Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1212 - Bringing Up Boys With Dr Arne Rubenstein

Transcript

#1212 - Bringing Up Boys With Dr Arne Rubenstein · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:05
Speaker 1: The Hi everyone, it's Justin Ruland from Bridge Media here.
0:08
Speaker 1: And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, where's the
0:10
Speaker 1: other Justin? And he is coming. Because normally on a Friday,
0:14
Speaker 1: Justin and Kylie do their I'll Do Better Tomorrow episode
0:17
Speaker 1: where they look back at the week that was. But
0:19
Speaker 1: this week Justin's media schedule has been absolutely enormous. He's
0:24
Speaker 1: been slammed with media requests as a result of his
0:27
Speaker 1: viral post about the Netflix hit Adolescens on his Facebook page.
0:31
Speaker 1: So as a result, what we're going to do today
0:33
Speaker 1: is we'll be replaying a discussion that Justin had with
0:37
Speaker 1: doctor Arna Rubinstein about Bringing Up Boys. It's actually an
0:40
Speaker 1: excerpt from a longer conversation about boys, part of the
0:43
Speaker 1: Bringing Up Boys Summit at Happy Families dot com dot au. Well, look,
0:48
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoy the conversation and if it sparks
0:51
Speaker 1: something for you, the entire Bringing Up Boy's Summit is
0:54
Speaker 1: available now fifty percent off. That's ninety nine dollars until
0:57
Speaker 1: March thirty one at Happy Families dot com dot com.
1:00
Speaker 1: That's fifty percent off. Bringing Up Boys plus the Misconnection
1:05
Speaker 1: Summit will also be on sale for ninety nine dollars.
1:07
Speaker 1: That's at Happy Families dot com dot au will put
1:10
Speaker 1: the links in the show notes. Now here's doctor Justin
1:13
Speaker 1: Coulson with doctor Arna Rubinstein.
1:21
Speaker 2: I'm really super excited to be able to spend some
1:24
Speaker 2: time talking today with doctor Arna Rubinstein.
1:27
Speaker 3: Now, the conversation that we're going to have is actually
1:29
Speaker 3: part of the.
1:30
Speaker 2: Bringing Up Boys' Summit. We had a whole lot of
1:34
Speaker 2: experts from around the world join us for conversations about
1:37
Speaker 2: what it is to bring up boys. But I think
1:38
Speaker 2: that you'll find that this content is useful not just
1:41
Speaker 2: for parents of boys, but for parents generally. My sense
1:45
Speaker 2: is that hearing what doctor Arna Rubinstein has to say
1:48
Speaker 2: will make a big difference in the way that you
1:50
Speaker 2: engage with your family. Doctor Arna is the CEO and
1:54
Speaker 2: founder of the Rights of Passage Institute. He has over
1:56
Speaker 2: thirty years experience as a medical doctor, counselor, mentor, a
2:00
Speaker 2: speaker and a workshop facilitator. The programs, the seminars and
2:04
Speaker 2: the camps that he's helped to develop have been attended
2:07
Speaker 2: by more than three hundred and fifty thousand people globally.
2:11
Speaker 2: While some of the largest schools in Australia have implemented
2:14
Speaker 2: his framework in wonderful ways. His programs are designed to
2:18
Speaker 2: support boys and girls to successfully transition, healthy, safely into adulthood.
2:24
Speaker 2: His goal is to make rights of passage mainstream once again.
2:29
Speaker 2: Doctor Arna Rubenstein is the proud father of two wonderful
2:32
Speaker 2: young men and a mentor to many others, and he
2:37
Speaker 2: joined me for this discussion about why boys seem to
2:40
Speaker 2: be natural risk takers.
2:42
Speaker 4: There's a reason for it. And when I studied rights
2:44
Speaker 4: and passage all over the world, what I discovered that extraordinarily,
2:48
Speaker 4: despite the fact that they never met their shatter, they
2:51
Speaker 4: all did the same thing. So they all reckon. They
2:53
Speaker 4: all did at the same age sort of when the
2:55
Speaker 4: boys were hitting puberty, and they would always be taken away.
