Here's what years of spending time around boys have taught me about screens: the number on the timer matters far less than whether your son will come and tell you when something goes wrong online.

We've inherited an idea that a "real" conversation means sitting a child down, face to face, eye to eye, and talking it through. For a lot of boys, that setup does the opposite of what we want. Direct, sustained eye contact can read as pressure, even as a low-grade threat, and a brain that feels under threat isn't a brain that opens up. So the talk stalls, everyone feels it, and the story hardens into "he doesn't tell me anything."

We ask boys a lot of questions. "Why aren't you trying?" "Don't you care about your future?" "What were you thinking?" We ask them with the best of intentions...we want to understand, to help, to get to the bottom of things.

I recently had the privilege of assisting in the facilitation of one of our Making of Men programs, a process which see’s over the course of 5 days, 25 boys and their fathers or significant male figure work to create new bonds and transform the relationship from child and adult to one of peerage and mentorship. 

Over the past couple of months I have met around 500 young people between the ages of 14-16. I have been so inspired and deeply moved by their vision of who they want to be as adults.