Building Trust With Boys
Photo by Jonathon Reed
By Jonathon Reed
A couple years ago, a teen I know got mugged. It was the scariest thing he’d ever experienced. When he got home, he couldn’t stop shaking. His parents made decaffeinated tea and sat with him until midnight, and he fell asleep on the couch with them on either side.
Last week, a different boy I know was out in the evening when he noticed he was being followed. His neighbourhood doesn’t have a lot of streetlights, so he ran down the street in the dark. When he got home, his parents grounded him for being out by himself.
To give his parents the benefit of the doubt, they could have been trying to demonstrate concern about his well-being. But I know from talking to him that he ended up feeling less trustful and more alone. He didn’t get a chance to tell them what had happened. After getting grounded, he decided it wasn’t worth it.
With him in mind, I revisited a study from the early 2000s examining aspects of young masculinities, looking for a description of boys’ experiences with parents and trust.
“The image of the angrily grunting and inarticulate teenager is not one which stands up to scrutiny when one looks at what can happen when boys are given the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and are encouraged to talk. They often spoke particularly poignantly about losses and also about how much value they placed upon parents who attended to them sensitively and seriously—and how disappointed they were by parents who did not.”
Trust is a complex and ever-changing aspect of relationships, particularly as young people change and grow. I know firsthand that it can be even harder to maintain the trust of young people when you feel like they’re in over their heads. When I’ve been given trust, though, it’s been because of the time I’ve set aside for sensitive and serious conversation.
The boy who got followed last week, for example, turned to me to talk about it because we’ve previously talked about things like mental health struggles and drama with his friends.
“Given the opportunity,” the study concluded, “many young teenage boys are eager to think and talk about their lives, and about how to make things better.”
More on this next week.
Read more: Look up the article “The trouble with boys,” written by Stephen Frosh in The Psychologist.
ICYMI This Week
There Is No Vaccine for Teenage Despair (The New York Times)
7 Ways Educators Can Help Students Cope in a Pandemic (ASCD)
What Happened to American Childhood? (The Atlantic)
Written by Next Gen Men Program Manager Jonathon Reed as part of Learnings & Unlearnings, a weekly newsletter reflecting on our experiences working with boys and young men. Subscribe to get Learnings & Unlearnings delivered to your email inbox.