Notes from HAIS Conference: Michael Thompson

[Melissa Handy]

Please post your notes from the four Michael Thompson presentations at the HAIS conference on October 27th. Thanks for sharing!

[Melissa Handy]

Topic: Best Friends, Worst Enemies

Every kid needs to have at least one friend.

When they arrive at school, kids of all ages look for the eyes of a friend. Children do not get up to see what’s new in the curriculum. From the kid’s point of view, the only point of the school is other kids. Students are focused on affirming their common humanity – knowing that they are experiencing the same thing and going through it together.

There are things that peers give to kids that adults cannot or do differently:

1. Teach each other effective communication – kids have their own language.

2. Modulate aggression – peers regulate teasing.

3. Sexual socialization – sexual scripting. Most boys who are gay know by age 12. What about homosexual kids? Girls don’t know it until they are 16, and date boys to discover it doesn’t work or them. Sexual teaching among peers. Most peers engage in sex around the same age as their peers.

4. Moral values – kids teach each other moral values. Rules – “that’s not fair.” Mixed-age free play is predominately about rule formation and rule debate. Moral accountability and leadership clinic. We interfere too much. Protect recess. You have to let kids work things out because that is a moral growth experience.

5. Development of self-worth – Kids make each other feel great. Classmates can make kids feel in a way that no adults can.

Everyone from 4th-9th grade is consumed with fear that they won’t be part of the mix. By fourth grade, kids’ definition of friendship is structurally the same as adult friendships. Don’t trivialize kid friendships. Friendship is fundamental. All your child needs is one friend.

When kids are struggling socially, get them a base outside of school. Find their people.

Remind parents that they didn’t buy a piece of paradise. Teasing is not bullying. Parents are Trauma Preventers!

We cannot eliminate hierarchy in human life. Hierarchy forms during Middle School – males it is fighting, girls it is exclusion. Wrap it with a moral community. Reduce the distance between the top and the bottom of the hierarchy so that the bottom kids aren’t dehumanized.

[Melissa Handy]

Topic: It’s a Boy

The US is a highly violent society. We are afraid of our own sons. Our fear of violence informs the way we think about small boys. Politicizing education is troubling for small boys. We do need to come to grips with the fact that they are different.

There are brain differences! When working on the same task, different parts of their brains light up in a PT brain scan in boys and girls.

Every psychological test of girls falls out on a bell shaped curve. It is the same with boys, a bell curve. Look at the curves overlapping and they are 90% the same. Boys and girls are much more human than they are gendered. Our current educational system is not irrational. The statistic data says that within group variation is wider than boy-girl variation. Temperament wins and personal uniqueness rules.

But, it is a different arc of development with boys taking longer to mature.

By school age: Boys are more physically active, impulsive, and immature.. Physically, they are only 25% overlapping and therefore, school is difficult for boys. The basic requirement of sitting in school is a lot tougher than boys. Girls are more efficient processors of language. Girls use both hemispheres and break things down. Boys are still over in the right hemisphere thinking it is like legos, LOL. Elementary classroom is 80% language based. Reading, talking about reading, etc.

Leveling the playing field conferred an advantage for girls and we don’t know why? What is not happening for boys in school? What is happening for girls in school?

[Melissa Handy]

Reading Recommendations:

Katch, Jane. Under Deadman’s Skin: Discovering the Meaning of Children’s Violent...

Biddulph, Steve. Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different - and How to Help Them Become ...

Gurian, Michael. The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School an...

Sax, Leonard. Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmot...