Boying Up Page 7
One of the best ways to combat some of the less-than-flattering portrayals of women and men and even lifestyle choices is to put yourself in situations where you can learn from seeing positivity in action. Surrounding yourself with friends and situations that seek to elevate men’s and women’s relationships and encourage you to strive to be all that you can be is really important—even if it sounds kind of silly. You learn by example and not just by being told to do this or not do that, so the more you see respectful communication, kindness, politeness and gentle words from men and women, the more likely you are to make those things a part of your worldview and your expectations for yourself. You may find these people to learn from in your home, or you may find them in the homes of friends or family members. You may even find some positive role models on TV and in movies, but know that the best kind of learning about social expectations and standards of being an all-around good person comes when you are watching it in action.
How Much Screen Time Is Too Much?
After many years of research and analysis, the American Academy of Pediatrics has officially announced that screen time should be limited to under 2 hours per day. Yup: 2 hours a day. We end up pushing aside physical activity, social interactions and schoolwork when we engage more with our screens than with the outside world. As an experiment, keep track of how many hours you spend a day on your computer or in front of the TV. Find ways to be selective about the time you spend with your screen and see if you can feel a difference in your life. You might be surprised!
Learning Your Passion
Even though I was a social kid, there were a lot of times in my life when I wasn’t around tons of friends. I remember times when I would tell my mom and dad I was bored, and they never liked hearing that at all! I spent a good amount of time when I was little playing outside and riding my bike, but once I hit the tween years, riding my bike just didn’t have the same appeal it did when I was younger.
One of the things I started to cultivate as I entered middle school was hobbies. Now, when you think of hobbies besides sports, I bet you think of the boys in your classes collecting baseball cards or postage stamps (that’s what my brother collected when we were kids!). Or maybe you think of a loner teenage girl doing puzzles by herself (that would be me!). Hobbies are interests we have that we can pursue alone, but sometimes we pursue them with others. Hobbies can involve learning a skill or a set of skills, doing crafts or playing a musical instrument. Hobbies can be playing board games, collecting comic books or learning all about a particular historical period. Hobbies use learned skills as a springboard for imagination and creativity. Your brain thrives on new stimulation as well as your ability to incorporate learned information that may seem simple, but with a little creative input, can delight and bring joy. That’s the most rewarding kind of learning you can experience.
So, what are some of my hobbies? Well, I started playing the piano in kindergarten and have continued playing to this day. I learned how to play trumpet in my elementary school when I was 10, and I continued to play in orchestra and jazz band through middle school. I learned bass guitar when I was 16 and played with a few bands in my college years, although I was a very shy performer, so that didn’t last long! Music is a wonderful hobby, and it is also a terrific outlet for emotional release. In addition, the brain does amazing things when mastering music. Musical ability has been linked to advanced math ability as well as increased creativity in other fields. It’s never too late to learn an instrument, and I know this because I learned how to play the harp for The Big Bang Theory just a few years ago!
Another hobby I have is sewing and crafts. I was raised by a mom who knew how to sew really well—her parents were both tailors—and my mom passed on her love of sewing to me by teaching me the different kinds of stitches, how to assemble clothing patterns and how to make blankets and pillows for my dolls. The things my mother taught me were invaluable: she taught me using math, geometry and color theory, but she made it fun, interesting and inspiring. Some of the most memorable times I had with my mom as a child were learning with her—not just learning how to sew, but learning alongside her. That’s kind of how learning works: learning things with others is its own process of learning. We learn skills, but we also learn about interaction, relationships and what we like and don’t like.
As I got older, even though I didn’t play with dolls anymore, my love of being crafty stayed with me.
I’ve dabbled in a lot of other crafty hobbies, such as painting with acrylics, making pot holders, learning calligraphy, experimenting with papier-mâché and weaving friendship bracelets. My sons and I have started trying out something called felting, where you use a felting needle to turn a ball of wool into amazing and elaborate shapes, like animals and even people.
This is the first thing my sons and I felted: a little snowman wearing earmuffs. Come on: admit that this is pretty cute!
Wrapping Up
Our brains are made for learning: how to survive, how to communicate, how to exist as humans on a very complicated planet. As boys, you have a lot to learn that helps you make the journey of a lifetime: the hero’s journey. You learn to take that journey when you move your bodies, when you work hard to understand emotions and when you best understand what it means to win and what it means to lose.
Learning how to focus in school builds our brains, but so does playing sports, watching TV and doing things that bring us and others joy. We are learning beings, and we are creative beings. Good school habits, making wise choices about your free time and taking an active and engaged part in your journey to Boying Up will make you a well-rounded person and a satisfied one as well.
FOUR
• HOW BOYS LOVE •
Human beings are just one of millions of living things on the planet. We are Homo sapiens, a special kind of mammal that can have very complicated and meaningful relationships with other Homo sapiens (as well as dogs and cats and a variety of other critters we sometimes have as pets!). Homo sapiens have significant relationships with parents, siblings and other family members, as well as friends and romantic partners. These relationships are defined by something called intimacy.
What exactly is intimacy? Well, when you hear the word intimacy, you might think of the kind of relationship you’d have with a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a husband or wife, but intimacy is actually a general term that refers to a kind of extreme closeness where we share parts of ourselves that we wouldn’t share with just anybody. Having an intimate relationship means two people are making themselves vulnerable. These kinds of relationships allow us to learn new things about ourselves, to challenge ourselves to be patient, affectionate and compassionate, and to appreciate other people’s viewpoints. These are qualities boys and girls and men and women all need to cultivate to have content and happy lives.
Let’s Get Close: Family and Friends
The first intimate relationships we have in our lives are with our caregivers, who, for most people, are parents. Some babies are raised with help from grandparents or older siblings or other family, and some babies are raised with the help of a nanny. No matter who changes our diapers or feeds us or gives us baths, the first people we come in contact with when we’re tiny are our first and, in some ways, most important intimate relationships.
Even though we probably can’t remember the first months and even years we were alive, the way people talked to us, the way people held us and the way people attended to our needs made a big difference. Babies rely on caregivers to understand what their cries mean, and they need to trust that someone will help them when they need help. Sometimes a baby’s cry means “I’m hungry!” and sometimes it means “My diaper is really wet and kind of mushy right now!” but other times it means “I’m feeling lonely—hold me!” So even as babies, we are genetically programmed to want to be understood, and we have an innate sense of trust that someone will both understand us and be able to help us get our needs met, which is a
ctually the core of any good relationship. And just think: it starts when we’re too young to even remember it!
As we get older, we have meaningful relationships with the people who continue to feed us, provide us with clothing and a place to live, help us grow and learn new things and have fun with us. For many of us, our parents, siblings and extended family are our main relationships when we’re little. When we start going to school, we make friends and form new relationships with people our own age, and we find that we want to pursue relationships with people who have the same interests we do. We want to participate in conversations about things we have in common, and we start to open up to people about who we really are. These are relationships that are close and meaningful. They are intimate.
Relationships change throughout your life. My brother and I did a lot of things together when we were little, but as he got older and his interests spread out from mine, we had fewer moments of intimate connection and more moments of just being siblings in the same family, which is normal and also fine. I was super close with my mom and dad when I was little, but as I made friends and found things I liked to do, I spent less time with them and more time in my room reading and playing with friends. This is also normal!
It is healthy for relationships to change, and the great thing about strong intimate relationships with family and friends is that there is always a solid core of connection to come back to. There have been times as an adult when I needed my brother almost more than I needed him when we were kids, even though we haven’t been as close all of these years. We can draw on our connection as adults in new and important ways now.
The intimacy we feel with family and friends is special and valuable. It is the foundation of all of the relationships we end up having with new people we meet as we grow. Some of the people we meet will become part of a separate kind of intimate relationship: a romantic intimate relationship. But those are not the only relationships that are important to think about as you continue Boying Up.
Brotherhood
One of the closest relationships boys have as they are Boying Up is with their friends: their buddies, their bros, their homeboys, their dudes, their posse. No matter what guys call each other, the friendship of a group of boys and men is intimate and special, even if you don’t automatically think of the things a lot of guys like to do together as intimate or special. Groups of boys sometimes play sports and video games when they hang out, but they also can share a fondness for things like sci-fi movies, comic books, music and poetry—really anything at all. In my junior high, I was in orchestra, and a lot of the guys who were in orchestra and jazz band hung out together discussing and playing jazz music. Some guys in my high school were “theater geeks,” and they would spend a lot of time rehearsing scenes for plays and choreographing dances for performances. All of these guys’ relationships were different, but all shared a notion of a brotherhood that is very important for the Boying Up you are doing.
While girls’ relationships are sometimes thought of as a bit more emotionally complicated than friendships between guys, the old-fashioned idea that boys and men don’t have complicated relationships or don’t need to think about interactions the way women do is exactly that: it’s old-fashioned. Boys and men have different ways they handle relationships, but they are just as important and worthy of exploration as girls’.
Evaluating a Friendship
Have you ever had a friend who tells other people things about you that you’ve asked him to keep private? Do you have a friend who acts one way when it’s just the two of you but acts totally different when other people are around? Or someone who’s mean to people and assumes you will go along with it? Have you ever had a friend try to pressure you into doing things such as smoke, use drugs, drink or look at inappropriate stuff on the internet? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to reevaluate the friendship. Friends should absolutely help us be the best we can be, and deception, lying and peer pressure are not cool. Talk to someone you trust if you think you’re in a friendship that’s not healthy. The way you Boy Up to be the best you that you can be is by consistently putting yourself in healthy situations that build you and others up.
