Struggling School-Age Boys

Boys are now forced to be institutionalized at five years old, when they should be playing with their peers. Boys should have time to run around and play, allow them to be boys. The school system is set up in a way that boys have to sit for eight hours straight in a chair, and expect the boys to be still. Evalute this, boys have to constrain themself for so many hours. Some schools are blessed just to have gym once a week, come on then the system wants to diagnos boys with ADHD. As an adult you try and sit for all of these hours at a time and not feel mentally drained. And now recess is another target for learning when will they allow the boys to let out all their energy, please. No more money for art, music, sport program and they want them to learn, how about letting them express themselves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so happy to see that someone is finally catching on! I would take this a step farther, too. I would argue that one of the reasons boys are struggling is they are being told they are wrong for being boys. They are being told they need to be more sensitive like girls. Instead of playing war, they should be playing house. Boys are no longer allowed to be boys. You can bet this is having a big impact on their emotional and psychological wellbeing.

I'm no expert but I would think that excessive TV and video games begun at an early age and continued throughout childhood and into adolescence have a trmeendous negative impact on our children, both boys and girls. I don't think educating them too much is the problem! If we expect nothing from our children, that is surely what we will get.

There is definitely a strong push to make our kids grow up faster. I am a grandmother raising my grandson and I am not able to help him with his 6th grade math! I was no genius, but I made above average grades in school. We leave our house every morning at 6:30 a.m. to get him to school in time and he doesn't get home until around 6:00 p.m. after football practice. That is a long day for anyone! Then, there is homework stacked up for him. The school he goes to is college preparatory and that is great. The problem I have is that some of the teachers there write that on all the papers to remind them that they are expected to do more and better! To me, this is so unnecessary. It just pressures them more. I feel so sorry for the kids today. They are constantly pressured to do more and more and are not given enough time to just be kids!! I think that homework should totally be done away with. Their days are long enough!

I personally think, (granted I'm a woman, and a single mom to a 15yr old boy) that the gender role change and all the homosexuality everywhere is what is affecting our boys. I'm not a feminist, nor am I joan cleaver, but something in between, but I was brought up in a very 50's kind of way, except my mom worked but also took care of housework, while my father worked then came home and "relaxed", my mother always told me I had to work and also take care of the household, and my dad would always separate the sexes as well with things like "act like a lady, don't play with boys" and so on...I have brought my son up with some of those same sterotypical ideas, and I'm happy for it, he's a good well adjusted, secure boy. Yes I've taught him housework is 50/50 and how to cook and fend for himself, but I've also taught him some of the "old stuff" like, boys don't play with dolls, don't hit girls' and boys just don't wear pink (lol). Things of that nature.
I'm sorry if I offend some people but the truth is the gender lines are blurred, and it's hard for boys to comprehend the differneces anymore, so I'm raising my boy to be a good honorable, hardworking, resposible man, not a metrosexual or homosexual, but a hetrosexual, with christian values.

Nice start, but what are issues and solutions: Is this a US issue, North American issue? What are other regions, countries doing that allow "Boys to be Boys".

60 Minutes did a great show on "Boys". Examples were shown on solutions being utilized in various areas of the country. Japan was looked at since they don't have alot of the issues when boys reach their teenage years that otherwise exists in the US.

Keep the discussion going.
Garry
Toronto, Canada

Instead of immediately medicating them for ADHD, why not have them tested for food allergies. Both my wife & I and her sister had uncontrollable kids, and of course the first reaction from the school/doctor was medication. Instead we had them tested for allergies found out they were highly allergic to certain everyday foods (and dyes) and had to adjust their diets...What a difference it has made in both of them..And no chemicals had to be used...imagine that...Will it work for everyone...cant say..is it tougher then simply giving them a pill everyday, sure is...what's the harm is trying it though...its to the point where we can tell when she has had something she shouldnt have...she becomes harder to control etc...Our doctor supports us, saying if its working dont stop...

