Save the Boys Initiative

Your son needs to know that, ultimately, he is the one in charge of how he reacts to his feeling s. Dr. Meeker explains that, when boys are still young, as part of their emotional development, they need to learn that while their feelings can be intense, they do not need to be ruled by them. In fact, she says that moms can put it this way to their sons,  “Are you going to allow your feelings to dominate your decisions, or are you going to take charge of them?”  Here’s how to teach your son to handle his emotions in a constructive way. Put a name on them. Before your son can deal with his emotions, he needs to identify them. So while it may seem like he’s angry at his father about being late to his ball game, the actual feeling underneath the surface is sadness. Teach him to look beyond the surface emotion to what lies deeper. Green-light the feeling. Try not to make your son feel guilty for his emotions. As Dr. Meeker says, “…they can feel st...

  We feel.  Save us.  we need help “Boys grow up in a world inhabited by a narrower range of emotions” ―Dr. June Gruber and Dr. Jessica Borelli In a study examining conversations between mothers and young children, mothers interacting with daughters employed emotion vocabulary of greater density and depth, whereas conversations with sons tended to focus primarily on a single emotion(anger) Regardless of whether gender differences in adult behaviour arise from conscious or unconscious psychological processes, one thing is clear: Boys grow up in a world inhabited by a narrower range of emotions, one in which their experiences of anger are noticed, inferred, and potentially even cultivated. This leaves other emotions, particularly the more vulnerable emotions sorely ignored or missing in their growing minds. This is all the more concerning given that research from Harvard Medical School shows that boys are in fact more emotionally expressive...