Category Archives: Uncategorized

Moving to a new site soon

Hey, friends,

I haven’t written any blogs for awhile for a couple of reasons:

1) I have been writing some articles for various websites.

2) I’m connecting with a new blogging family and we’re in the final stages of moving my blog to their site.  So I’ve been saving up posts for that new site.

Once we’re up and running I will let you know.

If you haven’t seen my latest article on boys, check out: http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2013/august-online-only/finding-lost-boys.html

Tim

A Bias Against Testosterone? Raising Boys in a Kryptonite World

A friend sent me an email with the header: Why Boys Need Parents.  The email consisted of several pictures of boys about to do something reckless and goofy.  For example, picture:unknown

  • A young boy standing on a skateboard at the top of a steep hill in San Francisco about six blocks long, ending at a pier jutting into the ocean
  • A young boy sticking a knife into an electrical outlet
  • A boy with a huge frog in his mouth

And the question is, Why do boys do that?

In a word: Testosterone.  Testosterone in an energy hormone.  An action hormone.  A get something done hormone.  A risk-taking hormone.

Testosterone is the energy that causes boys to fidget when they sit too long, that demands movement to learn and bond, and that enables boys to laser focus on a particular item but makes it difficult for them to multi-task.  Imagine experiencing a surge of that volcanic energy 7 plus times a day!  That’s the story of boys as they begin to move into puberty.

On a deeper level, testosterone is the hormone that gives some insights into the purpose of boys.

Testosterone is the fuel of superheroes.  Testosterone is the energy that motivates a boy, when forged in healthy ways, to save the world.  Every boy begins life wanting to be a superhero…to fight the bad guys, to save the world.  To make the world a better place.  When harnessed for good and noble purposes, testosterone is the power that energizes our boys for greatness.

It seems, however, that our boys are increasingly growing up in a kryptonite world, a world that devalues, demeans, dismisses or misunderstands the unique power of testosterone, robbing them of their purpose and superhero power.

An example: I was watching a cartoon with my granddaughter designed for young preschool children. Each episode teaches a lesson about getting along with others. The main character is a girl and she has three male animal friends.

In this episode one of the boys was expressing his testosterone. He was a bit rambunctious. He wanted to move…to play…to make noise. The other two boys were having nothing to do with it.  Each time he splashed them or ran a circle around them, they would whine and say, “He’s being rough!”

The girl character taught them a new song: Don’t be rough…be gentle. Each time the boy got rough (and he was never really rough, just a boy moving and playing) the other boys would whine, berate the “rough boy,” and sing the song, Don’t be rough…be gentle.

Seems fair enough.  But consider how a little boy might internalize that message: Could it be…that what might hear is: Boy behavior is always bad!

Rather than helping the rambunctious boy harness his energy in appropriate ways, the lesson essentially said that boy behavior is always wrong. Never be rough. Always be gentle. Never once were the whining boys encouraged to stop their whining. Instead, their whining led to the rough boy being told to stop acting like a boy!

I think boys subtly and not so subtly hear that message over and over again as they grow and those messages act like kryptonite, robbing them of their power and purpose.

Could it be…that every time boys are made to sit quietly for extended periods of time or reprimanded for getting fidgety after longs periods of sitting, they hear: boy behavior is bad? After all, girls, who produce more calming hormones and chemicals than boys, are often rewarded for their ability to sit quietly and listen.  Education and that favors sitting, listening, talking, relating, and emoting at the expense of action, building things, and moving subtly tells boys that there is something wrong with them.

Could it be…that the fact that 85% of all stimulant addressing drugs prescribed in the entire world are prescribed to U.S. boys suggests to boys that there is something wrong with them?

Could it be…that the increasing blurring of the lines between equality and “sameness” subtly sets culture up to say that testosterone-charged boys are a problem to be solved?

Could it be…that the negative stereotypes of boys—Boys will be boys; Boys are out of control savages, Boys feel entitled (actual quotes from comments on a previous post)—permeate a boy’s world with so much power-robbing kryptonite that boys are growing into young men living down to those stereotypes?

Linda Lewis Griffith, a marriage and family therapist published an article focused on boys and violence, with a “teaser” paragraph stating the following: Most rough-and-tumble behavior is normal, but parents should keep an eye on out-of-hand aggression. 