This author nailed it! Forcing kids into early overly structured play and forced standardized testing causes a reaction in the brain similar to fight or flight. Our nervous systems are geared towards survival, not memorized facts and rote memorization (school curriculum) if we feel threatened , even socially, we go into survival mode and the brain shuts down to learning to maintain surviving from preceived threats i.e.school.

Great article, I never had boys, but yes I beleive it starts at home. Parents don't take responsilbilty for thier children's behavior. We can't use paddling or you're called in to Social Services, children use the most obscene language at an early age also, where do they learn it from? They sit in front of the TV and are left alone after school or put in after school day care centers. Maybe a little of attention from parents and discipline with love might help. Stop blaming government, teachers and others. And please! Stop with all the medication, do we all need to be on drugs to control ourselves??

When my children were growing up I was home all day and they all had naps no matter what age, if they weren't tired they would lie on their bed and look at a book for an hour and a half. They played outside all morning in the field with the neighborhood children while I worked in the garden. Today you can't trust to let your children play out of sight anymore the world is a different place. Also most moms now are in the situation that they must work, it is a shame really. Staying home and being a mom was the best thing I ever did! When the kids went to school I went to work, when summer came I had the ability to not work. I have five grandsons now and their world is not like their parents world was.

I agree with the author's idea that the way schools have evolved is damaging to boys' learning. Boys learn best through hands-on, active involvement, like studying science by taking nature walks. Also, boys are expected to perform the same tasks as girls of the same age, which is unrealistic. The brains of boys and girls develop in different ways, and boys are not developmentally ready to sit still and read at the same age that girls are. Starting boys in kindergarten a year later than girls would benefit the children and the school system. Boys' lower performance on these tasks early on can lead to a lessened interest in academics, as well as lower self-esteem; these problems can mount throughout the child's entire school experience. We as parents, teachers, and administrators need to remember that we are talking about children--little kids--and we should do our best to teach them in the ways that will stimulate and benefit them the most. And don't get me started on standardized testing and NCLB: that's the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard.

No one is mentioning the fact that the family core has degraded and more kids are growing up in single parent houshold primarily that being the mother. How is a boy to learn to be a man if his primary parent for modeling behavior is a female?

The other day, my 6 year old son came home from school, very excited about Art class. He told me he learned about an Artist. When I asked who, he said he didn't remeber his name, but he did cut off his ear and shot himself to death. How is this pertinent to a 1st grader? How unappropriate is that? What ever happened to cutting, coloring and painting in Art class?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is how become what first grade used to be. It's no wonder boys in particular have trouble--they are not emotionally ready for what is now expected of them, especially compared with girls. Five-year-olds (boys more so than girls, but not exclusively) are still learning fine motor skills (needed for writing) and definitely aren't ready to just sit and listen as so many others have mentioned. Outside play is needed for five- and six-year olds And what happened to just learning the basics in Kindergarten AND having a nap-time! I remember having a nap-time, marching in a circle with blunt-end scissors to learn how to safely hold scissors, music-time in which we all were shown how to play tambourines, etc. Let them learn how to hold a pencil and write in first grade...has anyone else noticed how many adults now don't know how to hold a pen or pencil correctly!? (I've seen many of the strangest ways adults are holding a pen to write, I don't see how they can write!) Teachers who have been trained need to be showing how to do this. (And I'm now wondering how many of the younger teachers know how to hold one correctly, much less teach it!) And as parents they are now expected to teach their four-year-olds this skill to prepare them for Kindergarten? Give me a break! All this pushing everything down to the youngest obviously hasn't paid off as is obvious by all the Posts I've been reading. It's very sad. The question is, how do parents and others who love and care about the children get schooling shifted back to Kindergarten being what it used to be--as preperation for First Grade, rather than being the new First Grade? In the long run, our children will come out ahead...and that's the most important thing. It's sad reading the Posts and reading how many children are incorrectly identified as ADD/ADHD just to control a child's natural tendency to need to move and run...they need to be able to do that in order to then be able to be taught the discipline of how to sit still for a period of time as needed. To drug our children for just being their age is so wrong and terribly sad...