3:00
Speaker 4: And then there would be four elements that always happened.
3:03
Speaker 4: The first is that the boys get to hear the
3:05
Speaker 4: stories of the elders. They get to hear the men
3:09
Speaker 4: talking about their lives and the big things that had
3:12
Speaker 4: impact in their lives. And that's how they actually received
3:15
Speaker 4: wisdom and knowledge, not by being told how to live
3:18
Speaker 4: their lives and what to do, but by actually hearing
3:21
Speaker 4: the stories. So stories were an incredibly important part of
3:25
Speaker 4: Rutza passage. That was the first element. The second element
3:28
Speaker 4: is there's always a challenge, and there was always a
3:31
Speaker 4: challenge that pushed a boy to his edge. And actually
3:37
Speaker 4: it did a couple of things. It actually made him
3:39
Speaker 4: face his own mortality and fear, and it humbled him.
3:46
Speaker 4: It humbled him, which is very interesting because if this
3:50
Speaker 4: is anate need inside a boy, and if we don't
3:54
Speaker 4: create it for him, he will go and do it himself.
3:58
Speaker 4: He will push himself to a point where his mortality
4:01
Speaker 4: is challenged. And if there's no supervision, the danger is
4:07
Speaker 4: that he'll actually kill himself or badly injure himself, which
4:10
Speaker 4: you know, I know did emergency man, I did retrieval medicine,
4:13
Speaker 4: and or all the young men even make it to
4:15
Speaker 4: the hospital. And so I actually believe that every boy
4:19
Speaker 4: is going to go through a rite of passage. The
4:21
Speaker 4: question is are they going to create their own which
4:26
Speaker 4: you know, we hope is not too disastrous, or we're
4:30
Speaker 4: going to create something for them which is actually appropriate.
4:34
Speaker 4: And then the other thing is if the humbling doesn't occur,
4:39
Speaker 4: then they end up arrogant and entitled. And you know
4:43
Speaker 4: how many young men do we know out there who
4:46
Speaker 4: are arrogant and entitled and think the world is there
4:50
Speaker 4: for them and their role is to take as much
4:52
Speaker 4: as they can. So that was the set the first
4:55
Speaker 4: element story, the second element, there's always a challenge. The
4:58
Speaker 4: third element is creating a vision for how you want
5:01
Speaker 4: to be in the future. What sort of man do
5:03
Speaker 4: you want to be, what's your role you know, how
5:07
Speaker 4: do you want to be in the community. And included
5:08
Speaker 4: in that vision is what are the from your childhood
5:12
Speaker 4: that you need.
5:12
Speaker 3: To let go of.
5:15
Speaker 4: If you're going to become that man. And then the
5:18
Speaker 4: fourth element I call it an honoring or a recognition
5:22
Speaker 4: of spirit, and it's based on this idea that every
5:24
Speaker 4: boy is different, and every boy is born with their
5:27
Speaker 4: own unique gifts and talents, their own genius and spirit.
5:31
Speaker 4: And one of the key things of a rite of
5:33
Speaker 4: passage is to recognize and bring out those gifts, bring
5:36
Speaker 4: out that talent, bring out that spirit. And they were
5:41
Speaker 4: things that were done and so our challenge is then
5:45
Speaker 4: to make that appropriate for today because we don't live
5:48
Speaker 4: in you know, the jungles of Africa a Papua New
5:51
Speaker 4: Guinea to one hundred years ago, the deserts of Australia,
5:54
Speaker 4: it's whatever we do has to be appropriate for now,
5:56
Speaker 4: and I can talk about that. But if we don't
5:59
Speaker 4: do that, those things we don't create a rite of passage.
6:02
Speaker 4: The danger is the boys do not evolve and end
6:07
Speaker 4: up becoming physically out up men, but still with the
6:13
Speaker 4: psyche the behavior boy, which is a disaster.