She writes: Little boys seem pre-programmed to behave in rough-and-tumble ways.  A five-year-old dreams of being a superhero and killing bad guys with his sword.  A preschooler pretends his carrot stick is a gun and points it at the child sitting next to him at snack time.  Experts generally agree these acts are the result of increased levels of testosterone.  Yes, they cause parents (especially moms) to cringe.  But they seldom indicate an underlying mental disorder. 
In fact, they may be perfectly normal…

However, boys may be more sensitive than their sisters to the impact of witnessing violence…

She then offers some great advice for molding and shaping the power of testosterone in boys:

 *Understand that rough-and-tumble play is appropriate for boys.

*Encourage lots of outdoor time.

*Provide appropriate outlets for physical aggression.


*Seek male role models.


*Take strong stands against violence.

 *Get professional help if you’re concerned.

The best way to forge boys into good men is not to drain them of their energy but to mold and shape that energy, teaching boys how to harness their super power for good and noble purposes.

Does Liberty and Justice for All Include our Boys?

As our nation rounds the corner on another birthday and continues its long history of trying to figure out exactly what it means to be a nation of liberty and justice for all, it’s a good time to look at an increasingly “lost” group in our culture: our sons.

Fast Facts about our Boys:

According to New York Times Best-Selling Author Michael Gurian:

*For every 100 girls suspended from elementary and secondary school, 250 boys are suspended.

*For every 100 girls diagnosed with a learning disorder, 276 boys are so diagnosed.

*For every 100 girls expelled from school, 355 boys are expelled.

*Boys are expelled from preschool at five times the rate of girls.

*Boys are 60% more likely to be held back in kindergarten than girls.

*Richard Whitmire, in his book, Why Boys Fail, tells us that the reading skills of the average 17 year old boy have steadily declined over the last 20 years.

*According to Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley, policy makers in the United States calculate that if 5 percent more boys completed high school and matriculated to college, the nation would save $8 billion a year in welfare and criminal justice costs.

*More girls than boys take college prep courses in high school.

*Girls get better grades than boys and graduate from high school with higher GPA’s.

*More girls than boys take the SAT.

*More girls than boys are graduating from college.

Does that look like liberty and justice for our boys?

Little-Boy-with-Flags

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, when we sensed our girls were not keeping up with our boys in education, we rolled up our collective sleeves and did something about it to the tune of $100 million dollars from the US Government and Title IX.  Backed by the women’s movement, we not only got our girls caught up, but by the 1980’s, they sailed past our boys and have now left them in the dust.  To this day, even though our girls are light years ahead of our boys, the storyline is still about how our girls are behind, facts to the contrary.

Richard Whitmire notes that boys are struggling in most Western countries.  But here’s his telling observation: What makes the United States unique is its relative indifference to the issue.  Here, the U.S. Department of Education has yet to launch a single probe into the problem. 

Not one dollar from the US Government has been spent on getting our boys caught up.  No national movement focuses on our boys (or our men).

Does that look like liberty and justice for our boys?

We are just now learning what it means to have undereducated boys growing into men.  Men who are not trained for this new emerging world dependent on reading and verbal skills.  Men who are growing up with no vision for what it means to be a man in the 21st Century.  To re-quote Kathleen Parker from a previous post: Young men now in their twenties have never experienced a culture in which men were respected or expected to be gentlemen.

Where will these men work?  What women will want to marry them?  Where will these men find significance and meaning in life?  What will society do with an increasing number of undereducated men or men who don’t fit the profile for the emerging jobs of the 21st Century?

If indeed we are a nation of liberty and justice for all, then it’s time for us as a nation to invest in our boys on a national scale.  To get them caught up in school.  To call out the noble in them.  To give them a vision for how they, along with their sisters, can change the world.

We’ve seen the power of fighting for liberty and justice for all in our battle for our girls.  Let’s do it again and fight for our boys.  Our country is much stronger when our girls and our boys can lean in to their potential.

Why I Believe the Church May be the Best Hope for our Boys

These are tough days to be a boy:

  • 70% of all D’s and F’s are given to boys
  • 85% of stimulant addressing drugs prescribed throughout the world are prescribed to US boys
  • Over the last 20 years the reading skills of the average 17 year old boy have steadily declined
  • Boys have fallen behind girls in virtually every area of education
  • Boys are increasingly growing up with no compelling vision for manhoodimages
  • Some fifty years ago, when our girls were falling behind our boys in school, the US government spent over $100 million to right that wrong.  As a result, girls caught in the 1980’s and then sailed past boys.  The amount the US government has invested to get our boys caught up?  $0.

These are tough days to be the Church:

  • Sexual scandals in the Catholic Church
  • Angry, fringe churches like Westboro Baptist making front page news
  • Pastors of mega-churches caught in various scandals of their own making
  • Church and denominational splits over gay/lesbian issues
  • Church attendance in decline, especially among young adults
  • 70-90% of all boys leaving the church in their teens and early 20’s…and most not returning.

So it may seem cavalier or reckless for me to suggest that the Christian Church may be the best hope for our boys.

For several years a variety of voices have sounded the alarm concerning the boy crisis in our country (Michael Gurian, Michael Thompson, Peg Tyre, Richard Whitmire, to name a few).  Yet for all of the attention given to the boy crisis, the crisis is still being questioned by many under the guise of a misguided political correctness that suggests that any attempt to focus on boys will have a negative impact on our girls.

So here we are, almost 30 years after our girls caught up to and surpassed our boys, still arguing over whether or not there really is a boy crisis (there is) while the story for our boys continues to degenerate.

Having spent almost 30 years as a pastor, and having worked on the boy crisis for the last 7 years, I believe the Church may be best positioned to help us solve this boy crisis for the following reasons:

  • The Church is rooted in a deep, rich, sacred view of men and women.  The Bible says that men and women are created in the Image of God.  Both male and female are good.  Both are equal.  But they are also different.  Take off our clothes and we see the difference.  Take the clothes off of our brains and we see the difference (at least 60 differences between the male and female brain have been identified so far).  The male is not better than the female, just different.  The female is not less than the male, just different.  Both are rooted in the sacred view that they are created, male and female, in the Image of God.  Based on that, the Church can rise above political correctness and stereotyping to draw out the best in our boys and our girls.  It can take the lead in reshaping the discussion, moving us from antagonism of one sex toward the other to a comprehensive, sacred appreciation of the equality and uniqueness of both.
  • The Founder of Christianity offers a vision for compelling manhood. Jesus offers boys a vision of what it looks like to be a man:  Courageous, compassionate, a warrior against injustice, an advocate for the voiceless, a friend, passionate, committed, a man of his word, a man of action, gracious, humble, gentle, tough, forgiving, purposeful, commanding, strong, fully in tune with who he is, and ultimately a man willing to lay down his life not just for his friends, but for his enemies.  Imagine our boys growing up into that kind of manhood.
  • The Church understands the primal need of every boy for a blessing from his father. Part of what makes a boy a man is the blessing of his father—that moment when dad looks his son in the eyes and tells him he loves him and that he is proud of who his son is becoming.  Sadly, most boys never hear those words from dad.  For some it’s because dad isn’t around.  For others it’s because dad never received that blessing from his father and so has no idea how to give it to his son.  The ministry of Jesus began with the blessing from his Father.  Armed with his father’s love and approval, Jesus had the masculine power he needed to change the world.  The Church stands in a unique position to train men to give that blessing to their sons and to boys in general.
  • The Church has an army of men who can pour masculine energy into our boys.  In a time when our boys have few men investing in them, the Church is loaded with potential male mentors, who, with a bit of training, can begin to pour good masculine energy into our boys who desperately crave men in their lives.

That’s why the Church may be the best hope for our boys.  Why may be? Because the Church has a checkered record, at best, when it comes to raising boys into honorable men.  Too often the Church has raised boys to lord it over women rather than serve them.  Too often the Church has devalued women, treating them as inferior to men.  None of this has been Biblical.  None of it has been in line with Jesus and his agenda.  Yet sadly, it’s still happening today.

If the Church can get its act together and embrace its deep, sacred understanding of male and female, if the Church can let go of its past sins and truly follow Jesus, the one who is the vision for manhood, and more than that, the vision for humankind, then the Church can take the lead in changing the storyline of our boys.