Raising Wildlings
Raising Wildlings
From Boys To Men With Dr Arne Rubenstein
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Today, we are delighted to have Dr Arne Rubenstein back to answer your questions about the role of father figures and how to maintain meaningful connections during a boy's journey toward adulthood.
Dr Arne is the CEO and Founder of the Rites of Passage Institute. He has over 30 years of experience as a medical doctor, counselor, speaker, workshop facilitator, and the proud father of two wonderful young men and a mentor to many others.
For full show notes head to: https://www.raisingwildlings.com.au/blog/From-Boys-To-Men-With-Dr-Arne
Today, we're chatting again with Dr. Arne Rubenstein, who's the CEO and founder of the Rites of Passage Institute. He's got over 30 years of experience as a medical doctor, counsellor, mentor, speaker and workshop facilitator. And his expertise lies in Rites of Passage for boys and men, but also children and families. Now, we've got Dr. Arne on again because we got some great feedback from you as listeners. So please always give us feedback because if you have loved a guest or you want to hear more from a guest, then we will very gladly get them back on again. What you wanted to know from Dr. Arne this time around was more information about school programs and how you could get him to come and visit the schools that your children and teenagers are in, and also how we can help your husbands and the fathers of your children.
UNKNOWN:Music
SPEAKER_02:We like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we record today, the Kabi Kabi and Gubbi Gubbi people. We recognise their continued connection to the land and waters of this beautiful place. We recognise Aboriginal people as the original custodians of this land and acknowledge that they have never ceded sovereignty. We respect all Gubbi Gubbi elders, ancestors and emerging elders and all First Nations people listening today.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education and Welcome back to the
SPEAKER_02:show, Anna. We've had
SPEAKER_00:you once
SPEAKER_02:before last year, and because we had so much feedback from our audience, we decided to get you back in again. So how have you been? You've been around and traveling a bit, but you feel like you've landed.
SPEAKER_01:Great. Well, first of all, thank you for having me back. I'm very happy to be here. Landed. I kind of feel like every time I land, I'm then getting prepared to take off again. I'm good. I'm really good. But my truth is, there's just a lot going on. And I think we're in a really critical time. I think that people are realizing that COVID has really exacerbated this. I don't believe COVID caused the problems, but I believe that it's really exaggerated them. And there's a lot of demand for the sort of work that we're doing. And, you know, even just ties in with the rise of technology that, and now we've got all this stuff about AI. And really, for me, in the simplest form, the way we combat or deal with everything that's going on is we need to create the human experiences, the most human of human experiences. And that's really what our work is about. And so I think, you know, we're really expanding what we're doing and I'm excited about that. And it takes a lot of energy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I hear you on that. And I think that that's a beautiful segue into what kind of things are you seeing post-COVID that have popped up that are seeming, you know, we have the same issues that come up with teenage boys, I guess, in a way, but new technologies and the societal So what are the issues that you see that are currently really affecting our teenage boys?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we're definitely seeing a rise in mental health issues. We're definitely seeing increased stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems, all of those things. And we're also seeing that there's just more and more access and time spent with technology. And, you know, bottom line is during COVID, a lot of kids did all their work and everything and all their communication online. their technology and now it's really sort of embedded almost encoded into them that technology is normal and with them all the time and I think we really need to address that and you know like I'm very clear we're not going to get rid of technology we don't nor should we get rid of technology but we do have to have those boundaries so that we use it well and at the appropriate time and not just as the absolute default.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah are you seeing any particular apps that are proving currently and again I know this changes over and over again that are making I guess not causing more trouble, but that's the only thing that's popping into my head, causing more trouble for our teens at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:Look, I don't know the specific apps, but, you know, I have great concern when they spend many hours on apps that are involving killing and violence and actually a lot of them, you know, there are some of the ones like the Grand Theft Auto in which, you know, there's completely inappropriate treatment of women, you know, all these sorts of things going on. And also porn, porn. Porn's not necessarily an app, but every teenage boy has access to porn. And we know that it's affecting sexual behaviours in boys and girls. And we know that it's creating a lot of problems on lots of different levels. And I think that is a major issue that's affecting their ability to have healthy relationships and their expectations of what should happen when they're in a relationship. So I think there's a lot going on. But I also have to say, and I always believe in this work, we have to sell hope. We have to look at solutions and things that we can do about it. And I do believe there is a way through. And that's what I'm most passionate about. Okay, what do we do? Because technology is not going to disappear all of a sudden.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that's exactly right. So some of the feedback we got from our listeners when you were here last was, you know, I can't access or, you know, I'm finding it difficult to get to your camps with my child or my team. How can I encourage my school to come to have you to come visit? And what does that look like? And what kind of benefits are you seeing for the teenage boys that are going through your school programs? Well,
SPEAKER_01:the first thing is, you know, a big emphasis for us now is schools because that's where the kids are. And I've wanted to work in schools for a long time, but I felt like we didn't really have all the tools and the pieces of the puzzle. But in the last few years, I genuinely believe we do now. And what we recognise is that when we approach schools, we have to give them clear research as to what's going on and how we can impact on it because schools are actually obliged to do that. to be across all of that. And we've identified that there's some really key things that young men need in order to thrive. And it's worth mentioning those because we can create this within schools. And I'll talk about four of them. And the first is to have a sense of belonging. Young men need to belong. They need to belong to a team, a group, a tribe, you know, however we want to describe it. So we have to look at how we set that up in schools. And the interesting thing with young men is if they don't have a healthy community to belong to. They would rather belong in an unhealthy one than none at all.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, we see that as high school teachers all the time. Absolutely. Yeah. Anything's better than nothing.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. The second is they need to be safe and there's physical safety, which is hopefully they all are, but there's also issues with bullying and bullying's not in the playground anymore. It's online. And so how we address that. The only thing that young men really need is they need to feel safe enough to make mistakes and see that as a learning opportunity or have it demonstrated to them as a learning opportunity rather than feeling shamed. Because if they don't feel safe to make mistakes and try new things, then they'll just get stuck in this thing of just trying to be like everyone else and go under the radar. So that's the second thing we talk about. The third is they need to be seen for who they are. I believe every young man is different. They've all got their unique gifts and talents. Some of them are musical some of them are mathematical some of them are beautiful and sweet and loving and kind some of them are creative some of them are adventurous some of them ask a million questions and all of those things are great and are needed and a part of a diverse community and we need them to you know we need to create a scenario where we recognize we we love them for who they are rather than all the young men thinking they need to be like I don't know Chris Hemsworth or you know they need to be six foot four and built in a certain way and look a certain way and act a certain way, which is not real anyway. It's artificial. So that's a really big one. And then the fourth one that we talk about is that there are skills that they need. There are skills that we need to be teaching them to get through life. And it's been identified by some big research that was done, first of all, by the National University of Singapore. The sorts of skills they need, they're life skills. like resilience. You know, when things go wrong, that they don't just throw it all in and give up, that they, you know, the ones who can get back again and go for, you know, go for it again, they're going to do well. They need to be adaptable. They need to be encouraged to be curious, to have vision and purpose, emotional intelligence. These have been recognized as the 21st century life skills, and they've been recognized as what is actually going to create success in the future. And interestingly within that, It's clearly been demonstrated now that a boy's year 12 mark is not the main determinant of his future success. So it's not about academics anymore. Academics is, yeah, that's right. That's what everyone says. You know, academics is only part of it. It's wellbeing, 21st century life skills. And then we sort of weave that in with that. We also need to create a healthy rite of passage for
SPEAKER_03:them.
SPEAKER_01:And a healthy rite of passage can really encompass all of these things that It creates a sense of belonging. It creates safety. It allows them to be seen and it teaches them skills. So we're looking, you know, more and more within the schools that we work in and we have a program called Transform and we've actually partnered with the Man Cave who are based in Victoria, New South Wales, who do fantastic work with young men and are great. They're student specialist engagements, sorry, they're student engagement specialists and they teach mostly intelligence and resilience and things like that to work in schools and focus on creating strong healthy communities teaching 21st century life skills and creating healthy rites of passage so they don't go out and create their own, which can be potentially disastrous.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And when I worked for 15 years as an emergency medicine doctor, I saw way too many of those disasters.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. We've, yeah, we're seeing it and hearing it roaring around our street lately and in town. And, you know, we've had some deaths in the community in cars recently that could have absolutely have been prevented if they weren't searching for those things absolutely oh that's so how do we go about uh if you're a parent how do we go and petition our schools to get you in
SPEAKER_01:well the first thing's probably coming to our website the rites of passage institute and if you google rites of passage the first thing you'll find is a tattoo convention and then probably second or third you'll find our organization the rites of passage institute and then we have a process where if a school is interested we have a 30-minute call with them with a few members of our team a few members of their team we talk to the school about what they're doing and you know what's what they're wanting to bring in or change or what they're struggling with we talk about what we do and if if we feel there's an alignment then we can go on to the next step of coming and visiting the school and starting to look at doing work with them so you know we recognize that schools are very busy places they've got a lot going on but we also recognize that the school Schools are looking for something. They know there's a problem. And interestingly, parents are now as interested in the wellbeing program at a school as they are in academic outcomes.
SPEAKER_03:Again, finally. So parents want it. Schools want
SPEAKER_01:it. Yeah. The ones we actually need to support are the staff members because staff are the ones who it's all falling back on the staff and they don't want just another thing. And a lot of the staff are exhausted and, you know, there's been a, it's a, It's not easy being a staff member in a school where so much is expected of you and they don't feel treated well or, you know, that's kind of the stress point at the moment. Yeah. We recognise in our work that what we do has to be positive and supportive for the staff as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I've got a couple of teachers that are in high school still and they have also said they don't think it's COVID that's caused it, but since COVID the behaviours, the engagement, disengagement the attendance and but mainly the behaviors and the mental health is just it's really impacting them as educators as well and they're struggling teachers that i've known have taught for 20 years have said this is the hardest it has ever been to teach so any support they can get is because if we're losing those good teachers they're losing their lighthouses they're losing their support networks so um yeah whatever we can do to keep them in their jobs would be amazing on Another thing that our listeners really wanted, which I thought was really interesting, we had a couple of wives and partners message in and say, that was a great episode. Thank you. I really appreciate it. What if I think my partner or the father of my children could use a rites of passage? What could that look like? How can I access that? Can they do it without the children first was a question we got, which I thought was interesting. Some of them are mentioning they feel like they need their work on the Yeah, well, this is
SPEAKER_01:actually a very common thing that comes up. And, you know, the first thing is that the role of fathers is so important, so important. And a boy who grows up with a healthy relationship with his father through his teenage years is so much better set up than a boy who has a disastrous or, you know, combative or no relationship with his father. And it's a great sort of point of inequality, you could almost say. And so we know that the father relationship is just so important. And when I first started doing men's work in 1994, I went along to my first ever men's gathering and there were like 68 men there. And I remember thinking, what are they going to be talking about? What's going to be going on? And And I found that the men basically had five key things that they were dealing with. And every man had at least three, if not four or five of these things. And the first was unresolved relationships with their own fathers. That was the biggest wound in men, unresolved. They hadn't been accepted and acknowledged and seen by their own fathers. That was the first one. The second was what am I supposed to be doing with my life? And what I'm doing I don't think is actually what I really want to be doing, but how do I change that or how do I even find out what I'm supposed to be doing? The third thing was when am I going to feel like a man instead of feeling like a boy in a man's body? The fourth was how do I be in a relationship properly because I never got any education there. And the fifth was if I have children, how do I be a good father? So it's right up there for men. It's really right up there for men. And I think the most important thing is that men actually do know that their role is important because also men are being portrayed now as being unnecessary, as being stupid. You look at the whole, you know, the TV shows and the cartoon shows like The Simpsons that come out of America and the men are always or family. What's the one about the family?
SPEAKER_02:It's
SPEAKER_01:a sitcom. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:with Dumfrey, Phil Dumfrey as the character.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's a good man, but he's portrayed as an idiot. And, you know, a lot of his behaviour is not great, obviously. But, you know, men need to know that they do have an important role. That's the first thing, incredibly important. And then it is about training men. And there are some good rites of passage programs for men. There's things like the Mankind Project And there are different things going on. And I would really encourage men to seek out those programs. And some of them will work for some men, some will work for others. But I really encourage them to seek that out. I encourage them to read. I mean, I do have a book, The Making of Men, which I think is very helpful for men in fatherhood. And Steve Bidoff's written his great books on raising boys and men's stuff. So there's some really good things out there um and then there are just some basic things that men as fathers can do and i really encourage them and we talk about this in our work if the first thing i really encourage men is to with all of their children make sure that they regularly spend one-on-one time doing something that they're both going to enjoy with the mobile phones and technology turned off And, you know, it can be listening to music. It can be walking the dog. It can be going for a surf. It can be going to the gym. It can be, you know, going to a movie once a week and then having dinner on the way home. There are a million things that men and their children can do. But the key is doing it one-on-one, not with another child present, not with mum present, one-on-one, special time mobile phone turned off and just hanging out and not asking them 100 questions not drilling them about what they want to do with their lives how they're going at school if they've you know just being there and building that that's how you build a relationship i encourage men to do with their partners as well one-on-one time phone turned off just being there and that is That is a life-changing thing for the children and for the men. You know, I just went and visited my son in Vancouver. He lives there. He's 33 years old. And I'm not the perfect father. I need to say that. Not the perfect father, not the perfect man, none of that. But when I go there, I just do whatever he wants. So he loves, he's just started playing disc golf in the last year. He loves disc golf. He just wanted to show me. So every day we went and played disc golf and I loved it. And we ate all the food that he wanted to eat. You know, it's not the food I would normally eat, but I loved it. You know, I say that a America and Canada have got the best shit food in the world, if I'm allowed to swear. Absolutely. We just had a ball. And we watched movies and we watched sport. And I just had a blast. And he just loved it. And at 33, and I'm nearly 60, we both just loved it because we were just doing stuff together. And it's so special when we do that. So I'd really challenge fathers to find that space with each of their children, to find that space with their partners and just do things one-on-one, no fun. It's so simple. And then to explore. Yeah. And then also to bring, if the dads have got kids, bring them on programs, whether it's here or looking for other programs, places you can go away. I mean, I still also have a policy with my children that I've had since they were teenagers to try and have an adventure together once a year. And that might be going away for a weekend. It might be going on a road trip. It might be going off surfing. We've done some great things. We went skiing in Japan one year. Well, now because they live in other parts of the country and what I just go and visit them and we just hang out. So, you know, it's that being a proactive father and being a father is a journey. We've all made mistakes. We all don't do it perfectly, but we can, you know, work on it and keep getting better at it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. I love the simplicity of that. On the other side of that, how do you have any tips on accepting your father for who they are and and what they were you know they were doing the best they could right generally any tips for fathers to go through that process of you know maybe their
SPEAKER_01:father give their own fathers
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:well look they say one of the biggest challenges for all men is to forgive their fathers and that's a hard one but we just have to keep coming back to you know i've got a 93 year old father and he's a grumpy old bugger i call him the cactus you know and every I go there I'm optimistic and then I haven't even walked in the door and he's telling me what I should be doing and how you know this and it's challenging and I just keep going back and sometimes we have beautiful visits and sometimes it's very challenging and also that's you know it's part of being a son part of being a father and you know to be honest unfortunately there are things I've learned from my father about how I don't want to be there are things I've learned about how I do want to be but also about how I don't want to be and and it really has to be all right how do i be the best father i can and okay i got it wrong today but what can i do tomorrow i can say sorry i can go hey you know all sorts of things but it's as much as anything just spending that time thinking about how we want to be good fathers and and and mothers and wives and partners encouraging that and supporting that and not shaming their fathers and go you did that wrong or you know you know but saying hey i really want to support you as a father What about we have a talk about what you can do and I'd love to listen to your ideas and if you're open to some thoughts from me, great. You know, it's a team thing. Bringing up a child, boy or girl, is a team event.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. It's funny that one of the things we sat down with our kids, we, you know, have dinner with them at the table every night and we said one day, we said, what could we do as a mother and father? What would you love us to do more or try and get better at or, you know, and it was that only answer they could give us was we'd like to spend more time with you one-on-one
SPEAKER_01:time that's what all these kids say more time yeah yeah and even when you talk about having dinner together they did research which astonished me that families who have dinner together more than three times a week do better the kids do better now first of all i was like but they even did that research. I thought every family had dinner together every night, but they don't. The kids are in their room on their computers or there's three different sittings. So that's a big one. And then it's about having dinner and not having the phones at the table. You'd think that was a given, but it's not. There are plenty of kids at the table with iPads and phones. I mean, really? And then we also talk about having a check-in. So a check-in is just sharing about how we're going, how our day went. And there are different check-ins. There are really simple ones like rose thorn banana peel.
SPEAKER_02:I haven't had the banana peel.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, rose, what's the best thing that happened? Thorn, was there anything tricky today or difficult? And banana peel, was there anything really strange, funny, wacky, interesting, out of the box that you'd like to share? And that's a great one.
SPEAKER_02:That's great.
SPEAKER_01:So there are many families who do that every night or once a week. You can do that with little kids. And then we actually developed a sort of a more complex checking, which is we call it, and I can send you this and we can put it on the podcast you can send us a link the golden check-in g-o-l-d-e-n and g stands for how am i going overall i'm good i'm bad i'm tired i'm grumpy i'm sick o is what have i been occupied with and doing l is what what am i liking at the moment what's going what's good d is anything that's difficult right now e is anything i'm excited about or looking forward to and n anything i need
SPEAKER_02:Oh,
SPEAKER_01:nice. Because what we're aiming for with the check-in is that we cover the various areas, not just what's going well and not just what's going badly, but trying to cover it. So also we put that, we supported a lot of schools during COVID with the golden check-in. The idea being that families can do it at home, staff can do it at the beginning of meetings. We can just do it when we meet a friend. You know, you and I had a check-in before we started this podcast. And it was just really good. even just, you know, two minutes just to hear a bit about what's going on. So we really encourage people to do check-ins and, yeah, I'll send you a link for the golden check-in.
SPEAKER_03:That would be great.
SPEAKER_01:And, you know, some people do it once a week. Thursday night they might have pizza, sit around, have a golden check-in, get the little kids involved, get the parents involved and then see what discussions happen after that.
SPEAKER_02:What I love most about that is the end, the need, and that we're encouraging children and teenagers to actually express what they
SPEAKER_01:need. Ask for what they need. So often
SPEAKER_02:we're not taught that children are allowed to even ask for that. So just modelling that and actually explicitly asking and getting them to say that, it will be family changing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, one of the things we find, especially with teenage boys, I mean, we're talking about boys. I think a lot, a lot, a lot of this is relevant. They call it lack of help-seeking behaviour. So kids who are struggling who have a problem but don't seek help. And, in fact, the research is showing now when they have a problem, they're more likely to go to the internet
SPEAKER_03:than
SPEAKER_01:they are to come to us for help or someone who could help them. I mean, the last place I would want my kid to go is the internet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That's for sure. Oh, my goodness. There are so many things. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. All right. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Is there any programs you'd like to tell us about before we move on to our rapid-fire questions?
SPEAKER_01:Well, look, you know, I think there are more and more programs happening around the country and we're super happy to support all the different programs that are happening. There's great stuff happening in Western Australia with people like Mike Dyson who does Good Blokes. There's Man Cave in Victoria, New South Wales, who are doing workshops for boys in schools. Yeah, yeah. Once you start looking around, I think you'll find lots of stuff. We've got some really great programs happening for boys. We have a program, Young Warriors, which is seven to 11-year-old boys with mum or dad as an overnight program. It can be boys or girls with mum or dad. We have a great mother-son program, which is, I think it's 10 to 12-year-old boys. It's a weekend, two nights, boys and their mum. Really, really important program, sort of supporting mums as the boys are just in that in-between play and starting to pull away and be a bit more difficult and moving towards that transition where they're going to become young men. And then we have our five-day making of men camp, which is boys and their fathers or a male mentor. And they're all tremendous programs. The other thing that we do is we do, I do a lot now of training. I train people. It's a three-day process in the rite of passage framework. And we usually do them up here at our purpose-built property in Byron Bay So you have to come to Byron Bay for three days. And it's really about giving people a good, clear understanding of the rite of passage framework and encouraging them to then go out and set up their own program in their own way, in their own community. And that's a great program for anyone who has family or works with young people or works in schools. And I actually run them now all over the world. We've got our programs are now happening in 25 countries globally and all over Australia. So the three-day leadership training is a big thing and, you know, we have a limited amount of funding to support people who, you know, don't have the financial capacity to pay fully themselves. You know, we really try and do as much as we can. I always try and say I don't want anyone to not come to our programs because of the money. So people are interested in the work. If someone works in a school or an organisation, hopefully that they'll be paid for to attend. But that is a great introduction into the work.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's amazing. We were planning to come this year, but we are definitely, I'm sending either my husband or myself next year and can't wait.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's so needed. All right. Here we go. Rapid fire questions. Now we've asked you these before, so I'm going to switch. I know I
SPEAKER_03:forgot.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, there we
SPEAKER_03:go.
SPEAKER_02:So it doesn't matter if you don't remember them because I'm going to switch them up on you. So one of the things we, sometimes get asked, and this is about a variety of topics, is that I really want to get my husband partner on board, but they don't read. Are there any podcasts or documentaries or YouTube channels that you'd recommend for fathers about rites of passage? Because we've obviously, we've got your book, we sell yours, we sell Steve Rudolph's and we sell them. Most of the mothers read them. So how can we then get the fathers on board in other mediums?
SPEAKER_01:Podcasts for men. I will struggle to name exact ones, but they're There are some great ones coming out of America. There's the Fathering Project. I've got a whole bunch of podcasts that I've done with, well, with you and with Barry Lieberman from Dumbo Feather and other organizations. Yeah, I'm not doing great at specifically answering. That's all
SPEAKER_03:right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I just read an amazing book called Endurance. And it's actually about Ernest Shackleton, who took an expedition with 27 men down to the Antarctic in 1915. And their wooden boat got stuck in an ice flow and crashed and sank. And it took them nearly two years in the most inhospitable conditions in the world. It is just extraordinary. And they all eventually got out of there. I mean, you can't believe it. And so that's not specifically a book I'm on fathering but it's a book on leadership it's a book on men you know i i want that we get to a point where once again we can celebrate what it meant means to be a man
SPEAKER_02:instead of
SPEAKER_01:feeling like we're the criminals and the problem and possibly if not we are the problem i mean we are part of the problem but you know books like um endurance are incredibly inspiring
SPEAKER_02:it's funny i had never heard of shackleton until this friend who i'm actually seeing today at a co-op their dog is named Shackleton I said what's where's that come from and she told me all about that story so I'll have to put that book on the list because what a what an incredible journey of resilience that was
SPEAKER_03:yeah yeah
SPEAKER_02:all right next question I know you've been traveling a lot lately what's one of your favorite places in the world that you've been either for work or play
SPEAKER_01:uh I love Brazil I love Brazil when I was 18 I was I had a actually had a Brazilian girlfriend for I was living in Israel on a leadership course and then I went to Brazil a few times and I just loved the passion of the people and the football and the samba and all of that. So today my answer to that, you know, they're just so alive and there's just so much joy de vivre and it's quite an extraordinary country.
SPEAKER_02:It's one of my favourite too, actually. Again, probably my own rite of passage was South America that I took myself and that was, again, that experience of, The high emotions that, you know, everyone's really honest about how they feel. It's just it's all out there. It was so different to our kind of Victorian upper lip upbringing.
SPEAKER_03:Correct.
SPEAKER_02:All right. If you could tell parents and high school teachers of boys just one thing today, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01:To practice seeing and acknowledging when they do something well. So, hey, thanks for checking in on that kid who was been away and they came back and you asked them how they're going or thanks for tidying up when you left or you know what we find a lot happens with boys is they get told everything they do wrong But we also need to really focus on telling them what they do well because that actually feeds them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And, again, all of these things are so simple. We just forget about them. Simple.
SPEAKER_01:Simple.
SPEAKER_02:And last of all, where can we find out more about your work?
SPEAKER_01:Our website, therightsofpassageinstitute.org is the best place. I'll send you a link for that if you don't have it already. But, yeah, that's really the best place and that tells us about our camps and resorts. and different things that we offer and our trainings and things like that and our school programs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so if you're a parent and you're looking to be, please be the squeaky wheel because parents, you have all the power in school. So if you're making noise and you're talking to your P&C and telling people what you want for your teenagers, they don't know unless you let them know. So be kind, be very kind about it. But please, you know, we need this for our teenagers and this is a great way of accessing it if you can't do it yourself. So thank you for your work. Thank you for those reminders of what boys need is simple. We just need to just give them some time and remind them what they're good at because they are all good. They're inherently good and I think we sometimes forget that about our teenagers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much for coming on. I hope your build goes well. I hope your travelling continues to be joyous and that things continue to be good but maybe a little bit quieter.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much and thanks for having me on and thanks for everything that you're doing. It's fantastic. I
SPEAKER_02:love the reminder from Dr. Arnaud how it's just, it is, everything is so simple, but we live such busy lives. So we need to really, really go out of our way to make time to do these things that will help build our strong relationships with our teenagers. So simple things. And again, this is for neurotypical families. Remember, we've just had this conversation with Low Demand Amanda about letting things go that are too hard. But for those families that can have dinner more regularly or lunch or breakfast it doesn't matter which meal at the dinner table with devices down it's a time for connection it's a time we can make for check-ins so whether it's the rose thorn banana kind of check-in whether it's the golden check-in we used to do and we haven't done it in a long time a sparkle we do the sparkle in our programs but I have dropped it out of our family routine so I'm going to try and remember to bring that back in but I love the addition of what has been hard and what have you got to look forward to or what do you need? Because so often we don't allow children to voice their needs, you know, often rather than, you know, food, water, shelter. What do they need emotionally from us? And as Dr. Anna keeps on saying, children tell him and teenage boys tell him over and over and over again that what they want and what they need from us is our time and one-on-one time. So this is your, I inspiration to try and book some time with one of your children at some point this week. It doesn't have to be long. It can be reading a book together. It can be kicking the soccer ball in the backyard. It can be painting. It can be just sitting with them and listening to them talk about their video games that they're loving this week. So let's all try and give our children a little bit of time this week. And until next week, stay wild.