6:19
Speaker 3: So in your book The Making of Men, you actually
6:21
Speaker 3: talk about a world that runs on boy psychology? Correct?
6:25
Speaker 3: Can you just maybe? Because I definitely want to get
6:27
Speaker 3: to these solutions and these ideas about what we can
6:29
Speaker 3: do it, because we're not going to send our kids
6:32
Speaker 3: out to hunt a wildline in the forest just down
6:34
Speaker 3: the street here. What does a world running on boy
6:36
Speaker 3: psychology look like? Yeah?
6:38
Speaker 4: So when I was doing the work, someone said, well,
6:40
Speaker 4: if you're going to talk about boys to men, you
6:41
Speaker 4: have to be able to define the difference. I wrote
6:43
Speaker 4: a model boyscology, healthy maunt psychology, and boy psychology is
6:47
Speaker 4: what we typically see in a six to eight year
6:50
Speaker 4: old boy. I'm the center of the universe. It's all
6:53
Speaker 4: about me, all about me, me, me, Me. I want
6:56
Speaker 4: constant acknowledgment. I can't handle my emotions if something goes wrong.
7:02
Speaker 4: I have a temper tantrum. I want as much power
7:05
Speaker 4: as possible. I'm going to live forever. I can never
7:10
Speaker 4: be wrong, never wrong. And I want a mother. I
7:13
Speaker 4: want a mother to be my sur to do everything
7:15
Speaker 4: for me, to tell me how wonderful I am. To
7:18
Speaker 4: just be on call twenty four to seven. Now, that's
7:20
Speaker 4: fine in a six to eight year old. But if
7:23
Speaker 4: you imagine a man like a global leader, or a
7:26
Speaker 4: head of community or ahead of a family, who still
7:29
Speaker 4: thinks he's the center of the universe, still thinks it's
7:32
Speaker 4: all about himself, wants as much power as possible, can
7:36
Speaker 4: never be wrong. When he doesn't get what he wants,
7:39
Speaker 4: he has a temper tantrum and wants a mother instead
7:44
Speaker 4: of a relationship. That's a major problem. And I can
7:48
Speaker 4: think we live in a world that's run by boys.
7:52
Speaker 3: I was about to say, isn't it great that all
7:54
Speaker 3: of the men who run various countries in our woo
7:57
Speaker 3: who have done isn't it wonderful that they've actually mature
8:00
Speaker 3: from that voice?
8:01
Speaker 1: That's right.
8:02
Speaker 4: We don't know, yeah, you know, it's but it's a
8:06
Speaker 4: serious issue when those men can push buttons that change
8:09
Speaker 4: the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions of people
8:13
Speaker 4: or make decisions. You know, do we want those decisions
8:16
Speaker 4: to be for the best of the people or for
8:18
Speaker 4: the best of that person? And so healthy man psychology
8:23
Speaker 4: is I'm not the center of the universe. I'm part
8:25
Speaker 4: of a community, and power is not just for me.
8:29
Speaker 4: Power is so I can do more good in my community.
8:33
Speaker 4: And if something doesn't work, I don't have a temper tantrum.
8:36
Speaker 4: That's actually domestic violence. I have to be able to
8:39
Speaker 4: stand with my emotions. And I'm not going to live forever.
8:44
Speaker 4: One day I'm going to die. And I'm not always right.
8:47
Speaker 4: I make mistakes. When I do make mistakes, I have
8:49
Speaker 4: to be accountable. And finally, I'm not looking for a mother.
8:53
Speaker 4: I'm looking for genuine relationship. And when I give my talks,
8:57
Speaker 4: which I do all around and around the world, and
8:59
Speaker 4: I talk about this model, and I say to any
9:01
Speaker 4: of the women in the audience, know any men who
9:04
Speaker 4: still think that the center of the universe want power, acknowledgement,
9:08
Speaker 4: can't stand their emotions, are never wrong, and want a mother.
