Michael Gurian - The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys Into Exceptional Men

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Table of Contents

Also by Michael Gurian

PARENTING

The Minds of Boys (with Kathy Stevens)
The Wonder of Children
(previously published as The Soul of the Child)
The Wonder of Girls
A Fine Young Man
The Good Son
What Stories Does My Son Need? (with Terry Trueman)

EDUCATION

Boys and Girls Learn Differently!
(with Patricia Henley and Terry Trueman)
The Boys and Girls Learn Differently
Action Guide for Teachers (with Arlette C. Ballew)

PSYCHOLOGY

What Could He Be Thinking?
Loves Journey
Mothers, Sons and Lovers
The Prince and the King

FOR YOUNG ADULTS

Understanding Guys
From Boys to Men

FICTION AND POETRY

The Miracle
An American Mystic
The Odyssey of Telemachus
Emptying
As the Swans Gather

For Gail, Gabrielle, and Davita

Preface to the Ten-Year Anniversary Edition

Ten years ago, I was thirty-eight, a teacher, therapist, new father of my second childand my fourth book was just coming out. This book, about what boys needed in contemporary life, had been rejected by twenty-six publishers. Girls books are what were looking for, the editors had said. It was hard to blame them. Numerous bestsellers had come out in the early to mid-nineties about the issues that girls face. A controversial book on the issues that confronted boysthis was untried, risky on many levels, including the possible political fallout in gender politics. Also, my book was science-based (based in neurobiology). That, too, was risky, since the biological sciences of gender had not yet been applied to child development in this way. Neither my editor nor I knew what would happen when the yellow book with three boys smiling on the front cover was officially published. We held our breath.

Fortunately, when The Wonder of Boys came out in September 1996, the risks paid off. Some reviewers attacked it immediately for political reasons, some even arguing that boys issues meant very little. But just as immediately, something started happening. Mothers and fathers wrote me letters (no e-mail yet) telling stories of raising boys in todays world. A teacher wrote that the struggles of boys in school today are much larger than people realize. People began writing from all around the world, agreeing that boys needed as much careful attention as girls.

A decade has passed since the publication of this risky book about the other half. Thanks to readers, the book has reached hundreds of thousands of families. In a ten-year period, several boys issues have continued to find the light. A number of other powerful books on boys have also been published. The school shootings in the late nineties showed us how dark the male soul can become when a civilization neglects to care for its sons. A national think tank called the Boys Project has recently emerged in our cultureits mission: to alert academics and the government to boys issues.

I have continued to write new books about boys (and girls) and continue to receive daily mail (now its mainly e-mail) regarding this work. In all this correspondence, the affection shines through, of parents, grandparents, researchers, and many others who care for all children, and who are saying, Our boys DO need our help. We know it. We care deeply. Since The Wonder of Boys was first published, America went to war. The ripple effect of this on the lives of boys is just being understood.

Also, since the books original publication, the Internet has become a major media factor in the lives of both adults and children. There is now a heightened need for guidance and mentoring of boys and girls as they navigate the free-for-all cyberworld. The section of this book titled Teaching Boys Values Through the Media has taken on new meaning as boys spend hours every day (sometimes up to seven or eight hours) on the Internet, watching television, playing video gamesand they start using computers as young as two and three years old. Indeed, everything our boys do today requires vigilance, for many of the new things they are doing affect their ability to live with wonder. Wherever I go now to give talks or meet with communities, I am thrilled to see a constantly growing understanding of all the issues boys face.

The response to boys issues over the last ten years shows me that our boys have inherited from us adults not only a great deal of our mettle, our tenderness, our drive, and our accomplishmentsbut also our insecuri ties and unresolved conflicts, the weight of our questions, passed down through the generations, that are now coming to difficult confluence:

What is a man?

How should boys become men?

How should boys and men show their love and be loved?

In what way do males have a sacred role in this life?

Answers to these questions are being lived and fought for by boys, girls, women, and men. These were the primal questions that drove The Wonder of Boys into words and action. I am nearly fifty now, my children teenagers, and I am still working to answer these questions.

A reader, a grandmother in her eighties, wrote this to me recently: I got The Wonder of Boys for my granddaughter when she had her first son. Now Ive given a copy to one of my great-granddaughters. Shes also having a boy. There is no better feeling for a writer than to know he has touched several generations.

As I read again the words and research and stories I presented ten years ago, I feel most of all honored to continue to be part of a timeless effort in our civilization to help our sonsone family, one neighborhood, one generation at a time. I thank you for reading this book and letting it help you love and care for your children. Our children, much more than any single book, are the real risk worth taking and, indeed, the reason for our living.

Writing this book and also this preface has been an honor for me. I hope that as you read this anniversary edition, you experience much more than just my feelings and insights and observations. I hope youll receive a deep understanding of the needs, hopes, dreams of your sons, for they are filled, I know, with the wonder of boys.

Michael Gurian
February 2006

Introduction

Pinocchio! Oh Pinocchio!
Youre a boy!
A real boy!

Geppetto

When I was a boy I joined millions of other children in experiencing Walt Disneys version of the Pinocchio story. I watched Geppetto, the carpenter, fashion a boy from wood. I watched the Blue Fairy come down from the starry sky to promise Pinocchio that if he were brave, truthful, and good, hed be transformed into a real boy. Bravery, I learned, made a boy real. Truth and goodness made a boy come alive. Without them, he was an inferior model of a boyhe did not quite exist.

Hungry to be real myselfhungry in my small weakling body to be brave, hungry in my young spiritual mind to be truthful, hungry in my boys search for love to be goodI watched Pinocchio set out on numerous adventures, with Jiminy Cricket as his conscience. I watched this wooden version of myself, who did not know who he was and did not feel important, learn how to be brave in the whales belly, how to be truthful when his nose grew so long, how to be good by suffering the painful consequences of being bad. I cheered happily when the Blue Fairy made Pinocchio real. In that moment of transformation, I was like every boy who identified with PinocchioI felt just a little closer to becoming who I wanted to be. I felt real.

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