What Is Your Level of Boy Tolerance?

The following essay first appeared as an article in Alvaro de Vicente’s Substack publication, Men in the Making. For more articles like this one, you can visit his page here. Subscribe to the publication to stay up-to-date on Alvaro’s writing.

Every piece of marble, Michelangelo famously said, contains a sculpture within it. The artist merely liberates the figure by chiseling away the inessentials. So too, in every boy there lies a man waiting to be freed. Or perhaps an even better image is that of a seed: within it lies the whole plant in potency, waiting to be actualized through the right nourishment and care.

In this process, how a boy understands himself is crucial. His self-image, moreover, is shaped largely by the image his parents—and the educators who assist them—have of him. Parents and teachers communicate this image at times with words, but more powerfully and more frequently through their expectations, tone, and manner of relating to him.

Today, the dominant—though often implicit—image of the ideal boy is that of the compliant child. Yes, we want him to be smart, kind, funny, athletic. But most of all, we want him to do what he is told. The underlying message is simple: if he complies, he is good; if not, he is bad.

The problem with this view is that it often causes us to make formative decisions based not on what will facilitate the boy becoming a free man but what will make the boy less bothersome to us as parents and educators. And, increasingly, the behaviors that most annoy adults are simply those that express a boy’s nature: loud, energetic, active, and adventurous. Thus, boys are often punished not because they are bad but because they are boys. As a culture, we have a decreasing tolerance for boyhood itself.

Antecedent to any particular practical changes to how we educate boys, then, we need to reconsider what our “boy tolerance” is. Likely, it needs to be recalibrated.

Increasing Our “Boy Tolerance”

When I say that we must be “boy-tolerant,” I do not mean tolerance in the sense with which that word is often used in contemporary political discourse. Mere tolerance, bearing with another, is not in itself a virtue. Rather, I mean learning to distinguish between what is natural in a boy and what is deficient in his character, and responding accordingly. Here are five practical suggestions to this end: 

1. Distinguish nature from vice.

We need to distinguish between behavior that is typical of a boy—a manifestation of his spirit of adventure and investigation, an outpouring of his energy—from behavior that is a weakness of character. A boy will naturally be loud and energetic, and in the right setting he should be allowed to act accordingly—yet, how often we fail to provide such settings. But a boy should not be rude by yelling obscenities or blatantly disregarding his mom’s calls for dinner.

2. Teach discipline without killing spirit.

A boy will need to learn when to restrain his natural energy and will need to develop the self-discipline to do so. Parents and educators need to correct the boy to help him to this end. Correction, however, should be directed toward prudence—knowing how to act well—and self-discipline—being able to act well—without squashing passion. The manner and matter of our corrections is meaningful. We should, for example, tell a boy to remain quiet when others are speaking, to encourage respect, but still to voice his opinion in turn, to encourage self-confidence. And we should convey the message in a way that is clear and respectful of the boy, who is not a mere animal to be trained into subservience.

3. Accept his energy and help him channel it.

Parents and educators must also be accepting of a boy’s energy, even embracing it, in moments where they personally would prefer calm but the occasion does not require it. A parent may be tired and hopeful of finding a quiet place in the evening, but that is not a good enough reason to suggest a boy be quiet. It may make sense for a parent to insist that his son be quiet (if, for example, mom is sick with a bad headache). In such an instance, perhaps dad may take that boy outside to throw a ball in the backyard and burn some boy-energy; it will be easier for the boy to be respectfully quiet after that. The point is that our convenience should not be the driving reason for telling a boy to be quiet and sit still. It should be the boy’s formation. We should not tell him to be quiet merely when he is annoying us, but when doing so is what virtue requires. 

4. Correct what is anti-social, not what is inconvenient.

Parents and educators should correct a boy when he exhibits behavior that is anti-social. This means behavior which is taking place at the wrong time or the wrong place, that which is especially unmindful of others or the occasion. But we should tolerate his behavior when it is simply loud, energetic, and goofy, since that is nothing more than the boy being a boy. It is okay for the boy to run around the yard with his friends, loudly chasing and tackling each other, wrestling—roughhousing. This is natural boy energy coming out; it is healthy and necessary. It makes the boy physically stronger and psychologically alert as he spends time outdoors being active, emotionally attuned to others as he learns their moods and how to interact with them at various times—to learn when his friend wants to play a certain game and when he would rather not. It is much healthier than being indoors quietly playing video games where the only physical exercise is in his thumbs, where his brain is withdrawing, and his interactions are with a screen rather than other kids. At the same time, that healthy roughhousing behavior would be out of place in the dining room, or even when there are guests over for dinner and the yard has become a social gathering space for adults.

5. Permit reasonable risk—which may mean more risk than you currently feel is reasonable.

Boyhood involves danger, and that is part of its goodness. Running, climbing, jumping, and tackling are not threats but training grounds for courage and judgment. The goal is not to eliminate risk but to teach prudence: which branches can hold one’s weight, which cannot.

Tolerance in Service of Formation

To be boy-tolerant is not to indulge immaturity or excuse vice; it is to recognize in a boy’s energy the raw material of virtue. The goal is to help a boy learn how to channel his vitality toward good ends. The world does not need nice guys; it needs dangerously good men.

If we fail to distinguish between what is natural and what is vicious, parents and educators may stifle the very energies that make true manhood possible. The result will not be peace, but passivity: men who fear risk and complain about difficulties.