9:10
Speaker 4: And you see the women and they sort of think,
9:13
Speaker 4: and they look at their husband and they look back.
9:15
Speaker 3: And then there's this sort of this awkward shuffle.
9:17
Speaker 4: And you know, we know exactly what I'm talking about here,
9:22
Speaker 4: and it's actually not okay. And all the stuff we're
9:25
Speaker 4: seeing in the Me Too movement and toxic masculinity and
9:29
Speaker 4: the patriarchy, and that's all inappropriate boy behavior from men,
9:36
Speaker 4: and it's just it's not okay. It's completely not okay.
9:39
Speaker 4: And a big part of it is because we don't
9:41
Speaker 4: have the rights or passage to create this shift from
9:44
Speaker 4: boy to men.
9:53
Speaker 3: Okay, So you can't start raising a teenager once it
9:57
Speaker 3: becomes a teenager. I wish don't necessarily say that we
10:01
Speaker 3: can still do some good right, it's never actually too late.
10:05
Speaker 3: But we've got parents of boys from eight to eighteen
10:08
Speaker 3: who are watching as many of them are actually watching
10:09
Speaker 3: it with their boys. In the book, you've got quite
10:13
Speaker 3: a lot in chapter five about how you can't start
10:15
Speaker 3: raising a teenager once it becomes one. So we need
10:18
Speaker 3: to we need to start pairing young boys the right
10:20
Speaker 3: way to transition them effectively from that boy psychology into
10:24
Speaker 3: what it is to be a man. Where do we start,
10:26
Speaker 3: How does this place this happen? Because, by the way,
10:28
Speaker 3: you're not sending eight year olds out for these rights
10:30
Speaker 3: of passages opportunities as they're moving through with their adolescens.
10:34
Speaker 4: Now, look, that's completely true, and ed's one of my saying,
10:37
Speaker 4: you can't start raising, you know, teenage, you want to say,
10:39
Speaker 4: become a teener. So it does come down to parenting.
10:42
Speaker 4: And one of the things I've discovered, despite the fact
10:44
Speaker 4: that my main interest has been right to passage, is
10:47
Speaker 4: there is a parenting issue and many many parents feel
10:51
Speaker 4: very lost and feel like they don't have a basic
10:53
Speaker 4: sort of God book and they want to be the
10:55
Speaker 4: best parents they can, but it's hard because they're so busy,
11:00
Speaker 4: their children are so busy. There's so much technology available
11:03
Speaker 4: every moment, and there's not a lot of I have
11:06
Speaker 4: found a lot of great guidance. So even though I
11:08
Speaker 4: do not want to be a parenting expert, I have
11:11
Speaker 4: found myself drawn into that sort of area. And we
11:15
Speaker 4: developed a model and I can give you the link
11:18
Speaker 4: to send it up if that's okay. On the thing
11:21
Speaker 4: great and we talk about seven strategies for building healthy
11:26
Speaker 4: relationships with our sons. And the first and it's quite basic,
11:31
Speaker 4: but our experience has been that parents love this knowledge.
