From Sensitive Boys to Men

Researchers into temperament suggest that around twenty percent of babies are born sensitive (Kagan; Aron). Not to be confused with shyness or introversion, sensitive children stand out because of their finely tuned nervous systems. Jerome Kagan talks about children with high reactivity temperaments—children who are easily aroused by the unfamiliar. Sensitive children prefer to observe before acting; to gauge what’s out there before setting off—what Elaine Aron calls their ‘pause-to check’ nature—and they don’t like dealing with change.

Aron (2002) has put together the following checklist of features common to sensitive children:

• Startles easily
• Complains about scratchy clothing or labels against the skin
• Notices the slightest unusual odor
• Seems very intuitive
• Is hard to get to sleep after an exciting day
• Doesn't do well after big changes
• Asks a lot of questions
• Notices the distress of others
• Prefers quiet play
• Tends to be a perfectionist
• Is sentitive to pain
• Bothered by noisy places
• Considers safety before climbing high
• Performs best when strangers aren't around

Much more could be said about the ways of the sensitive child and, of course, each child will present with his or her particular array. But for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on two core attributes: emotionality and caution. If we accept that some children are born sensitive; then we have to conclude that emotionality and caution are central to both their interior and exterior experiences. For a sensitive child to prosper optimally, he has to learn to accept and respect his ways. These aren’t going to change. Through school and beyond, he has to learn how to listen to his emotions and to manage the way the world comes at him.

However, the attributes of emotionality and caution can be especially difficult for a boy because they tend to go against societal expectations regarding what and who a ‘real’ boy should be. Talk to any adult and you’ll find that we carry around this common notion of ‘a real little boy’. Real boys play outside, they love getting dirty, wrestling, fishing and doing dangerous things. Real boys don’t get scared, they don’t feel much pain and it takes a lot to make them cry. Parents speak with pride when their sons behave in these ways and they worry when their sons don’t. More than once I have had a boy brought to me because he cries too easily.

Because they tend to be emotional and cautious, sensitive boys are likely to be ‘accused’ of being too feminine. Instead of being lauded, sensitive boys who are gentle, conscientious or empathic in nature may feel inadequate as males.

Terrence Real (2002) writes about the ‘three rings’ sustaining patriarchy. Firstly, full human experience is dichotomized into masculine and feminine. Secondly the masculine is exalted whilst the feminine is devalued. In fact, contempt is directed towards the feminine. Thirdly a conspiracy of silence shrouds everyday enactments of patriarchy, in that perpetrators are seldom confronted for the ways they degrade the ‘other’. Importantly, patriarchy promotes power over intimacy. Because boys and men distance themselves from their own emotional/relational needs, the needs of others are seen as signs of weakness. If you love too much, you lose power.

Research suggests that boys are inducted into the codes of masculinity at a very young age (3-5 years), with the mechanism of shame being most commonly employed (Real, 2002). I remember talking to a father who had his young son on his lap. The boy was sitting with his legs crossed ‘lady style’. Whack! The father slapped his son on the thigh: ‘sit properly man!’ I can still picture the look of shocked dismay on the boy’s face.

This father was no brute, but he knows how ‘feminine ways’ leave his son open to being teased or bullied. In fact, at school, displays of emotion are often attacked as signs of weakness. Dan Olweus (1993), perhaps the most established researcher in the field of bullying, says that boys tend to be targeted, not because they look strange or talk funny, but because they tend to be sensitive, cautious and quiet. When attacked, they tend to respond by crying and withdrawing. ‘Just klap (hit) him’ some fathers urge, but this remedy is often quite unavailable to the sensitive son: it goes entirely against his grain.

Parenting ‘with the grain’ can be very difficult. When children are born, parents already carry a whole host of conscious and unconscious expectations regarding who he ‘is’ and who he’s going to be. Often parents have hopes for the relationship they’re going to share with their children, and when it comes to fathers and sons, these hopes commonly have to do with shared activities. Fathers look forward to going on hikes with their sons, or teaching them how to play certain sports, and it can be piercingly disappointing for a father when his sensitive, cautious son says ‘no’. Also, fathers might worry that their cautious sons aren’t competitive enough; that they won’t ‘go for it’, especially when it comes to the rough and tumble of school sport.

