Michael Gurian Quotes

The culture in which you parent, mentor, or educate boys exhorts them to be individualistic and group-oriented at once, but does not give them a tribal structure in which to accomplish both in balance. It used to be that the tribe formed a boy's character while the peer group existed primarily to test and befriend that character. Nowadays, boys' characters are often formed in the peer group. Mentors and intimate role models rarely exist to show the growing boy in any long-term and consistent way how both to serve a group and flourish as an independent self.

Boys get unfairly labeled as morally defective, hyperactive, undisciplined, or 'problem children,' when quite often the problem is not with the boys but with the families, extended families, or social environments, which do not understand their specific needs as human beings and as boys

Our youth want less adult contact if that co ntacttreats them like boys. They want more adult contact that treats them like young men. Tired as they are of the former, they are hungry for the latter

Boys often need us to give them more time than girls need, and they often need us to connect their feelings to objects in the outside world.

There is no single way to educate.

All over the world when you test men and women for facial cue recognition, women test ... better. It's a negotiation tool.

If Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer were alive today, we'd say they had ADD or a conduct disorder. They [boys] are who they are, and we need to love them for who they are. Let's not try to rewire them.

Few things give a human being as much spiritual depth as relationship. If we teach effective communication and conflict-resolution skills to our boys from early on, we lay a foundation for spiritual groundedness. This means we must communicate effectively and resolve conflicts with them as much as possible. By our modeling and teaching, they'll gain the skill to go nearly anywhere and relate effectively, with appropriate boundaries, with good skills, and also with an ability to not take it personally when things go wrong.

Making fun of guys to get them to perform and prove themselves, that's always going to exist. But we have to equally celebrate them and empower them.

We are, in large part, a culture that expects its boys to initiate themselves into manhood. But holistic or even minimal initiation into manhood through relatively unguided self-experimentation is rare. Boys cannot become whole men without men and women making them into men.

Soul development depends on attachment and bonding. Every brain and body is genetically wired to develop itself, but the full soul development of brain and body depends on each child receiving the care of between two and five completely bonded caregivers.

We expect him to take up a lot of space in his gangly experiments with life, and we teach him, through task, work, game, activity, and experience how to use that space. Above all, we give him mentoring and supervision that respects and teaches his gifts, his visions, even his shadowy inner demons

Boys need to learn the value of spiritual solitude. For the soul to grow, it needs those moments of no-stimulation, of wakeful peace. Because we adults don't usually practice enough solitude - because we are always 'doing' things - we often neglect to teach our boys to find solitude

As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children's. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek ...

If we create a generation of men who aren't getting an education, that's bad for women.

Neuroligacally, human beings haven't caught up with today's overstimulating environment. Getting kids out in nature can make a difference.

I don't think anyone disagrees that male and female brains work differently.

Jed Diamond is, quite simply, one of the wisest men writing today on the topic of male emotional and physical health.

If we want boys to succeed, we need to bring them back to education by making education relevant to them and bring in more service learning and vocational education.

Most teachers are not trained in how boys and girls learn differently.

There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is 'the product of destiny,' or 'formed by fate,' or 'predestined for a certain life.' I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.

As Carl Jung once said, 'When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.' When our boys become adults, we become their inner situation. We become inner voices they often hear in their work, relationships and spiritual practice.

The human community and individual people are more likely to hurt or undernourish children they think of as 'bodies' to be used. Cultures and people are more likely to raise children to be mere economic interns rather than fully developed humans if they see children as 'bodies' to be forced into certain economic and social molds.

The boy and the man must be raised to see the possibility of self worth, then meet a few others who provide the vision of a road toward it, then spend a lifetime pursing that worth through action and relationship. One of the great tragedies in human life is to be born a male and not be guided toward the value of a man.

Boys must find ways to compete and see themselves as performing well. If they do not, if society does not provide them with these opportunities, they'll compete against society itself, abusing their community and themselves.

Adolescent youths cry out for us to help them contextualize their life experiences.

A great deal of intellectual intelligence depends on emotional intelligence.

The quickest way to create a boy or man who lacks compassion is to judge and shame his feelings.

Working outward in concentric circles from the single mother's situation, we can easily draw a picture of what a 'good' mother-son relationship needs in order to flourish. In its ideal form, mom would be experiencing physical, material, social, and emotional support from four interdependent sources: an intimate partner who is also attached to the child; a select group of close friends and family; a wider community that supports mom's values and goals; and a maternity-flexible workplace.