, substance abuse and other such risks are coping mechanisms developed in order to deal with the personal and societal stressors in boys’ lives. The program helps boys build resilience and teaches them skills so that they can cope with these stressors in a healthy way.
The JUST FOR BOYS manual is divided into 3 interconnected sections that provide you with everything you need to facilitate a successful, boy-friendly group.
CULTURE will provide you with the framework underlying the JUST FOR BOYS program. It looks at how sex differences begin in the brain, the interplay between biology and culture, at the effect that socialization and societal influences have on behaviour, and the ways in which boys deal with distress. In developing the framework and in making this program boy-friendly I have drawn especially from the work and experience of Michael Gurian, author of many books about boys—including The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors, and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men, and Barry MacDonald, counsellor and author of Boy Smarts: Mentoring Boys for Success at School. I appreciate and respect their efforts in changing the culture of schools and communities, and also their passion for and integrity in working for the welfare of boys.
The chapter on PREVENTION includes risks and protective factors, how to build resilience, the elements of prevention and the importance of peer groups. It looks at how prevention is like a pizza with a base that consists of the developmental/life stages, sauced with family and life experiences and with ‘toppings’ that address the factors and conditions of specific risks. While this book can be adapted to address the ‘alcohol’ topping or ‘drug’ or ‘tobacco’ toppings, it primarily describes and addresses the ‘eating disorders’ and ‘body image’ toppings because my expertise is in this field.
CORE provides you with everything you need to know to set up and facilitate your own program. It explains the goals of the program and provides a blueprint for the structure of the group. It describes how to plan your sessions. It talks about the importance of male mentors as well as the different qualities and challenges for women who facilitate groups for boys.
CONTEXT provides a context, rationale, learning outcomes and appropriate learning activities for each of the modules. At the end of each module there are websites, books and resources that you can explore to enrich your understanding.
* Module 1: I, Me and Myself: Creating a Strong Sense of Self helps boys build a strong and positive sense of self.
* Module 2: What a Feeling! Developing Emotional Literacy helps boys understand and identify a wide range of feelings, develop empathy and learn anger management and communication skills.
* Module 3: Wow! What Bodies: All Shapes and Sizes teaches boys why they have the bodies they do and why it’s difficult to change them. It addresses puberty and the growth spurt, genes and metabolism, body awareness and different body types and what happens when you restrict or manipulate the amount of food you eat. It addresses the current ‘war on obesity’ and shifts our focus from weight to health. It promotes the paradigm of Health at Every Size.
* Module 4: What a Guy! Busting the Myths of Masculinity teaches boys about status and hierarchy, gender roles and stereotypes. It broadens the definition of ‘cool’ and what it means to be a man in this society. It addresses the influence of the media, the current drive for muscularity and the increase in steroid use. It cautions you to avoid talking about steroids in elementary school and to talk about them in middle school only if this is an issue in your group, school or community.
* Module 5: Being the Best I Can: Creating a Life of Balance and Interconnectedness helps boys identify their support networks and provides them with experiences in working collaboratively. It looks at the importance in making a contribution to their family and community and at the ways in which they can do this.
The JUST FOR BOYS manual contains 23 Reproducible Handouts, an Evaluation form and a comprehensive Bibliography. The APPENDIX describes the risks that boys face and provides you with background information on substance abuse (including steroids and sports supplements), depression, eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia.
JUST FOR BOYS can be used with boys in different stages of adolescence. While the focus here is preventing weight and body image issues, the material and skills are also valuable tools in preventing smoking, drug and alcohol use and other health and social risks.
While it would be best if JUST FOR BOYS groups were facilitated by men or had a male co-facilitator, they are designed for men and women with varied personal experiences and professional orientations. The program is structured with interconnected sections which can be used together to implement a complete program or used separately in classroom situations, to enhance existing programs of many different types and by parents who want to learn more about boys.
No two programs will look exactly alike because no two facilitators are alike. What you need most is a willingness to share yourself (and if possible a co-facilitator to share the experience), a lot of curiosity and the ability to listen to the voices of the boys. The best part of the program is the opportunity to learn about the boys and to contribute to their growth. For the boys the most valuable part is always the opportunity to talk about their concerns in a safe environment and gain confidence knowing that other boys feel the same way. What matters most is that boys learn something positive about themselves and their capacity to make choices in how they live their lives.
