Raising Cain Quotes

“The most important thing to remember, the guiding principle, is to try to keep your son's self esteem intact while he is in school. That is the real risk to his success and to his mental health. Once he's out of school, the world will be different. He'll find a niche where the fact that he can't spell well or didn't read until he was eight, won't matter. But if he starts to hate himself because he isn't good at schoolwork, he'll fall into a hole that he'll be digging himself out of for the rest of his life.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“I recognize you. You are a boy—full of life, full of dreams, full of feeling.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart. —WASHINGTON IRVING”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“For too many sons, this emotional breach between them and their fathers remains a lifelong source of sadness, anger, bitterness, or shame.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Life isn’t always fair. Learn to deal with it. You can’t just go around hurting people every time you get angry. You need to consider how your actions affect others. Don’t see threats where they don’t exist. You need to know that controlling your anger does not make you a sissy.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“We build emotional literacy, first, by being able to identify and name our emotions; second, by recognizing the emotional content of voice and facial expression, or body language; and, third, by understanding the situations or reactions that produce emotional states. By this we mean becoming aware of the link between loss and sadness, between frustration and anger, or threats to pride or self-esteem and fear. In our experience with families, we find that most girls get lots of encouragement from an early age to be emotionally literate—to be reflective and expressive of their own feelings and to be encouragement, and their emotional illiteracy shows, at a young age, when they act responsive to the feelings of others. Many boys do not receive this kind of with careless disregard for the feelings of others at home, at school, or on the playground. Mothers are often shocked by the ferocity of anger displayed by little boys, their sons of four or five who shout in their faces, or call them names, or even try to hit them. One of the most common complaints about boys is that the are aggressive and 'seem not to care.' We have heard the same complaint from veteran teachers who are stunned by the power of boy anger and disruption in their classes. Too often, adults excuse this behavior as harmless 'immaturity,' as if maturity will arrive someday—like puberty—to transform a boy's emotional life. But we do boys no favor by ignoring the underlying absence of awareness. Boys' emotional ignorance clearly imposes on others, but it costs them dearly, too.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“If you ask a boy, 'How did that make you feel?' he very often won't know how to respond. He'll talk instead about what he did or plans to do about the problem. Some boys don't even have the words for their feelings--sad or angry or ashamed--for instance. A large part of our work with boys and men is to help them understand their emotional life and develop an emotional vocabulary.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“He must also be willing to fight. Even if you have never fought,”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“expectations, rules, and requests for compliance often drives the best-intentioned parents over the edge.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“The most important thing to remember, the guiding principle, is to try to keep your son’s self-esteem intact while he is in school. That is the real risk to his success and to his mental health. Once he’s out of school, the world will be different. He’ll find a niche where the fact that he can’t spell well, or didn’t read until he was eight, won’t matter. But if he starts to hate himself because he isn’t good at schoolwork, he’ll fall into a hole that he’ll be digging himself out of for the rest of his life.”
― Michael Thompson, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“In an intriguing study by Richard Fabes and Nancy Eisenberg at the University of Arizona, researchers played a tape of a baby crying to a group of kindergarten and second-grade boys and girls and monitored their physiological and behavioral reactions.3 Specifically, they noted whether the child tried to eliminate the troubling sound by turning off the speaker or to soothe the baby in a manner that had been demonstrated previously by an adult—talking to the baby over the speaker. The results? The girls were less upset by the crying. They made greater efforts to calm the baby and less often moved to turn the speaker off. Boys whose heart rate pattern showed that they were quite stressed by the crying also were quick to “turn off” the crying with a flip of the speaker switch. These distressed boys were also more likely to act aggressively toward the baby—telling it to “shut up,” for instance. Boys whose heart rate showed a lower stress level were more likely to comfort the infant. The researchers theorized that children—in this case, boys—who are more easily stressed by emotional responses may prefer to avoid them. In other words, boys who have trouble managing their own emotions may routinely tune out the cues of other people’s upset.”
― Michael Thompson Phd, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“What are the reasonable expectations for a boy his age, and are there any plausible nonmedical explanations for his behavior?”
― Michael Thompson Phd, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Teach boys that there are many ways to be a man.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Model a manhood of emotional attachment.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Use discipline to build character and conscience, not enemies.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Teach boys that emotional courage is courage, and that courage and empathy are the sources of real strength in life.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Talk to boys in their language—in a way that honors their pride and their masculinity. Be direct with them; use them as consultants and problem solvers.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Recognize and accept the high activity level of boys and give them safe boy places to express it.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Give boys permission to have an internal life, approval for the full range of human emotions, and help in developing an emotional vocabulary so that they may better understand themselves and communicate more effectively with others.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“On the one hand, we expect them to do things they’re developmentally not ready to do, and to be tough ‘little men’ when they’re really just little boys who need goodbye hugs and affection. On the other hand, when they behave in cruel and thoughtless ways, we say, ‘Oh, boys will be boys.’ We let them off the hook over issues of respect and consideration for others.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“boys suffer deeply as a result of the destructive emotional training our culture imposes upon them, that many of them are in crisis, and that all of them need help.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Mothers speak about sadness and distress more with their daughters and about anger more with sons. And it shows. A study observing the talk of preschool-aged children found that girls were six times more likely to use the word love, twice as likely to use the word sad, but equally likely to use the word mad. We know that mothers who explain their emotional reactions to their preschool children and who do not react negatively to a child’s vivid display of sadness, fear, or anger will have children who have a greater understanding of emotions.13 Research indicates that fathers tend to be even more rigid than mothers in steering their sons along traditional lines. Even older siblings, in an imitation of their parents, talk about feelings more frequently with their two-year-old sisters than with their two-year-old brothers.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Newborn boys, on average, are actually more emotionally reactive than girls. For example, studies show that baby boys cry more than baby girls when they are frustrated or upset.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“One of the most common disclaimers we hear from mothers talking about a problem their son is having is this: “I know my son is sensitive, but …” The inference is, of course, that most boys aren’t sensitive and that her son is somehow different because he is. That’s something our culture would have us believe, but it’s not true. All boys have feelings. They’re often treated as if they don’t. They often act as if they don’t. But all boys are born with the potential for a full range of emotional experience.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“We build emotional literacy, first, by being able to identify and name our emotions; second, by recognizing the emotional content of voice and facial expression, or body language; and third, by understanding the situations or reactions that produce emotional states.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Emotional distance keeps many good men from being better fathers;”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Emotional distance keeps many good men”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Fathers and sons are players in a tale of unrequited love—a story told in yearning, anger, sadness, and shame.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“It is parents and educators who need to create a climate that clearly communicates a moral code in which cruelty is neither tolerated nor ignored. In a home”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“Contrary to some fathers’ fears of creating a “crybaby” by coddling an emotional son, a father who accepts and assists his son in distress helps him grow stronger emotionally. These are fathers who know that, as Mark Twain wrote: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” These are fathers who will gently help their sons with the hard tasks of growing up rather than try to harden or toughen the boys to match a tough world. In our work with boys, we find that the ones who are most prone to break down when the going gets tough are those who have been raised with the idea that to admit vulnerability, even to themselves”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys