Q&A with Michael Gurian

Boys and Schools Exclusive: Meet Michael Gurian and learn more about nurturing the core nature of your child

Long an advocate for boys and an expert on developmental and learning differences, Michael Gurian has offered help to thousands of parents and families. In his new book, Nurture the Nature, the co-founder of the Gurian Institute helps parents shake off the burden of social trends parenting and its pressures and learn how to discover (and nurture) the core nature of their child. Mr. Gurian was kind enough to discuss his book with Boys and Schools.

Boys and Schools (BAS): You make some strong criticisms of parents getting too involved in what you describe as “social trends” parenting. Can you give some examples of what social trends parenting is and how it can be harmful to the family and/or child?

Michael Gurian (MG): (Refers first to the list of examples contained in the book) The big issue we face as parents is the sense of the child as a blank slate, and my book lays out the scientific research (genetics, biochemistry, brain science, etc.) that shows that kids are not blank slates. They come into the world with personalities, learning styles, vulnerabilities, and temperaments. What I’m saying to parents is that we’re all in this thing together and we have external forces telling us that kids should do “blank,” and we have to fight that because every child is an individual. . . . We over-stimulate kids, and are creating chronic stress. American kids are suffering from a lot of stress.

BAS: How is your nature-based approach a critical alternative to social-trends (or other) parenting styles?

MG: The nature-based approach helps parents and extended family (just as crucially) to focus on the individual personality of the kids. There are lots of tools in the book that are fun and help bond families, even for younger kids. The basic idea is that one can ascertain the core nature of the child, and the tools and activities to help can be weaved into a busy day. The nature-based approach . . . gives parents a filter for dealing with the influences and opinions of the world. We always have a reference point for our decisions because we understand our kids.

Excerpt from Nurture the Nature

"We’re conditioned to create families whose standard of success is how a child will function as a competitor at the highest level of the competitive hierarchy. In the shadow of this stressor, we hyperprepare children from prebirth for entrance in the “the best” college or highest-paying job even though we know that (1) most children will not achieve this top-end acquisition, nor need to in order to be successful and happy; and (2) that we and all other adults end up most successful and happy by living and growing in sync with who we really are, not by making huge amounts of money or fitting a rigid mold."

Read the whole excerpt...

BAS: You mention (in your discussion of the newborn and infant years) that many parents, especially mothers, feel that there is very little social support out there for parents of young children. (A sentiment with which I generally concur.) At the same time, others would claim that we live in a very child-centric culture. How would you square these seemingly opposite views—both right, one’s right, etc.?

MG: The semantics is what makes it different. We’re child-centric in sense that we hover around our kids and over-focus on their activities and every moment of the day. This even extends to the idea that kids don’t have to behave in public, or that to require it would hurt their self-esteem. On the other hand, I would say that our society is not very parent-centric. We are brutalizing parents with the constant stream of information and trends. We need to be a parent-centric culture, and then children would be safe. [Remarking that he prefers a non-interventionist approach as parent himself.] An understanding of the anthropology of raising kids means that when we look through history, we see that if family systems are protected, than the children can be protected.

BAS: Throughout the book, when approaching parenting children of different age levels, you especially concentrate on developmental differences between boys and girls, and how parents should take this into account in raising their children. How would you respond to someone that making these distinctions encourages sexist stereotypes, pigeonholes or disadvantages girls, etc.?

MG: My response is that I’ve been doing it for 20 years, and we have thousands—millions—of parents affected by this sort of philosophy, both from girls’ and boys’ advocates. We’re just not seeing this sexist stereotype stuff. Reality is just not seeing the results predicted by the social trend philosophy that discourages it. It [gender-aware learning] works with both boys and girls schools, both flourish, and it’s the same within families. There is no evidence of harm. (It may have been different 100 years ago, and when the feminist frame created this thinking 30-40 years ago, it was important and crucial, but it is not true now.) Life experience is disproving this trend for the contemporary era, and it has become a sort of framed social trend.

BAS: Your take on symbiotic marriage in particular would probably be considered fairly controversial—especially by those who would argue that staying in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the children gives children an unhealthy example, promotes further family conflict and unhappiness, makes unfair demands on the emotional needs of the parents, etc. How would you respond to those criticisms?

MG: The research does go both ways, but the best research (as well as my experience as a family therapist) makes me feel comfortable in saying that staying together causes less chronic stress for kids. (Stress is a major focus of this book.) I’m speaking of the non-dangerous situation, of course, where the divorce is about fulfillment for parents. In these cases, we want to think twice because the trauma level to the child from a break-up can be severe. Some bounce back fine, but some really get derailed, so if we can avoid breaking up for this reason, then that should really be considered.

In my practice, I am upfront about my prejudice for staying together. Lots of couples found comfort in this because they wanted to find a way—because they felt it would be better for the kids if they could. [Describing one such example from the book, where a couple chose to stay together in these circumstances.] They felt fulfilled that they had sacrificed some of their own happiness and emotional fulfillment for the happiness of their children. Luckily, we now have assets like therapy and family therapy, so that when parents are unhappy, they have resources.

And if they can’t stay together, then they can’t. But they should look at research and then make their decision.

From Nurture the Nature...

"How do we parents keep up? We can’t. So we constantly fail. And in raising kids through the following of social trends, we tend to listen less to wise ancestors or our own instincts and instead take our cues from test makers, psychological theorists, personality-based gurus, morning show sound bites, and magazine advice columns regarding all children in general. Our children thus get pulled in many directions, often far away from their own core nature."

Read the whole excerpt...

BAS: Your take on the adolescent years involves a great deal of advice on helping children develop their own identity and sense of values. What would you say to a parent who is worried that their child’s core personality seems to be embracing principles that conflict with important, deeply held beliefs (e.g. religion, sexual morality)?

MG: Spirituality is a part of core nature, but religion is not necessarily so. (Religion is more of a mythos that we are brought up in as kids and choose as adults.) I would handle the religion issue differently than sexuality. Picking a different religion is not actually a rejection of your core self as parent. This kind of change is getting more common.

With sexuality, there’s a lot of biochemistry around it, and my response was to teach my daughters the biochemistry. [Cites the example from the book regarding girls, oxytocin, and bonding versus guys and testosterone.] In this case, I used a science-based approach in addition to instruction in core values.

BAS: Why did you choose to extend the age discussion to the young adult years (into the early 20s), a point at which many people feel that the parent’s direction and authority are “done”?

MG: I think because there’s this kind of late maturing and “failure to launch” of some young adults. Some of the kids are burned out by the high-stress childhoods they had and are just not finding their way. Some, mainly boys, have brains that have been burned out by bad schooling. Then there are the kids who are coddled, or for some reason, “who” they are didn’t come through. These situations all require different responses . . . . They are not launching for various reasons, and you need to tailor the response and approach for different groups. But certainly we’re having later maturing. (To some extent this is because of economics, which is different from late maturity. It’s not the living-at-home that indicates anything, rather the lack of direction, purpose, or self-responsibility.)

BAS: We hear a lot from parents who are frustrated with their son’s progress in school and with the school’s approach to the issue. What is your advice to parents who are struggling with a boy whose nature doesn’t seem to flourish in the conventional school setting?

MG: The best piece of advice I can give is to get The Minds of Boys, because it’s in-depth and dissects the boys and schools issue and lays out success-driven solutions. But overall, what we have found in our research at the Gurian Institute is that when there is a mismatch between a boy and the school system, the parents first have to identify that there is a mismatch. They may go the Ritalin route, and that may well be the issue. But our research is showing that at least 60% of boys on this drug in pre-teen years are mismatches. That parent will then have an awakening and realize that their kid is not sick—it’s a mismatch with the school system. They then talk to other parents, educate themselves, and go into the school. (And this is what they ought to do—bring other parents in, talk to the principal, go to the school board, etc.) There are now resources that didn’t exist ten years ago. Then if the school won’t do anything, they start looking at other educational formats. (homeschooling, other schools, Montessori, other alternatives.)

This is the pattern we see, and luckily now, once a school has the issue called to their attention, they are more willing to look at it. I’m very optimistic. Parents of boys are awakening along with schools, community by community, and media and academic folk have begun to care about it. (Though they are distracted by their own inner dialogues and arguments, but luckily the parents don’t care about that.)

I can say that right now we’re living in a much better time than 20 years ago, because it was very much under the rug then, but now it is part of the public dialogue. This is a great time to be an advocate for boys.