Dimensions
152 x 229 x 26mm
The years between ages two and seven are crucial to a boy's long-term cognitive, social, and emotional development. And yet as a culture we are increasing failing to respect young boyhood, pathologizing normal boy behavior and foisting burdensome and stigmatizing diagnoses of ADHD, Asperger's Syndrome, bipolar disorder, and more on boys as young as three years old. The result, as Dr. Anthony Rao passionately argues in THE WAY OF BOYS, is nothing less than a crisis in American boyhood, with ever-increasing numbers of boys being treated and medicated for problems they simply don't have.
In this practical and accessible guide to the distinct challenges of raising young boys into good men, Dr. Rao urges parents, educators, pediatricians, psychologists, and other developmental experts to reevaluate and radically alter how we deal with our youngest boys. Offering a clear-eyed examination of the cultural and psychological factors that have created our current approach to rearing young boys--based on groundbreaking longitudinal studies, he explains the social, emotional, and intellectual growth of boys through colorful anecdotes and research into brain development, bringing to heel our increasingly runaway ideas about "normal" boyhood. He reminds us that often, what seems to be a developmental setback is really just "the storm before the calm," a temporary lapse in previously acquired skills that precedes a major cognitive leap forward. In doing so, he teaches us how to parent our sons with respect for their natural development right from the start, which gives them the best shot at growing into confident and healthy men ready to make their unique contributions to the world.