Sandra Susan Friedman
Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada
November 2010
Understanding How Boys Interact with the World
Risk Factors and Protective Factors
Prevention is both Universal and Selective
The Importance of Peer Groups in Prevention
Prevention is On-going, Creative and Eclectic
CORE [the JUST FOR BOYS program]
Developing the Group Agreement
Module 1: I, ME and MY SELF! - Creating a Strong Sense of Self
Module 2: WHAT A FEELING! - Developing Emotional Literacy
Module 3: WOW! WHAT BODIES! - All Shapes and Sizes
Module 4: WHAT A GUY! - Busting the Myths of Masculinity
Module 5: THE BEST I CAN BE! - Creating a Life of Balance and Interconnectedness
Disordered Eating / Eating Disorders
THE LAST WORD...ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
H-1 Inviting Boys to the Group
H-6 Building a Feeling Vocabulary
H-8 Detecting the Clues: Finding the Secret Stories
H-11 Responding to Anger Signals
H-13 Win-Win Ways for Dealing with Conflict
H-14 Differences in Growth During Puberty
H-15 Understanding How Genes Work
H-16 Understanding How Metabolism Works
H-17 What Really Happens When You Diet...
Two babies lie sleeping side by side in the nursery. ‘Look how cute and delicate Jennifer is,’ boast her parents. ‘She’s so quiet. She’s so good.’ ‘Michael lets us know what he wants,’ his parents proudly exclaim. ‘What a set of lungs on him. He’s so strong and sturdy. What a guy!’
A research study about the response of parents to newborns matched day-old babies according to weight, length, alertness and strength. Most mothers and fathers perceived their sons as more alert, stronger, larger featured, more coordinated and firm. They saw their daughters as less attentive, weaker, finer featured, less coordinated, softer, smaller, more fragile and prettier. The study showed that even when babies are only one day old, they are already being seen and described through a gender lens that will play a major role in shaping their lives (Rubin et al, 1974).
Gender refers to the array of socially constructed roles and relationships, personality traits, attitudes, behaviors, values and relative power that society ascribes to the different sexes. Gender role consists of the rules that tell us how to be what our specific society defines as masculine and feminine. Gender socialization is the way in which our culture molds us into internalizing and obeying these rules. It has a profound influence upon us from birth. It determines what we are named and how we are treated, the clothes we will wear, what toys we will be given and the games we will play. It teaches us how to act and behave separately as girls and boys, and later as women or men. It instructs us in the different roles we are thus expected or required to play. As we mature, gender socialization will influence the kinds of jobs we will have and the amount of money we will get paid for doing them. Factors such as our race, ethnicity and socio-economic class will reinforce these differing standards of behaviour for us as girls and boys, and women and men. So too will our relatives, friends, childcare workers, school and institutional officials, employers, the media and our peers influence and reinforce these differences.
There was a time when we believed that gender differences were created only by socialization and culture. We thought that these differences in behaviour were learned and could be unlearned if we treated girls and boys the same. We gave girls trucks to make them more assertive and gave boys dolls to increase their empathy and sensitivity. Many girls then transformed the big truck into the daddy, the medium truck into the mommy and the littlest truck into the baby. And many boys pointed their dolls at one another and yelled ‘bang, bang.’
Boys and girls inhabit two distinct cultures with quite different languages and different ways of interpreting and responding to the world. While they may as individuals do the exact same things, they will likely experience and describe them differently. This is because of differences not only in the way that they are socialized but also because of differences that exist in the structures of their brains.
As I describe the male and female behaviours you might find that some boys and girls (or men and women) you know don’t fit precisely into these categories—such as nurturing boys and aggressive girls. Nor are all girls or all boys the same. Please keep in mind I am describing averages and medians, or talking about the polarities of the continuum of human behavior. While as men or women we share characteristics that are common to our sex, as individuals we are all different and exhibit behaviors across the wide continuum of human traits.
