By Contributing Author Janet Allison, of Boys Alive!
Recently, I watched as a 6-year old-ish boy and his mom greeted grandma at the airport gate. Grandma was eager to give grandson a hug – he complied reluctantly – with arms locked down by his sides and body held tightly erect.
As soon as Grandma released the boy with great exclamations, he turned and slugged his mom in the leg with his fist!
Recognize that response?! What’s behind that seemingly innocent hug and subsequent punch? Obviously, he was full of feeling at that moment – but why, oh why, couldn’t he just use his words? Why such a physical reaction?
To be in a relationship with ourselves – and with others – we have to be able to first: identify our own feelings, then: give them words, and then – much harder to do – express them to another – either appropriately or inappropriately.
This boy was definitely having a feeling — without knowing what to do with it!
Boys and girls, men and women, have different styles in their approach to relationship and Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, in his book The Essential Difference, elaborates.
The ability to EMPATHIZE is the ability (and the desire) to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts and respond to them with an appropriate emotion. (It is NOT a cold calculation of what someone else thinks and feels.) Empathy arises out of a natural desire to care about others.
We empathize in order to:
- Understand another person
- Predict their behavior
- Connect and resonate with them
Baron-Cohen says that, “Most females have a brain that is designed to spontaneously empathize to a greater degree than males.”
The ability to SYSTEMIZE is the innate drive to analyze, explore and construct a system. The systemizer intuitively figures out how things work, or extracts the rules that govern the behavior of a system.
We systematize in order to:
- Understand and predict the system (think dinosaurs & pokemon cards)
- Invent a new system
- Pay-off is control over the world
On the other hand, he says, “Most males have a brain that is designed to systemize to a greater degree than females.”
Most girls and women, with their empathizing brain can cope with hundreds of emotions – and hugging grandma at the airport is pleasurable and stress-free.
But for boys and men, attempting to systematize the event – hugging grandma means filtering her behavior though a system – and that particular system is unpredictable and therefore, stress-filled!
Consider this:
Empathy requires self-control – it is hard to consider someone else if you can only think of yourself. Studies have shown that when children, as young as 3, are asked to hold a candy on their tongue, boys score much lower in the ability to control themselves and not eat the candy.
Systemizing requires ego-centricity – it is difficult and may be seen as unnecessary to stop to consider the feelings of others when you are completing a task.
Systematizing a person doesn’t work. Sure, you can systematize a person’s systems: vascular, neural – even behavior can be systematized (voting, driving habits, etc). And those systems can certainly deepen our understanding of each other.
But systemizing gets you NO WHERE in DAY-To-DAY social interactions!
So when he slugs – instead of hugs – stop and guide him to empathize rather than systemize the interaction. And that requires practice and explanation ahead of time… interesting plane conversation, eh?
About the Author: Janet Allison is a teacher, speaker, and author. She graduated with a BS in Elementary Education from the University of Maine. She has studied and taught in the field of Waldorf Education extensively. She has attained a master’s level certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a set of comprehensive communication skills. Janet synthesizes her expertise and experience from diverse areas. As a parent educator, Janet knows that while parents are often overly-prepared for the arrival of baby, they are often under-prepared for the life-long task of parenting. When parents acquire foundational communication skills combined with effective language and specific strategies, they will know how to raise children who are confident and capable. With more than 15 years of classroom teaching experience, Janet shares her expertise with teachers, providing educational consulting services to individual teachers for mentoring and classroom management skills, and to schools for gender-based trainings, communication skills building, and evaluations. Drawing on her extensive training in communication skills, group dynamics, and non-verbal communication, Janet also designs and delivers trainings for business professionals. She works with specific individual and team needs. She has delivered trainings for Portland Parks Foundation, Nike, and Linn-Benton Community College. Janet is especially interested in gender intelligence and why males and females learn and communicate so differently. She has written “Boys Alive! Bring Out Their Best!” a compendium of recent relevant research coupled with practical strategies. “Boys Alive!” helps parents and teachers to understand the unique learning and social needs of boys and how to create a supportive environment for them so that they can thrive. Check out her website Boys Alive! She is available for speaking engagements, training sessions, and interviews.
Janet says: I have two grown daughters and I live in Portland, Oregon. On a continuous journey to live an authentic life and to remind others of the importance of doing the same, I blog to evoke thought, feeling and action and like to throw in a little wit along the way. Throughout it all, I try to keep it real and focus on the greatest joys in my life: my family and friends.
Photo of boy by Philippe Put. See more by Philippe on Flickr.
