Book of the Month May 2022 - The Simple Guide to Sensitive Boys

​The Simple Guide to Sensitive Boys: How to nurture children and avoid trauma, by Betsy de Thierry. 
 
I love small clearly written and accessible guides, especially about heavy or difficult subjects. Betsy de Thierry’s books usually fit that brief and this one is no exception. Sensitive Boys landed on my desk at a time when I was working with a sensitive boy who felt he had to put on a helmet and wield a toy sword before he left the therapy room, and I had been reading All our Sons by Allan Schore (2016).
 
De Thierry is clearly aware of Schore’s research, which evidences that boys - not just the sensitive ones - need more nurture than most of us give them. Boys are born more stressed and harder to soothe than girls. It is more difficult for them to attach and their brains and regulatory capacities develop at a slower pace than girls. Common sense would then suggest that we have to lavish them with nurture to avoid traumatizing them and yet our culture is one of “manning up” and telling hurt children that, “big boys don’t cry”. We punish, shame and humiliate our boys for their neurobiological vulnerabilities in the hope that it will toughen them up for a cruel world and then wonder why we find ourselves in the grip of toxic masculinity on a global scale. Clearly, as this book suggests, something has to shift!
 
With extra sensitive boys the problem worsens. De Thierry likens the sensitivity of some children to being “skinless”. It’s a wonderful metaphor for highlighting how tiny scratches can wound. I’m thinking of boys who cannot touch another child when lining up at school without feeling picked on, how falling in the playground can make them feel like the whole school day is unbearable, or contact sports send them into fight or flight. Add to that the sensory challenges, bullying and misunderstanding of children who are neurodiverse and we begin to see how some children who do not appear to have a trauma history can display symptoms of trauma. “But there is no trauma history,” is something I hear from school staff regularly when I do trauma training. Understanding how feeling things deeply, hurts deeply, can help us make sense of children’s responses to experiences that often seem normal.
 
This book delivers a lot for such a slim guide. There is information on the early years and the importance of managing children’s fears and anxieties instead of leaving them to deal with the tough stuff on their own.
 
The content is enhanced by short stories from sensitive boys about their own experiences and invitations to stop and reflect on some of our own perceptions of boys and ourselves in relation to them. As expected with de Thierry there are references to the power of shame and a lot on the importance of attachment and relational connection in terms of resilience building, soothing and regulation.
 
We are reminded of the number of men who suffer depression and anxiety yet never ask for help, perhaps because they feel to display such vulnerability is weakness. Sadly, we are also informed about the high rates of suicide in people over the age of 15 years, 78 per cent of whom are male.  The author encourages us to become agents of change by teaching emotional literacy and encouraging nurturing connections with boys and men. Most of all in this book, however, there is a sense of hope and an urge to believe in children, to support their psychosocial development and build their confidence. We are invited to help our children redefine the concept of masculinity, and to support them to use their gifts, gentleness, strengths and intelligence in ways that they can feel proud to be a boy and safe to live in the world.

Sheila Lavery

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