According to Anne Moir and David Jessel, authors of Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women, boys and girls are wired before they are born to march to different drummers. When the sperm fertilizes the egg at conception, the genetic blueprint embedded in the fetus is determined by 23 paired sets of chromosomes. One set comes from the egg cell and the other comes from the sperm cell. The chromosomes determine specific traits from each parent (and from their ancestors) such as hair and eye and skin color, body type, intelligence, abilities, talents and vulnerabilities to diseases and disorders. The twenty-third set of chromosomes determines the biological sex of the fetus: the egg cell from the mother contributes one X chromosome while the sperm cell from the father contributes either an X or a Y. An XX combination produces a fetus that is female while an XY combination produces a fetus that is genetically male.
For the first six to eight weeks of gestation all fetuses develop along female lines and appear the same. Then chemical messengers in the form of sex hormones (steroids) called androgens and estrogens ensure that the designated genetic programs are carried out. At this critical time in brain development the genetically male fetus receives a surge of testosterone four times the amount experienced during infancy and boyhood. The testosterone interacts with the nerve cells or neurons that make up the brain and produces dramatic changes that alter the brain structure from one that is female into one that is male. It also stimulates the development of male genitalia in the fetus.
The fetus that does not receive the testosterone surge continues to develop along female lines and produces cells that bathe it in estrogen. By the thirteenth week of gestation, gonads appear in the form of ovaries and produce tiny amounts of testosterone required by the developing female brain. Regardless of the sex of the fetus, the more testosterone that bathes the brain at this time of development, the more that person will exhibit masculine behaviour. The lesser the amount of testosterone, the more feminine the behaviour will be.
The Female Brain
Girls and boys process information differently and have different priorities, behaviours and skills. The female brain is 10 to 15% smaller than the male brain but the regions dedicated to higher cognitive functions such as language are more densely packed with neurons. It is more diffuse than the male brain. The functional division between the left and right sides of the brain is less clearly defined so that both sides are used in verbal and visual activities.
The relational tendencies of girls are present shortly after birth. A study that measured the emotional responses of day-old infants found that girls responded more intensely than boys to crying babies. It concluded that girls are more tuned to an empathic response even on their first day of life (Hoffman, 1976). Girl babies show a tendency to be more interested in people and communication. Infant girls reach out to touch their mothers more than infant boys do. Two to four day old babies show that girls pay attention longer when adults are speaking and spend almost twice as long maintaining eye contact. They are more tuned in to facial expressions and emotional nuances and will lose interest once the connection is broken. At four months most girls can distinguish between photographs of people they know and those of strangers.
The female brain responds more intensely to emotion. Feelings (especially sadness) activate neurons in an area eight times larger in the female brain than in the male. Even before they can understand language, girls seem to be better at identifying the emotional content of speech. As girls grow older they can detect the emotions of others more accurately than boys can. Girls learn to speak earlier than boys and develop more skill at verbal memory, which helps them master grammar and the intricacies of language at an earlier age. Girls speak on average 250 words per minute versus 125 for the average male. They can also follow more than one train of thought and do more than one thing at a time. Girls hear better than boys and have a greater sensitivity to sound. They are better able to perceive changes in volume and are also more sensitive to smell.
The Male Brain
Male brains are more compartmentalized and therefore more specialized than female brains. The left side is almost exclusively set aside for the control of verbal abilities including speaking, writing and reading. The right side controls visual abilities, spatial relations, and abstract thoughts. The interpersonal connection is less important to boys than the activity. This may explain why disorders such as Asperger’s syndrome—a disorder that inhibits people from picking up on social nuance—is 8 times higher in boys. Infant boys tend to be interested in dynamic activity and in objects. Boys are more active and wakeful than girls. They are more sensitive to bright light and focus more on depth perception and perspective than on the wider picture. Boys tend to take in less sensory information than girls. They smell less, taste less, and get less input and soothing feedback from tactile information. They hear less well, but hear better through one ear than through the other.
Boys receive more testosterone and 20% to 40% less serotonin than girls (the neurotransmitter that inhibits aggression by calming and pacifying). As a result boys are more aggressive and impulsive than girls are. Because the male brain is designed for logical problem-solving, it can often take boys up to seven hours longer to process emotional data. The focused structure of the male brain means that boys can concentrate more intensely than girls can on one thing at a time. They are task-oriented and their brain turns on and off between tasks. Their attention span and motor activity are shorter than those of girls but are made up of more intensely active periods. Boys have better hand-eye coordination and greater ability to manipulate objects in space. They have better spatial relations. As they mature they will be better at interpreting maps, solving mazes, and doing the kinds of mathematics that involve abstract concepts of space, relationships and theory.
