Coming to Colorado Academy on September 23 as part of our SPEAK series: Rosalind Wiseman. The author of the groundbreaking book Queen Bees and Wannabes, Rosalind Wiseman has also published numerous articles on bullying, adolescent relationships, parenting and mediation. She has appeared on all sorts of television programs and came to CA back in 2008. Now that she has written a new book on boys, we are excited to welcome her back.

The new book, Masterminds and Wingmen, dares to go where few others have tried to go: inside the interior lives of boys and young men. If you have a son or sons between the ages of 6 and 18, this book has much to offer in the way of constructive advice. Even if you don't, there is good reason for all parents, as well as educators, to understand better why boys behave the way they do.

As she did in her Queen Bees book, Ms. Wiseman offers a few categories for the power relationships she identifies among boys: masterminds (those influential boys who wield power over others), wingmen (their supporters who often do the dirty work for them), and punching bags (the “guy in the group who the other guys love but relentlessly ridicule"), among others. Using direct interviews of hundreds of adolescents boys as her main source of information, Wiseman shows that there is much more vulnerability in our boys than we might imagine. Helping them navigate using their internal compass becomes an essential task for all of those who care about them.

Happily, I don't see that we have the strict power hierarchies at our school, at least not the way Wiseman describes them. However, that doesn't undermine her strong case for us to do a better job of supporting and drawing out the emotional life of boys. Wiseman notes that “Boys don’t demand our attention in the same ways that girls do. We don’t give them a language for talking about their worries and experiences like we do with girls. And we really don’t think enough about what our culture—and ourselves by extension—demands and expects of boys and how it frames their emotional lives, decision-making, self-esteem, and social competence.” In other words, just because boys are more reticent to reveal what is troubling them does not mean, therefore, that we should assume nothing is troubling them.

Sometimes that means working through their initial resistance to help or their shrugged shoulders when asked if anything is bothering them. “If we don’t recognize and appreciate the challenges they’re facing," Wiseman argues, "no matter how much we love them and want to help them, they won’t see us as a resource.”

Wiseman's no-nonsense, straightforward tone helps her garner trust. She comes off as knowledgeable and experienced without being didactic, like a wise mom who has learned some important lessons along the way. Her track record gives her credibility to speak with confidence and expertise. She will no doubt bring that same personal approach to her presentation to parents on September 27.

Excerpt From: Wiseman, Rosalind. Masterminds and Wingmen. Harmony Books, 2013-09-10. iBooks.