Speaker describes what boys need in their development

Whispers flew across the McAfee Center as parents trickled in. Many were mothers with notepads clutched to their chests. Others walked in as couples.

About 100 people were there on Jan. 18 to learn about the special developmental needs of teenage boys, a group often ignored among psychologists and other experts.

The speaker was Jerrold Lee Shapiro, a professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University. His talk was titled “What Boys Need.” It was sponsored by PTSO.

Shapiro has taught students for four decades and now uses his knowledge about boys to teach his psychology students how best to approach this group.

His first slide began with the title, “We are doing a better job of helping our daughters — now we have to save our sons.” Hoping to discuss the disadvantage that boys have in society, he then spoke about how an individual can fix these rifts. Shapiro has written nine books, many to provide support or advice for males. He has been featured on numerous television shows including CNN, ABC and Oprah.

“Promoting equality means promoting it in all forms, and it is one of the most important things we could do in our lives, but it is really an elusive topic,” he said.

His interest in psychology was sparked in his freshman year of college, when award-winning therapist Viktor Frankl visited his school.

“I was mesmerized, because my whole life I had looked at the world through a different lens than my teachers,” said Shapiro. “He spoke directly to my heart because the way we looked at the world is so consonant that it was striking.”

Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who utilized his experience to find fulfillment in life and teach others to do the same. He founded a new school of therapy, where the solution is to help patients find meaning to their life.

“I am still amazed at the person and the brilliance and the writing,” Shapiro said. “Who he was as a therapist was just incredibly influential.”

Shapiro soon changed his major to suit his new goal of fixing the gap in educating both girls and boys.

“We are creating equality in which we are pushing both genders down, as opposed to rising both up,” said Shapiro. “My purpose is rising up educational opportunities for both boys and girls.”

In his talk, Shapiro spoke about the Bush-era “No Child Left Behind” Act, which tested students for proficiency in reading and math. These standardized tests are not accurate representations of those who learn differently, he said.

In time when education emphasizes standardized tests,, Shapiro believes that males are at a disadvantage because many young boys cannot focus for that long on both tests and studying.

“What we forget is that inertia also means bodies in motion tend to stay in motion,” Shapiro said. “With boys, we just need to redirect their energy, not stop it.”

To Shapiro, education especially discriminates against boys because of the fine motor skills required, such as holding a pencil or crayon.

As a rule, boys mature more slowly than girls, both physically and mentally. In the meantime, tests and standards tend to target where girls are developmentally, leaving boys at a disadvantage.

Sophomore Sohail Syed was one of the only boys at Shapiro’s presentation. He said that Shapiro provided a story that no one else has acknowledged and he was surprised to learn this perspective: that boys have lower college graduation rates and higher rates of autism.

“I related to some of the things he was saying,” Syed said. “A lot of the psychological differences [between genders] were things I hadn’t thought about before.”

Shapiro also spoke about the communication differences between boys and girls; boys do not tend to speak about their emotions, which makes recognizing confusion hard for a teacher.

But despite their disadvantage, Shapiro’s talk underlined how parents could help their boys.

“The single best predictor of how successful a boy will grow up to be is if he has a man in his life to guide him,” Shapiro said.

By having a male role model in a boy’s life, Shapiro believes it can help give perspective to their personality and needs.

“We need to recognize how important acceptance, connection and friendship are to them. We lose sight of that,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said that to effectively parents and teach boys, adults must have different expectations.

“If a boy needs more physical interaction in order to learn, we should give that to him,” said Shapiro. “And if a boy can’t interact well face to face, we should give him that interaction shoulder to shoulder.”