11:35
Speaker 4: And the first is finding something that you both enjoy doing. Together,
11:40
Speaker 4: turning off your mobile phone and doing it regularly. And
11:43
Speaker 4: this is for dads and mums. And it might be
11:45
Speaker 4: walking the dog, it might be going fishing, it might
11:47
Speaker 4: be listening to music, it might be having a cup
11:49
Speaker 4: of tea in the day, whatever it is. But first
11:51
Speaker 4: of all, if you're going to have a relationship with someone,
11:53
Speaker 4: you have to have time with them. And extraordinarily I
11:56
Speaker 4: find a lot of especially dads, just never have one
11:59
Speaker 4: on one time with their children. That's the first one. I'll
12:03
Speaker 4: just name a few of them. The second is practicing
12:07
Speaker 4: acknowledging what they do well, so you know if you
12:11
Speaker 4: see them do something well, or their gifts or whatever
12:13
Speaker 4: you actually name it. It's very easy for parents just
12:16
Speaker 4: to tell their kids what they're doing wrong. And once
12:18
Speaker 4: again especially dads, but it is very good name of
12:21
Speaker 4: things they do well. Teaching skills of reflection. So when
12:24
Speaker 4: something happens, ask your child what they think about it first,
12:28
Speaker 4: rather than just giving them the lesson and saying if
12:31
Speaker 4: they have a problem, getting them they can come up
12:35
Speaker 4: with a possible solution or some ideas and then working
12:37
Speaker 4: with them on that. And then the last one I'll
12:41
Speaker 4: mention is that when something goes wrong when they do
12:46
Speaker 4: something wrong, which will happen at some stage, separating the
12:50
Speaker 4: person from the behave. So you know, I still love you,
12:55
Speaker 4: but you know burning down the house was not okay,
12:59
Speaker 4: or you know, hitting hitting your sisters not okay. We've
13:03
Speaker 4: got to talk about that, you know. Or if they
13:06
Speaker 4: don't do well at school, rather than shaming them, saying, hey,
13:08
Speaker 4: what's going on? You know, because one of the things
13:10
Speaker 4: we know with boys is when they act out often
13:13
Speaker 4: that actually means they've got a problem going on. So
13:16
Speaker 4: their way of expressing the problem is actually acting out.
13:20
Speaker 4: So those sorts of things, and we have like a
13:23
Speaker 4: wheel where we have all those things and parents can
13:25
Speaker 4: give themselves a mark out of ten in each of
13:28
Speaker 4: those areas and then join the dots. And you know,
13:30
Speaker 4: it's a simple thing. And the final one, actually I
13:34
Speaker 4: will mention, is sharing stories about when you were their age,
13:38
Speaker 4: including what went well and what didn't go well, and
13:41
Speaker 4: those sorts of things. It's just about building up strong,
13:45
Speaker 4: healthy relationship. Actually, there is one more which I do
13:48
Speaker 4: need to mention, keep going, connecting privileges with responsibility. I
13:54
Speaker 4: can't not name that because when we just give our
13:56
Speaker 4: boys everything regardless of how they behave regardless of how
14:00
Speaker 4: they are, and they become entitled. That's a problem. And
14:05
Speaker 4: from quite an early age, yes, we give them things,
14:08
Speaker 4: but if there's an agreement, like you know, you'll take
14:11
Speaker 4: your dishes into the kitchen, or you'll tidy your room,
14:15
Speaker 4: or you'll you know, be home when you say you're
14:18
Speaker 4: going to be home, and the privileges come together with that,
14:21
Speaker 4: that's a very important lesson because if we don't teach
14:24
Speaker 4: it to young as teenagers, when they're you know, six
14:28
Speaker 4: inches taller than us and big and strong and grumpy,
14:32
Speaker 4: that's not the time to be trying to sort of
14:34
Speaker 4: put in the boundaries. And unfortunately, I get a lot
14:37
Speaker 4: of phone calls from parents who say, I don't know
14:39
Speaker 4: what happened to my twelve thirteen year old son overnight.
14:43
Speaker 4: They won't talk me, they won't cuddle me. They just
14:46
Speaker 4: go in their room and lock the door, you know,
14:48
Speaker 4: and there's a war going on in the house. So,
14:51
Speaker 4: you know, I think there's a lot we can do
14:53
Speaker 4: around our sort of early stage parenting.
14:57
Speaker 3: Throughout those ideas that you've just shared. You've used dads
15:01
Speaker 3: and the importance of his role multiple times. Can you
15:06
Speaker 3: just talk a little bit about I mean, you've talked
15:08
Speaker 3: about rights of passage and the elders, the men go away,
15:10
Speaker 3: the elders spend time talking with the youngsters, and once
15:13
Speaker 3: again you've brought you brought the dads in the male
15:16
Speaker 3: role model. There's two parts to this question, and I'm
15:19
Speaker 3: not supposed to ask two questions at once, but they
15:22
Speaker 3: flow together. The first that can you just talk about
15:25
Speaker 3: why dads are so important? But the follow up is
15:28
Speaker 3: there's going to be a whole bunch of single mums
15:29
Speaker 3: who are watching this. There's going to be a whole
15:30
Speaker 3: lot of families where dad is either not safe or
15:33
Speaker 3: not present, or for whatever reason, wants to be but
15:36
Speaker 3: maybe even can't be. We want to give dads a
15:37
Speaker 3: benefit of the doubt as often as we can as well.
