The Gang’s All Here, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

October 22, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 1 Comment

Last weekend, I attended my favorite nerd event.  I like it so much, possibly even more than the MOTU loves San Diego Comic-Con.

The New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (commonly referred to as “Rhinebeck” because that’s where it takes place) is a grand get-together for people who love the fiber arts.  Even as it gets more crowded every year, it makes me happy to be among my peeps.  There is so much color, and so much appreciation of color.  There are animals that provide fiber or herd fiber animals, and you are allowed to pet many of them.  It’s a place where you can go up to a total stranger, stroke her shoulder, and ask her how she did that.

(That last one makes the long line for the ladies’ room much more bearable.)

When one shares a specific interest with other people, it’s easy to establish friendly relationships despite differences in other areas.  I’ve had delightful conversations with knitters who are ultra-conservative religious home-schoolers.  I’ve talked comics with people who rabidly prefer the suburbs to the city.  When my son was little and we’d go to the playground, I’d trade childcare tips with other parents and nannies who were nothing like me except that we lived in the same zip code and carried around juice-boxes.

Kind of related:  I saw this article about kids who aren’t athletic, but join video-gaming teams.  It’s a way for kids to learn about teamwork and camaraderie and shared goals without getting beat up or humiliating on the playing field.  Is it the same as playing sports?  I don’t know, but it’s an option I would like my kid to have as he considers the smorgasbord of activities to sample.

You know what else you should learn from meeting people with whom you share an interest?  Empathy.  Once I’ve talked with a stranger about Matter-Eater Lad <http://www.techtimes.com/articles/90170/20150930/plastic-eating-mealworms-may-help-curb-our-trash-problem.htm>, I might understand the way his head works and want to share stories of our childhood, our insecurities in high school, our troubles at work.

So I was thinking about all of this when I read in this story that boys suffer more and for a longer time than girls do from growing up in disadvantaged families.  Not only are boys more emotionally vulnerable than girls, but they are less likely to be raised to be cooperative and compliant, so that they have a more difficult time adapting to school.

I’m now going to take a leap into areas about which I have no expertise whatsoever (but that doesn’t stop me from having opinions).  If these boys from disadvantaged families (as a group, not each individual personally) share economic deprivation and the lack of self-esteem that comes with fractured, over-worked families, they may form “teams” of their own.  These could be “gangs” (which share an interest in dealing drugs) or “terrorist cells” (which share an interest in beheading people from other gangs).

It seems obvious to me that we can prevent a lot of damage and heart-ache if we intervene before boys get old enough to do serious harm to themselves and others.  It would be lovely if we could eliminate poverty and family dysfunction in order to do this, but I suspect that is too large a solution to accomplish any time soon.

Instead, we should strengthen the social safety net so that these kids have a chance to enjoy their humanity, their talents, their enthusiasms — their very boyness — before they start school.

There won’t be a one-size-fits-all way to do this.  Boys are as different from each other as they are from girls (and girls are as different from each other as they are from boys).  It won’t be as simple as organizing t-ball teams, or art classes.  We might have to actually talk to each child and figure out what he needs as a person.

Still cheaper than building more prisons or sending more bombers to Syria.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, will gladly talk to any random stranger about cashmere.