One of the cool things that happens when guys spend a lot of time together in groups is that they bolster each other in positive ways. The chemicals and hormones of boys and men, especially in their teen years and 20s, makes for a sort of “strength in numbers” that is very easy to see; a great example is guys who play sports together: you get motivated by adrenaline and endorphins and many men report accomplishing things with the support of a group that they could never imagine accomplishing alone. A similar sense of brotherhood happens when men serve in the military together; there is a shared feeling of purpose, motivation and willingness to put their very lives on the line for each other. This kind of brotherhood can lead to tremendous closeness and joy.
However, while it is true that the chemicals and hormones that get released when boys and men work together are powerful and can be transformative and meaningful, it is also true that they can encourage a lot of behaviors that can be harmful or dangerous, when something one boy might be uncomfortable doing on his own seems like it’s okay because all of his friends are doing it—or are encouraging him to do it. The saying “boys will be boys” is sometimes used to excuse inexcusable behavior by boys and men (like getting into fights or saying or doing hurtful things to girls), and it’s time for us to stop condoning bad behavior as “normal.” It’s not normal for men to be abusive. It’s not normal for men to be disrespectful. It’s not normal for men to not listen when someone says “stop,” whether it is “stop touching me,” “stop talking to me that way,” “stop texting me” or even “stop teasing me.” The purpose of our communication and ability for closeness as humans means it is all of our responsibilities to speak up when we see people mistreating each other.
Another extension of “boys will be boys” involves the way guys sometimes talk when they are out of earshot of women. It is a normal thing for boys and men to take notice of women and be curious about their bodies, their interests and their potential as partners. However, the way boys and men speak about women absolutely impacts the way girls and women are perceived and treated. Think about it this way: if you have to visit a family member and in the months leading up to the visit you tell yourself how much you don’t want to go, and you think about how much you resent going and how much you dislike this person, by the time it’s time to visit them, you will be in a pretty negative space. Your mind will effectively be “closed” to the possibility of seeing this person or the situation any other way.
The same could be said to be true of how boys and men are assumed to talk about women. “Locker room talk” that is degrading to women reduces women to sex objects, focuses around misusing their love and their bodies, and brings them down leads to a general mindset that sees women in a negative light. And just as it is not okay to call African American, Jewish or Asian people hurtful names, it is harmful and insensitive to speak harshly about homosexuals or to call boys you don’t like “gay” as an insult. In addition, calling a boy names typically used to describe female genitalia (such as pussy or vagina) or calling anyone a bitch is degrading to women and men, and it’s vulgar and gross. Basically, if you wouldn’t say it in front of your mom or sister or grandma, chances are it’s not something smart to say at all.
Even if you don’t participate in this kind of talk, being around it and being surrounded by it can have a negative impact on you. Ways to combat this are to reduce the time you spend with boys and men who use disrespectful speech and to spend your energy experiencing positive women and seeing the power and impact they have on your life, your community and the world. Instead of joining in and teasing someone everyone calls gay, introduce yourself to them and find out about them. Everyone’s got a story that deserves to be heard. There should be no hierarchy among boys that sets people who are different below th
ose who blend in more. While it may sound silly—or even impossible—to combat negative locker room talk, you are in charge of how you think and how you treat people. Surround yourself with guys who choose to be in charge the same way.
Fraternity Culture
One of the ways that young men can choose to bolster their male friendships and make new friends in college is by joining a social network of people who live together in apartment buildings and houses, known as fraternities for young men and sororities for young women. These groups require that you pay an annual fee to participate, and they historically do charity work and foster friendships, which can inspire many wonderful things because of the brotherhood that makes boys stronger together. However, the past 20 years or so have revealed many problems with what has become known as “frat boy culture.” The way you get into a fraternity (called initiation) has taken on dangerous and harmful elements in many cases, with a lot of drinking and encouraging each other to do things that can be very destructive. While this is not true of every fraternity or sorority, if you think about joining a fraternity, know that being asked to do anything dangerous as part of initiation is not healthy or necessary. In addition, the culture of many fraternities and sororities involves a lot of alcohol consumption, and when alcohol is consumed, judgment can slip, especially that of underage drinkers, whose frontal cortex, the part of the brain that guides judgment, is not fully developed. So if you decide to join a fraternity, be careful about which one you choose, and if anything ever feels weird or like there might be danger or compromising of your ethics, speak up.