Struggling School-Age Boys

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!

This alarm clock needs to wake everyone up! Stop blaming teachers, doctors and PARENTS! Here's the BIG PICTURE folks. Law maker's have stripped us of all of our rights to teach our children Right from Wrong in our own homes. We are all bound ( teachers, doctors, parents ) to do as we are told or face jail sentences for not following their laws. GET IT? GOT IT? GOOD!!!

It isn't just the boys. Your article said that 1 out of 10 girls have problems. Although that is not as many as the boys it is still very serious. All children need some time to do what they want. All children need exersize. All children need some time that is structured but not all of their waking hours. Different children need different amounts of each activity. Smaller class size and more attention to the indiveiual differences in learning style would make a big difference in the sucess of all children.

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?

Ms. Tyre I believe is on to something here. I am a parent to 2 girls and grandparent to 1 girl and 1 boy who is on the autism spectrum. My husband and I are advocates for Single Parents and have witnessed this phenomenon regarding boys. We as Parents & Educators must make changes for our boy???s sake's. We must not turn to medications as the only way to deal with this problem. I believe medication and therapy is good in its place. We need to make fundamental changes in educating and parenting ours boys to encourage their development into well adjusted productive members of an adult society. My husband is a teacher for 7th grade kids as well as a football and baseball coach. He can tell you for a fact we need to make changes to allow our boys to development physically and emotionally. As more and more confused boys grow into angry young men and even angrier adult men this is one report we most certainly can not ignore. I don???t have the answers but together I believe we can make growing up for boys a lot more positive.

This is not only a ???problem??? in the USA ??? it is all over the world. I am a Jamaican who lives in Jamaica. The mother of two wonderful sons, I have always felt that if something is ???wrong??? with half of a population, then we ought to look at the system they are in. Prescribing more medication seems to me to be the lazy way out. I constantly get reports that my younger son ???won???t sit still???, ???is disruptive???. He is just a very, very athletic child who loves to move ??? as boys have done for millennia! He learns by moving. I watch him as he does his homework, he is always moving - but does the work. I remember one day when he jumped in the car after school excitedly saying ???Mummy, we had so much fun at math today. We had to go around the school and ask the other children questions???. See? When he was allowed to be active, involved, up and about ??? he was excited and motivated! And of course, he aced the assignment! There is nothing "wrong" with our boys. They just seem to be in a system that doesn't play to what's best for them.

I agree that more meds is NOT the answer. Our society is causing the problems, there are more divorced families now then 10 years ago and as stated in the article kids are not sent outside to play they have their video games, ipods and cell phones. As a mom of 4 boys (11 to 18) I see these things happening and we are trying to help our boys through this tough time.

These days there are a lot of families split up, the Grandparents are raising their grandchildren. It is very hard for children to understand why their Mom and Dad are not "normal". Little boys need male bonding, sometimes they try to get attention in other ways, maybe misbehaving or not listening at school. My grandson is very active in sports, bike riding, skate boarding, he does have time indoors as well. It really helps to involve him with other children and male coaches. We thought at one time he was ADHD, but sometimes controlling sugar in their diet helps with controlling attention span. We live in a new age, of electronics, children are taught more than in my day, but I have seen the schools try to keejp physical activity, and fun in the schools as well as education.

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This is not only a ???problem??? in the USA ??? it is all over the world. I am a Jamaican who lives in Jamaica. The mother of two wonderful sons, I have always felt that if something is ???wrong??? with half of a population, then we ought to look at the system they are in. Prescribing more medication seems to me to be the lazy way out. I constantly get reports that my younger son ???won???t sit still???, ???is disruptive???. He is just a very, very athletic child who loves to move ??? as boys have done for millennia! He learns by moving. I watch him as he does his homework, he is always moving - but does the work. I remember one day when he jumped in the car after school excitedly saying ???Mummy, we had so much fun at math today. We had to go around the school and ask the other children questions???. See? When he was allowed to be active, involved, up and about ??? he was excited and motivated! And of course, he aced the assignment! There is nothing "wrong" with our boys. They just seem to be in a system that doesn't play to what's best for them.