If a father isn’t open to his own emotions, or if he suffered as a sensitive child himself, he may become quite alarmed and concerned when he can’t ‘get’ his son to be tougher. Sometimes it’s as though the son enlivens the very vulnerabilities that the father has worked to deny in himself. So what does the father do? Does he try to ‘force’ his son to change? And what does the son do when he realizes he is disappointing his father? Does he give up his own thoughts and feelings for the sake of being intimate with his parent, or does he push the parent away? How do the parent and son enjoy attunement in such a fraught situation?

Kohut (1984) argued that a child is crucially reliant on his parents to provide certain psychological functions that he is not able to provide for himself. These Kohut called the ‘self-object’ functions of mirroring, idealizing and twinship. For Kohut, mirroring refers to the child’s need for empathy—for the parent to reflect back to the child his inner emotional world. Idealizing refers to the soothing; calming function a parent brings to the child for whom the world is often too big or frightening. Through the twinship function, the child comes to experience and enjoy the similarities he shares with his parent; that he’s something of a ‘chip off the old block’, just like his parent in key respects.

Even brief reflection on the above self-object functions suggests the dilemma parents of sensitive sons may face. What do they do with their children’s emotionality? Do they try to ‘get’ their sons to conform, to take up the values of normative masculinity, or do they receive and mirror their sons’ authentic experiences? Do parents push their sons into activities the son finds distressing, or do they meet the idealizing function, and contain their children instead. This can be extremely difficult and even isolating for parents. Standing alongside a sensitive child can often mean standing alone while other parents go off and do stuff with their sons. Fathers know that their sons will get good social mileage if only they would adhere to the norms. In contrast, fathers also know that, if their sons don’t comply with the norms of masculinity, that they will be seen as ‘other’ and risk being hurt in the process. How do mothers and fathers stand alongside their sensitive children without sharing in this shameful ‘othering’? How do parents provide the mirroring, idealizing and twinship functions to an emotionally sensitive boy without acknowledging their own human vulnerabilities and needs?

In my work with sensitive boys, I’ve often found that they hate the fact that they get emotional and, when they do, they get angry. Glaser and Frosh (1993) argue that the masculine identity is built on the rejection of emotion, because emotion signifies vulnerability and dependence. Emotionality is projected onto the feminine and consequently it is deemed alien. Emotion is dangerous. It’s no surprise then that many sensitive boys deny their inner experiences, because they simply can’t see a way to be both ‘boy’ and ‘emotional’ at the same time. Pollack (1998) suggests that because many sensitive boys attempt to disown parts of themselves, they run the risk of low self-confidence and increased anxiety. “I love Rugby” they insist, and they deflect my invitations to accept that they simply don’t like sleeping away from home. It’s not that I don’t want them to get stronger; it’s just that I know they’ll be able to manage their emotions better by first receiving them.

Research by Jerome Kagan suggests that, by late adolescence, many sensitive children show healthy confidence if they’ve learnt how to manage themselves within the various challenges they’ve faced. When interviewed, these 18 or 19 year olds confirm that they are still emotionally ‘sensitive’, but they know how to both live with and appreciate their sensitive ways. And surely the parents have played a crucial role in this process, providing the support and ‘scaffolding’ required for the child to successfully negotiate his world.

Parents of emotionally sensitive boys seem to have a wonderful but admittedly difficult opportunity to review and perhaps revise their invisible ‘shoulds’. Because of their emotional ways, sensitive children force parents to stop and think, particularly when it comes to implicit notions of success. For sensitive boys to really hit their straps, they require adults who show faith in them, who aren’t rattled by emotionality, and who are able to envision men living beyond the bifurcations of patriarchy.

References

Aron, E. N. (2002). The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them. Broadway Books: New York.

Glaser, D. & Frosh, S. (1993). Child Sexual Abuse. (2nd ed.) London: BASW: Macmillan

Kagan, J. & Snidman, N. (2004) The Long Shadow of Temperament. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press

Kohut, H. (1984). How Does Analysis Cure? A. Goldberg & P. Stepansky (Eds). University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at School. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pollack, W. & Pipher, M. (1999). Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myth of Boyhood. Random House.

Real T. (2002). How Can I Get Through To You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women. Fireside. New York, NY.

About the author

Rob Pluke is a psychologist working in private practice in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.