Some notes from the ABEN Conference: Boys and Learning: Developing Emotional Intelligence and Engagement through and understanding of Behaviour

Andrew Fuller

The long, winding road to manhood

• Importance of resilience over the whole life span, but education system and parenting designed to reduce resilience or prevent its development
• Harsh inconsistent parenting is a key determinant of poor development
• Importance of play
  • Can’t learn to walk unless you learn to fall
  • CF Feng Shui Detective
  • Loss of knowledge of excitement and ability to form a large enough life.
• Problems of lack of experiences during childhood and experience of play and other adults
  • Epigenetics: genes demand triggers for development
  • School is the only environment which retains ‘normal’ developmental experiences
• Challenge of electronic parenting and verbal messages: families are word poor but schools are word rich and boys have no idea how to receive the messages
• Lowest resting heart rate: kids with the lrhr are at most risk of violence because of adrenalin brain
  • Think about re-reading favourite stories from childhood and reflect on messages (e.g., We Didn’t Mean to Go To Sea, To the Wild Sky)
• Adolescence is a time of grief and loss stemming from the loss of the relationships with childhood
  • Loss in adolescence is expressed through anger
  • Often accompanied by a depressed mother
  • Importance of bombarding boys with positive messages (love, regard, appreciation)
  • Roll of significant adults
  • Successful work with girls and boys is a work of spiritual transformation
  • Children need our love most when they deserve it least
• Aspiring Adulthood (21–28)
  • Delayed identity formation (Moratorium)
  • Some become achievement-obsessed (climbing the ladder when it is placed against the wrong wall
  • Importance of relationships and work
• Fatherhood
  • Sartre’s quote: good dads die young because they force their sons to find out for themselves
  • Father Son days are important
  • Don’t get put off by the electronics: get them to show you.
  • Living in a Father-absent society (and have been doing it for years, cf the war)
    • Create discussions around fatherhood (what would the ideal father be like?)