Try having a gifted child in public school. What a joke. If he were mentally handicapped he would have resources galore. You would think a community would take pride in having such a brilliant mind. But no he is treated like a leper and burden to the school system because the have to customize their curriculum. Not to mention the fact that they (the school and his pediatrician) tried to instantly peg him as an ADHD child instead of gifted until our visit to the dentist revealed that he had over sized adenoids. The Dentist, for Petes sake!!! This caused him to have sleep apnea which made him hyper during school... Oh and lets not forget that many school districts get paid per child. This is why they are against homeschooling. Unfortunately if your are not proactive with your child's school don't expect to get results.

The author has cleverly avoided addressing one of the major issues - that there is a pervasive anti-male culture in our schools. Boys are constantly made to feel that they are "bad" and girls are constantly praised and given awards - totally ignoring the merit system. The best evidence is that when tests are done where the gender of the test taker is concealed, boys on average do better than girls (look at the SAT and ACT results), however when choosing the valedictorian, almost always teachers favor girls over boys.

I purposly don't schedual my boy for many activites, and instead try to get him to places where it is safe for him to have unsupervised play. i only wish I could do more of this. He won't play organized sports because "grownup and uniform spoil it", but plays football when no adults are watching. When i was a girl, I often left the house before my parents were up, played around the neighborhood with my friends all day. Why can't we do this? i don't believe that (most of) the world is more dangerous now. We're just more scared.

My son is medicated for ADHD (non hyperactivity subtype) and I cringe when I hear other parents say that they won't "drug" their children (just let them run around the block or get on the treadmill, play outside, etc.). My son is NOT hyper. His brain just cannot focus on ONE or two things at a time. He is trying to focus on every little thing going on around him. He needs medicated. If you didn't know that he was medicated, you probably wouldn't guess that he was. He doesn't behave any differently really, but he is able to focus on his schoolwork and get it done! The schools changed the way kids learn to help out girls and it worked... but at the expense of the boys. There needs to be some kind of balance there. My son is having trouble reading "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and he is in the 2nd grade. It is meant to be read by 9-12 yr olds, but in his school, he is expected to be able to read that with no problems. We are expecting so much from them now. Some kids are naturally great readers, some take some time to catch on... but the schools aren't allowing it. Girls are faster at learning to read... which leaves the boys feeling extremely frustrated. Also, the recess is almost non-existent. I think we got 30 minues (at least)... he gets 10 and they don't get to just run around and play like we did!

I am at wits end with our Texas public school! Having two girls and one boy in the school system, and working there as a sub I have realized just how awful the system is! For the two girls in 2nd and 4th all you hear is TAKs TAKs TAKs..... Every school year the teachers start telling you how the kids have to pass the TAKs test Blah Blah.. The teachers are forced to cram TAKs down our childrens throats all year till time for the test! After the test the teachers can then begin to teach the other things that they feel is important for that age child to learn. The girls haven't had any problem, my son on the other hand is DIFFERENT! He is 5 in kindergarten, and went to Pre K last year he is always in trouble! This year he has been put on meds for ADHD, not sure if that is going to help or not! But my point is that in his Kindergarten class the school has taken away the naps that our school has always had in Kindergarten! At 5 I think that a nap is still important! The other thing is that from 11:25 until 3:31 the kids are stuck in the class room for learning time. Before 11:25 the kids have recess, PE, and lunch...Is 4 hours straight in a class room for a 5 year old crazy or what! The teacher has said that most discipline problems are happening during that time...... Should that not be a clue to the school that maybe they are asking for too much!!

Dr Dobson's book bringing up boys covers a lot of this. Boys need time to play and use their imagination and build forts and get dirty. I have 2 boys 5 and 9 and I limit what they watch and if they play video games no graphic violence or killing unless you consider legos. If they are bored and cant find anything to do i will give them chores to do..they usually prefer to find something else! I also have decided to home school. I found my older son was trying to be cool and bringing a lot of bad habits and language home. We attend a co-op, they spend time with their grandparents and friends and play sports. We also attend church.
I dont like the idea of drugging kids at so young an age, and it seems everyone wants to label kids these days.
You are the parent and you control what your children are exposed to, take some time to consider what you want it to be!

I agree!! We learned the times tables in 5th grade!!!! My son had to know them in 3rd! What is going on?