Osher Günsberg on steering young boys away from the toxic ideas of manhood

As I watch my son grow out of his big school uniforms and shoes every six weeks or so, I think more and more about what it’s like for young men today.

When I was one myself, it felt tough enough, but now it seems even more intense.

Before we know it our young boys will grow into young men, and we all have a responsibility to make sure that when those boys get there, our community is a better place for it.

On my Better Than Yesterday podcast the other day, I had a great chat with Dr Billy Garvey, a developmental paediatrician with decades of experience in the education space. There’s little he doesn’t know about kids’ mental health.

Billy works with the kids who’ve been kicked out, written off and labelled “bad.”

But here’s the thing that might be confronting to read: in his opinion, there are no bad kids.

Aggression? It’s often masking anxiety. Depression can present as withdrawal.

Acting out might be the only way a boy knows to show big feelings, especially if he’s seen anger as the only emotion expressed by men.

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These behaviours are sometimes more like emergency flares sent up by a kid in trouble.

And if we’re honest, we might have missed the signs because it’s hard work to see these behaviours as anything other than “bad”.

Raised by screens

Just like today, my idea of being a man came from screen time (except it was VHS movies instead of a phone). Muscles, violence, hiding feelings, misogyny wrapped in a Corvette and a power ballad.

But eventually the movie had to rewind, I’d be alone in a car with Mum and she’d do some hard work resetting what I thought being a bloke was all about.

Now? If you can get your son away from a screen for a chat, I applaud you.

Yet with near-constant access to some pretty toxic ideas of manhood, if we don’t step in and show them better, we’re handing them over to the algorithm, and that’s a battle we can never win.

When talking about how we might save these boys from a false idea of what makes a man, Billy shared something really powerful with me, “One of the most protective factors in a young person’s life is a non-parental adult taking a genuine interest in them.”

That’s it. You don’t need a PhD, and you don’t need to be perfect. Just show up, consistently and kindly.

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This kind of connection build what Billy calls secure self esteem.

It’s not the “I’m the best!” regardless of how well they do type of self-esteem, it’s the “I can fail and still be OK” type.

This kind of self-esteem builds resilience – not bravado. That resilience will be there to resist unhealthy pressures as they grow more independent.

The missing fifth episode of Adolescence

If you saw Adolescence, it hits hard. Talking about it with Billy, he spoke about what a hypothetical fifth episode could have been.

While the story was immensely powerful and in some ways frightening, the series missed a key point: what do we do?

Billy spoke about that fifth episode showing a community that shows up – for parents, kids, teachers. Schools that connect, not expel. Neighbourhoods that guide kids, not just punish them.

A culture that doesn’t demand a kid “harden up” but instead asks ‘how can I help?’ We protect girls by healing boys, and we do it together.

The thing which struck me the most about Dr Garvey was his boundless empathy for even the most dysregulated young man.

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More than once as he described working with kids who are on a path which is headed directly for violence, incarceration or worse,

I was moved to tears as he modelled what engaging with a young man who’s full of anger can look like, and how one conversation can literally save a life.

Mum asks for help over six-year-old’s homework question

Boys don’t become broken overnight. It happens in silence, when no one says, ‘I see you. I hear you. You matter. ‘

And as Billy mentioned, if one of the most protective factors in helping young people is a non-parental figure simply being the adult you wish you’d had around at 14, then I’m going to need you to be there for my boy – and I will be sure to be there for yours.

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