15:40
Speaker 3: What are parents do in that situation?
15:43
Speaker 4: Okay, so yeah, thank you for bringing that up. Equally
15:46
Speaker 4: important dads and mums, for sure. But the thing that
15:50
Speaker 4: we often find is that mums are so much more present.
15:55
Speaker 4: And these are generalizations, you know, very often the mums have,
16:00
Speaker 4: you know, so much more to do, especially in the
16:03
Speaker 4: early years with boys, and and we do have a
16:09
Speaker 4: lot of single moms who are trying to be mum
16:11
Speaker 4: and dad, which is very difficult. And one of our
16:14
Speaker 4: big recommendations there is to bring for the mums, to
16:18
Speaker 4: bring other men in, whether it's uncles, friends, grandfathers, are
16:23
Speaker 4: brilliant to bring that influence in. And what I also
16:27
Speaker 4: say to mums, there's a few really key things here,
16:30
Speaker 4: which is, you know, not to put up with inappropriate
16:32
Speaker 4: behavior from your boys. They've got to learn early that
16:36
Speaker 4: swearing at you, trying to hit you, you know, any
16:40
Speaker 4: of that stuff is just not okay, and they need
16:42
Speaker 4: to learn that while they're with you in the house.
16:46
Speaker 4: You know, it's a tricky one because you're right, something
16:49
Speaker 4: like a third of boys are now being brought up
16:52
Speaker 4: by single mums and not having contact with their fathers.
16:55
Speaker 4: So anything we can do to support mums is really
16:58
Speaker 4: important and I've actually got cap through about that in
17:01
Speaker 4: my book. So and those same principles with the mums
17:05
Speaker 4: are finding something you can do with your son one
17:07
Speaker 4: on one, sharing stories, separating the person from the behavior.
17:12
Speaker 4: All of those things are as important as well as
17:16
Speaker 4: doing whatever you can to have good men in the life.
17:20
Speaker 1: Of your boys.
17:21
Speaker 4: And we look at it as a community thing, So
17:24
Speaker 4: you know, I say, dads, whenever I work with them,
17:26
Speaker 4: you know, keep an eye out not only on.
17:28
Speaker 3: Your boy, but all the boy.
17:30
Speaker 4: The ideas were sort of trying to create an umbrella
17:33
Speaker 4: where the whole community is looking after all the children.
17:37
Speaker 4: And that's part of our work that we do in
17:39
Speaker 4: schools is trying to create community so that those who
17:42
Speaker 4: are on their own actually do have support.
17:50
Speaker 1: Hi. Everyone, Justin from Bridge Media. Again. You can hear
17:53
Speaker 1: that whole conversation as well as our long discussions with
17:56
Speaker 1: Peggy Orenstein, author of Boys and Sex, profess some Mark
18:00
Speaker 1: Brackett from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Manbox researcher
18:04
Speaker 1: Matt Tyler, and many many more in the Bringing Up
18:07
Speaker 1: Boys Summit that's fifty percent off until March thirty first
18:11
Speaker 1: at Happy Families dot com dot au and don't Forget
18:13
Speaker 1: the Misconnection Summit also on sale at Happyfamilies dot com
18:17
Speaker 1: dot au. We'll put those links in the show notes.
18:20
Speaker 1: The Happy Families podcast is produced by me Justin rule
18:24
Speaker 1: On from Bridge Media and don't Forget. You can get
18:26
Speaker 1: more information on improving your family's happiness at happy families
18:30
Speaker 1: dot com dot au