Boys Say It Like It Is Boys say it like it is: for them. They are not, generally speaking, diplomatic. If the thought is in their heads, chances are, it’s going to come out of their mouths. Uncensored. Without judgment or awareness of how what they say might effect someone else. That is, until they are old enough to have learned the lesson on how much impact they can have with their mouths. I often hear grown-ups accuse boys of “speaking without thinking.” Well, not exactly. The truth is, they are thinking, and whatever it is, they say it. More often than not, it is a function of their basic curiosity and connection with the physical world around them. For boys, that includes people too. He sees someone in a wheelchair, for example, and blurts out, “what’s wrong with his legs?” Or he sees a girl with a scar on her face and spits out, “what happened to your face? How did you get that ugly mark?” This can embarrass the crap out of the grown-ups with him. Now, he’s not trying to cause trouble. He’s curious and speaking his thoughts as they occur to him. If the scar looks “ugly” to him, that’s what he says. There’s no intent to judge or hurt the girl’s feelings. He’s just “speaking him mind.” The problem is, “speaking his mind” can be very disturbing for other people. Adults and children alike. The girl may burst into tears (then again, she may just explain what happened to her face) and the boy is going to be shocked. His thought will be, “what in the world is she crying about?” He’ll be just as curious about her crying as he was about the scar. Until or unless he gets a whiff that he’s in “trouble.” The grown-ups around either look angrily at him or speak harshly. Then, confusion sets in: “what did I do wrong?” he frets. He can’t figure it out because his question(s) were natural to him and now everyone’s upset with him. Without careful, step-by-step guidance to develop his understanding of how the girl felt hurt in response to his question, it’s bad-news bears for the boy. When all he gets from the grown-ups is anger, judgment, and criticism, he learns to either “keep his mouth shut” (to the bane of everyone who later want to know what he feels since he never talks about them) and/or to associate words as weapons and use them for effect. And boys can be very hurtful with their words. Modern American life offers ample opportunities for them to learn, from grown-ups, peers, television, movies, video games and media figures, how to “waste someone” with words. It just isn’t their natural tendency. But it sure gets mistaken as one. For boys, their connection to the world is a body-mind unity. Life is as it is and that is how they “see” it. His perception and response have a felt sense for him, but are neutral in judgment: he is connected with the natural world. There is no intent to harm someone when he opens his mouth. What is absent, is an empathic sense of what might occur as a result of his “speaking his mind.” It is a quality that requires empathy to teach, so that empathy is learned. That’s the job of adults. ©2008 Ted Braude Youth is wholly experimental. - Robert Louis Stevenson
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