Ever since journalist Peg Tyre wrote her best-selling and
widely influential book, The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card On Our Sons, Their Problems At School,
And What Parents And Educators Must Do, I’ve wondered whether my fun-loving eight-year-old boy should be the
poster child for the next edition of the book. He’s pulling off good reading and math levels, but when it comes to school, his attention span, interest level and
commitment are not nearly what his sister’s were at this age. And then there’s this: The other day
he said to me, “Dad, when it comes to behavior and stuff, I think I need a tutor.” —
Kind of heartfelt and adorable, right? Impressively self-aware and prescriptive,
yes? I loved him for saying it, even if, more than anything, he was probably
just trying to please me by showing that he was taking “behavior and stuff”
seriously.
After receiving a report card in the middle of the year that
had one too many “red flags” on the behavioral front, my wife and I have
made a much more concerted effort to spend more homework time with Adam, and
to talk more often about respect for
teachers and classmates. And it worked,
or something did. His teachers reported a big improvement this semester; they
even sent home an appreciative note to Adam, praising him for how hard he was trying to be a good and respectful
participant in class.
But now that June is here, and the weather is beautiful and
school is almost, if not quite, over, Adam has been gathering more behavior demerits like so many
berries. We’ve talked about this, and I’m
sure we’ll talk about it again, but I also try to remember something Peg Tyre
once told me when I had the good fortune of meeting her a few years ago.
As an NYC mother of two boys now in college, she said, “They turn out fine. If we just
accepted them as boys and stopped pathologizing boy behavior, they wouldn’t
seem so bad. They’d just seemed like
boys. And one day they’ll be good
men.”
Until that day comes…Adam is stuck with me as his behavior tutor. I feel for him.
––Eric Messinger
