What Are You Worried About?
Building Boys Bulletin 4-28-25
Parents worry, a lot.
It’s part of the gig - our worry literally helps keep our kids alive. It can also become dysfunctional and overwhelming. (I’m speaking from personal experience here!)
This short clip is from our most recent ON BOYS podcast episode:
(You can listen to the whole thing here.)
We’ll talk more about worry — & what you can to to set down some of your unhelpful ones — in Boost Boys’ Motivation, which starts May 6. I hope to see you there!
Here’s to building boys!
Jennifer
IN THE NEWS
(This is episode 2 of NPR’s recent series Falling Behind: The Miseducation of America's Boys. Check it out!)
Highlights:
“If you are seen as a troublemaker by your teacher, that impacts the way that you start to see…And that starts to shape the way that you then behave in future years.”
“If a boy and a girl have the same level of self-regulation, part of what's going on is that the boy is more likely to be seen as a troublemaker for that level of, or low level of self-regulation, than the girl counterpart.”
Q: “What we're asking teachers to do in the classroom sometimes, does that in and of itself conflict with what we need to do to allow boys to flourish?” A: “Absolutely.”
Rethinking “Kindergarten Readiness”
Highlights:
“The idea of readiness assumes that children must conform to the world as it is. But what if the world—our schools, our structures—is what must change?”
“Children are not broken when they don’t fit school molds—schools are broken when they don’t fit children’s realities.”
“Rather than demanding that children arrive ready, we must prepare schools to receive them with care, responsiveness, and love.”
Black Boys Matter: Why Are They Disappearing From Schools?
Highlights:
“We treat Black boys like they’re problems before they even know how to write their names.”
“Black male students are suspended and expelled at three to four times the rate of their white peers, often for subjective or vague offenses like ‘defiance’ that don’t usually merit punishment in others.”
“It’s not just about getting more Black men into classrooms — it’s also about transforming those classrooms into places worth returning to.”
Boys & School: Aspirations & Underperformance
Highlights:
“Perhaps the college problem for many young men, and thus the relative lack of effort in school, is that they can’t see it leading to a destination worth struggling to reach.”
“With so many boys uninspired… it’s time we confronted the possibility that the problem might lie in the absence of reasons to be inspired.”
Have We Been Thinking of ADHD All Wrong?
Highlights:
Many leading ADHD researchers “express concern over what they see as a disconnect between the emerging scientific understanding of A.D.H.D. and the way the condition is being treated in clinics and doctors’ offices.”
“Last year, the CDC reported that 11.4% of American children had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., a record high. That figure includes…21% of 14-year-old boys and 23% of 17-year-old boys.”
“Some scientists have begun to argue that the traditional conception of A.D.H.D. as an unchanging, essential fact about you — something you simply have or don’t have, something wired deep in your brain — is both inaccurate and unhelpful.”
“One group of children, those whose A.D.H.D. symptoms are accompanied by intense anger, are at much higher risk of negative outcomes than those with A.D.H.D. symptoms alone…Those patients, representing about 1/3 of children diagnosed with A.D.H.D., need early attention and comprehensive treatment — most likely including medication but often going well beyond it.”
How We Could Curb the Youth Sports Arms Race
Highlights:
“The push to get kids into more intensive programs at younger and younger ages is a collective action problem that warrants a community-wide response.”
“Like the Wait Until 8th movement to delay smart phones, a critical mass of today’s parents could decide to wait until their kids are at least in middle school to specialize in one sport”
”As they do with phones, parents often acknowledge the negative impacts of this culture, but feel powerless to resist it individually.”
ON BOYS Podcast
How Your Anxiety is Sabotaging Your Son’s Motivation
Want more than a short clip? Join us in May for Boost Boys’ Motivation!
Your newsletter's thoroughness is so helpful. This week, I particularly liked your link to the story on how we may be thinking of ADHD all wrong. There's always something in there for everyone. Thanks for putting it all out there. My son is going to have to send you a thank-you note when he's 50.