It is important to remember neither brain structure is ‘superior’ to the other. Nor are girls and boys restricted in what they can do because of the structure of their brains. Girls can excel in math and boys can develop a high proficiency in verbal and communication skills. However, because different parts of the male brain grow at different times and at different rates than the corresponding parts of the female brain, girls and boys may not develop the same skills at the same times in their development. As well, the ways in which they learn these skills and perform these tasks are different because they use different areas and circuits in the brain to solve problems, process language, and experience and store the same strong emotions.
Biology and culture are not mutually exclusive. While the brain’s first organizing principle is genes plus hormones, new connections are constantly being formed in the brain and new cell networks are emerging in response to interactions with people and with the environment. Biology may be the starting point but societal culture builds and expands upon what we bring into the world so that behaviour is not only the result of biology or culture but also of the interplay between them.
Theories that attempt to describe the psychological development of boys and girls evolve out of, and are influenced by, the biological proclivities of each sex and by the cultural beliefs of a particular time. Almost thirty years ago Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan found that the voices and experiences of women were missing from the psychological descriptions of identity and moral development that she was teaching. Along with Jean Baker Miller, Janet Surrey and other researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Research for Women she formulated theories of female development that are more congruent with girls’ biological nature than the male theories that were applied to them. These theories describe girls as growing up with a perception of the world that is less individualistic and more contextual than that of boys. Because girls are not encouraged to separate from their mothers, girls develop a core structure (or ‘self-in-relation’) which evolves out of this early relationship. Their identity is based on their experience of themselves in relationships. Girls grow up to be interdependent. They learn to evaluate situations not only in terms of their individual responses, but also within the context of whatever ‘others’ may be involved. It is because the world of relationships makes up so much of female experience that girls grow up concerned not only with their own individual well-being, but also with the well-being of all those systems in which they participate.
Popular theories of male development—such as the ones put forth by Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson—tend to reinforce the values espoused by our society which is male and patriarchal in perspective. These theories are hierarchical, goal-oriented and individualistic. They see development as occurring in progressive stages, with each stage in turn reinforcing certain qualities that are considered to be more appropriate and mature than those in previous stages. These theories are built upon an assumption that boys develop an identity and sense of self that is based on their individual accomplishments and on how well they perform in the world. They believe that in order for boys to become independent and able to stand on their own two feet, they need to separate from their mothers at an early age. Until recently it was thought that separation meant severely altering this relationship.
UNDERSTANDING HOW BOYS INTERACT WITH THE WORLD
Boys have tremendous energy and exuberance, a willingness to venture into the unknown, and a need to test their limits and take action. They are more physical than girls and have a greater need for space. Boys play in large groups. Their play is as much about the game itself as it is about hierarchy, power, defense of territory and physical strength. Boys test themselves against each other and measure their personal adequacy in terms of where they fit in. Competition makes up an integral part of how boys play and is one of the few acceptable models of expression of emotion that they are allowed. Competition can be healthy if it gives boys an opportunity to experience themselves as doing well. When competition equates not winning with failure and humiliation and shame, boys who become labeled as losers can become a danger to themselves and to others.
Boys manage their social world by striving for dominance while girls tend to build alliances and inter-dependence. Girls usually bond first and ask questions later. They nurture each other with empathy and with relational talk. Boys are more likely to approach social interactions aggressively. They tend to practice what Michael Gurian author of The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men, calls ‘aggressive nurturance.’ The insults, bumping, prodding, and pushing that boys engage in build strength, focus attentiveness and hierarchies. This behaviour increases in elementary school and soars with testosterone in middle teens and into their twenties.
When boys are young, their friendships can evolve out of rough and tumble play. As they get older, boys draw their friends from activities they are involved in. Boys’ friendships are based on loyalty and fairness. They support each other and help each other deal with problems by diffusing the emotional intensity through teasing and insults and making situations easier to handle. They cheer each other up. They offer each other advice. They show their caring not in direct words of affection or concern but indirectly and through action. Communication is best when it is shoulder-to-shoulder and not face-to-face. Connection for adolescent boys can be based on trust which evolves out of shared experiences, similar interests and agreement. Boys will be protective of those they care about. They will do things for them—do work and take on duties and responsibilities that will benefit the other.