Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction

Parents are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Society expects their children to succeed in specific, somewhat arbitrary systems to succeed in life, but each child is their own being with talents, shortcomings, etc.

It’s impossible for a parent to serve both. Parents are making constant trade offs, and if paying to keep their kids on track at school seems to be the best option, then I support that.

We build complex systems and environments that alienate and marginalize massive groups of people and then, rather than recognizing that as a failure of the system, we frame the problem as one of individual responsibility to adjust.

But, the system probably feels like it is still working working well enough for the folks running the WSJ to continue their support of it, so we get articles like this.

In the 90s at least in Finland this was more or less the norm. And this generation were at the top of PISA.

> Middle school has become high stakes.

Maybe having kids' futures set at middle school is not such a great idea? And the dog-eat-dog winner-takes-all underlying that.

What’s fascinating about the article is the focus on KPIs: the parents saw the performance lagging (esp in comparison to daughters) and decided intervention was required.

The carpenter knows the wood has its own grain and structure; Michelangelo said that “the sculpture is inside the marble and must be let out” (fissures and seams must be taken into account), but somehow the modern middle class mentality is that the child must be bent in some procrustean fashion to fit the model.

This affliction is well known to us programmers who see management setting unrealistic metrics to complex projects.

I don't know what's going to stop this machine. The machine craves GDP and profits. The machine needs problems like "boys struggling" in order to create products and services to reap those profits. The machine owns megaphones that broadcast its solutions: buy this product, buy that service.

We need to stop this machine.

Can you guys maybe turn down the volume on those megaphones and look inward? Instead of looking outward - coaches, counseling, this, that, maybe you need to seriously recalibrate your culture, because we're increasingly productizing solutions to problems that weren't problems in the past, and we're going broke, and our kids are suffering.

What are some familial-cultural things you think we could do differently that would help us help boys while not having to spend thousands per month just to give our sons the privilege of a normal life?

Remember, these issues simply were not issues in the past. Is there something from the past that we lost along the way that causes these issues? Can we bring that thing back? Similarly, what modern things did we introduce that could be causing these issues? If so, let's focus on removing that, the via negativa.

Perhaps what these people call disorganization and distraction is in fact a good thing, and boys are not meant to fit into the square pegs you're carved out? Let them go out into the desert and explore. They can't find and bring back treasure to enrich the tribe if they're stuck in a chair listening to you ramble for 8 hours straight. The problem could be you, not the boys.

The article also list many reasons for this worrying trend.

> The roots of boys’ problems are complex. Things that once benefited boys in school, including male teachers, recess and vocational classes, have dwindled in recent years.

> Parents, tutors and education experts say boys need extra encouragement to understand the payoff of working hard in school. Basically, they need a bigger reason than letter grades.

Requiring kids to have laptops out during school seems like a bad idea…

So - I used to play a lot of Destiny. Really loved running raids, some of the best fun I have had playing videogames. A raid requires a group of 6, all working together, sticking to their assigned role and being focused enough to improvise if a teammate falters.

To get a group of 6, you either need to know a bunch of folks, or you have to find random people on the LFG sites. There was a very common phrase in the LFG posts: "No Squeakers".

While politically incorrect I know exactly what they mean. Pubescent boys could not focus, and would not shut up. They understand their roles, but just cannot stick to it and often quickly devolve into screwing around. The kids 15-16 seemed a lot better. Young girls (what few there were) were fine too.

Even us older habitually distracted men who have trouble focusing were a lot better. There seemed to be something unique to boys of that age.

I'm decently intelligent, and have done fairly well academically and in my career. One of my traits, for better or for worse, is being detail-oriented (for me meaning that I don't feel comfortable until all the details of the thing I'm working on are known and taken care of). That trait has always been a double-edged sword: it's helped me as an engineer, but I also have a tendency to be overwhelmed and easily distracted, and it can make it hard to prioritize.

Since the advent of smartphones and modern "notification channels", however, it's definitely skewed much more to the negative. I feel like my concentration and focus have been totally shot, and, saddest for me, my creativity has taken a huge dive. I've also spent thousands on coaches/therapy, but it's still a constant battle that feels analogous to I think what people with strong addictions feel.

What rarely comes up in the media coverage is that maybe the change isn't in the boys, maybe it's in the social expectations that we have for boys. 400 years ago the average adolescent boy spent most of their days out in the fields farming or learning a hands-on trade or training in the military. What they were not doing was sitting in a classroom for 6-8 hours a day listening to someone talk and then going home and sitting indoors for the rest of the day because the world is too dangerous for their parents to let them roam free.

The free range kids movement is the answer, not coaching and therapy.

A few thousand years ago we used to literally set them loose in the wilderness with some wolves for a few years, and it was fun & educational.

We understand reason and organization because we have explored the chaos, in our youth. It is necessary to explore the chaos, in order to fully grow into a fully functioning adult human man.

You don't get wise men from boring kids.

> Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction; parents are paying to keep their middle-schoolers from falling behind

> Teresa Lubovich says nearly every student coming to her private tutoring center to learn personal organization skills is a boy.

> Starting at $500 a month, her services don't come cheap, but she says parents are willing to

This is not the first time I see a paywall instead of an article. It happens pretty often actually. And yet they're upvoted. Does this mean many HN readers are subscribed? Or am I blocked more often than others? The article sure looks interesting, but I confess I'm not interested in a subscription.