I am doing this group for boys aged 9-11 years old because I believe boys need to feel and they need to know it is okay to feel a certain way and to share that with others without worrying about ridicule.
Boys aged 9-11 years old are busy boys. They are emotionally very sensitive. At this stage – middle to late childhood - these budding personalities are becoming more evolved in their understanding of who they are and how they are perceived. This is self-understanding and it increases at this stage in their young lives. Social comparison, essentially differences between one another, also increase and kids are beginning to take notice of their differences and the differences in others. This is a developmental shift. Do you have a child in grade 5 or 6 that you can see this happening?
Self-esteem and self-concept are also evolving in middle to late childhood. When social comparison increases self-esteem can begin to decrease as the youth evaluates him/herself as less than favourable when compared to their friends. Self-esteem is the “global” evaluation of self meaning the social comparison plays a role.
One can begin to understand the incredibly important developmental period and how it relates to boys in the context of feelings. If society says ‘suck it up’ and says it is not okay to cry then what message are we sending our boys? It is not a message of acceptance for who they are naturally. #Boys Need to Feel.
This week we spoke about bullying in our group. We did not focus on who was a bully or not. In fact I know for a fact that at least two of the boys in the group were labeled as bullies at school. This wasn’t important to me for the purposes of this group.
During a role play scenario prior to watching the videos one boy hinted at a bullying situation and pointed to another boy and said “You tell her”. This was a clue to me that this other boy may have been involved or at least had details of the situation and it also told me this little guy was not comfortable sharing what had happened. That is okay, I was not interested in pushing him into talking about something he wasn’t comfortable talking about.
We watched three videos. The first one was ‘The Price of Silence’ where one bully was shut down in the end because someone stood up to him and others followed. The second video was ‘Bullying or Not’ an explanation between what bullying is and what it is not.
After we watched the videos the little guy I just spoke about blurted out what had happened to him and that he indeed was the victim of bullying. What an amazing accomplishment for me as the facilitator of this group! To hear him rather quickly provide details of his situation during our group was awesome. This tells me we are creating the safe space these kids need to talk about their feelings!
I purposely ended group with a video of Mr. Nick Vujicic as an inspirational message and someone who likely would have been a victim of bullying. I assured the boys that I had every confidence that in any situation they have the power to stand up for someone they may see being bullied. This session wasn’t about who the bully is; kids know who the bully is. The session was about empowering the boys, giving them a voice, a script so to speak about what to do next time they witnessed someone being bullied.
#boysneedtofeel
Sources and Resources:
Santrock, J., MacKenzie-Rivers, A., Leung, K., & Malcomson, T. (2008). Life-span development.
The Price of Silence:
Bullying or Not?:
Nick video No Legs No Arms No Worries:
