114: Friendships, frenemies and boy banter. Parenting our teens through the relationship pitfalls.

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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters now with that background, so you can imagine, I've seen my fair share of girl friendship turmoil. It's not easy as a parent. So I'm drawn to anyone who has really good insights that can help us support our tween and teen girls. Now recently, I met another Rachel at a working morning and she told me about Andrew Hampton, the former head teacher who founded girls on board. Now this organization trains teachers to help girls solve friendship issues, but his role is more than mad. He's a thinker and trainer on school based relational cultures of both boys and girls, so obviously, I knew we would all want to hear what he has to say.

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Welcome, Andrew. It's been a long time since I read the book Queen Bees and Wannabes and created an episode, which is, I think, Episode 10, talking about the dynamic inside girl friendships, and I continue to draw on that to this day. But your book when girls fall out, which is a guide for parents and daughters, told from the girls point of view, is, is brilliant.

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And I've got to say, there is a much broader look in on the way that girls relate to each other, and I found it very, very helpful.

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What I'd like to start with is, you're a guy, and you wrote this book about girlfriendships, but you did it with your daughters, which I thought was perfect.

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What prompted you to actually start to write something like that?

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Yeah, thank you.

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And I think I think I want to start by saying, you know, Muslim Wiseman is the guru on this. And you know, when I was a head teacher. So I was a head teacher for 18 years, and I was finding that the definitely, the hardest thing I could do as a head teacher was to try to help girls when they fell out.

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And girls were leaving my school an alarming rate. To put it that way, something like 12 girls left us what was a very small school. So it was very, very every time it happened, it was a big, big, big thing. And her book was the book that I found when I was just sitting on the sofa in despair, going, what are we going to do about this?

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Because whatever we're doing isn't working, and there has to be a different way. And her book was what I kind of came across when I was searching the internet. So I created this thing called Girls on board, which is all about using empathy and empowering the girls to sort it out for themselves. And after I'd been doing girls on board two or three years, I decided to write the Parent Guide, because clearly, it's equally hard for parents when their daughters are falling out. And when I say I wrote it with my two daughters, you know, that's not just a sort of tokenistic thing. Let's put them on the COVID. Them on the cover. Holly in particular, really did co write this, so I did kind of most of the donkey work. But then she came along and restructured the whole thing for me. And in the end, we kind of went that to sentence level, and we kind of argued about every single sentence. So it took three years to get it through. And then my oldest daughter, Naomi, who is a consultant psychiatrist, she came in late on with some really excellent stuff about validation and empathy. And so, yeah, it really is a team effort. But as you say, I have kind of no right to write a book about that as a man, and I kind of always acknowledge that, but literally everything that I've kind of got in that book, and in the whole girls and board approach is given to me by the girls, you know. So I'm working with the girls on a regular basis. I was working with a year nine group just yesterday, and I learned something every single time I'm in front of a class of girls, and they kind of give me a new perspective on what it's like to be them. And I absorb that, and then I feed that back into my work. Yes. And I want to just pause a second there, so that parents who are listening to this podcast, it's called an audio hug, for a reason, you're an incredibly experienced person who's still learning, who's still going, Oh, I see. It's like that. And it's for all of us. It's not it's not that you're broken or you're not a good parent. It's that it's just very difficult. So one thing used, just to start off with a really kind of encapsulating idea, is, do you talk about an existential imperative? What are you talking about when you're talking about what it is, what it is that girls are struggling with? And I think that's kind of where I started, when I was really trying to unpick What can I do as a head teacher, and therefore informing my staff and informing parents, What can I do to understand why this keeps going wrong for girls, why it gets so incredibly painful for them and everyone around them.

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And I think again, inspired by the rosalin Wiseman book, I kind of thought, well, if we were to see friendship as the most important thing, and not just kind of play around with that idea, but actually stamp that idea. And that's why I kind of use that, as you say, slightly height, fluent language, of calling it an existential imperative, then that kind of, you know, hopefully gets, gets the point through. So when I'm training people, and when I'm talking to parents, I'm going, No, the friendship is not a nice to have. It's not.

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Add on, it is the core of what it's like to be that age, and if we ignore that, then we will never make progress in terms of really helping them through a very difficult time of their lives. And of course, it's difficult for boys as well.

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Adolescents is a tough, tough time for nearly everybody. And whilst we've really acknowledged that it's, it's about friendship, not for every girl.

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Obviously nothing about this is kind of true for everyone. There are always going to be exceptions. But for the vast majority, it's, it's about friendship. And if, when we get that into our thinking and start from that point, then things start to change. Yes, and we will come on to boys in a while, because you wrote another very interesting book called working with boys, and it is textually different. The way that relationships work is very different, and understanding that can make such a difference for us as parents. And I love it because you said, you know, girls can fall out over things which seem to adults to be low level, trivial and even childish. And it's about understanding why this is so important to girls. So one of the things that I thought kind of really struck me as something I hadn't thought much about before was you were talking about the difference between boys and girls, and where the explicit rules are and the implicit rules and how girls tend to operate below the that explicit rules line. And there's a lot of stuff going on that you can't you can't put your finger on, yeah, yeah. Can you talk a bit more about how that plays out? Yeah? And I think that's really important aspect of of understanding how you can start to unpick what's happened in the story that you're being told. So what I mean by the explicit rules is what the school regards as good behavior and Afghani systems that they have now, pretty much every school in the world will regard kindness as an incredibly important part of the way that we interact as a community. And indeed, kindness is that is the rock, the bed stone of of everything, isn't it? You know, civilization, if human beings cannot be kind to each other, then it all falls apart. And the as we see across the world, you know, lots of wars are happening, and if we were all kinder to each other, then those things wouldn't be happening. So kindness is incredibly important. Girls really get that they hate, really breaking the rules. And I know that sounds a little bit sexist, but I think it's true in my experience, that girls, on the whole try to avoid breaking, specifically breaking a rule in within the school, most of them, and I think the reason for that is that if they do break a rule, particularly around a kind of relationship rule, if they are seen to be mean and unkind and bullish and physical with somebody else, they get into trouble. And that kind of licenses the other girls to say, Well, you're not a very nice person, therefore we don't need to be your friend, and it reduces their status as a friend right to the very, very bottom, which, if we were to compare that with boys, it just doesn't really work like that with boys.

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And sadly, sometimes boys will break the rules and they will gain kudos. Yes, being the rebel. Yes. Now, of course, that can happen with girls, but it's much more common that it's the other way round. So as girls are, you know, perhaps jostling around certain friendship turbulence, the idea of actually kind of being seen to be mean by the adults in the world is a bad strategy. So they don't do that.

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So they're very good. And this, again, sounds a little bit sexist, little bit sort of, you know, mean of me to say this, but they're very good at kind of manipulating their behavior in such a way that it might appear that they've broken the rules, but actually, when you look at it very closely, they haven't, and they're very good at defending what they've done and how they've done it. What's going on, therefore, is kind of below that line. And the implicit rules that I'm talking about are how friendships play out. So one of the kind of, the you know, the classic ones, is, you know, you're not allowed to talk to a boy who you went out with three weeks ago, yes, all the time, sort of thing. You know, it's not written in stone.

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It's certainly not the law of the land. But, you know, it's girl code. And, you know, and I think that's a really, there are lots like that. Actually, there are lots and lots of and I think those kind of implicit rules around friendship come and go.

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And as social media becomes, obviously the sort of the massive platform for their friendships, there are often little rules about, you know, the use of emojis and the use of images, not allowed to do this, not allowed to do that. And I came across one the other day where someone said, if you're, if you're kind of exchanging Snapchat photographs of yourselves, because, you know they like to do that. This is me in the evening. This is me with makeup on or whatever. If you do it full face, then we're fine.

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If you do it like half face. So literally, the the photograph is half of your face. That means, you know, there is a, there is a sense of uncertainty about the reliability of our friendship right now, I'm a little bit cross with you If, on the other hand, the picture is, you know, pointing down, maybe your arm, or something like that. We've got beef.

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Yeah, there you go. It's

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exhausting.

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It's exhausting. And my daughter the other day said to me.

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Mummy, you can't put a full stop after okay? And I said, really, because I thought I was just grammar. And she went, No, no, no, that's really aggressive. You can't do okay, whatever. But that's the thing.

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This is the subtleties are so, so confused, so extreme, and they all know it. They know the code. I guess my daughter's 28 my Holly is 28 and she keeps saying, Can you stop putting full stops after okay, because it really annoys me, is all of us.

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So one of the other things you do in the book, which I really loved, because I found that the Queen Bees and Wannabes book gave me some brilliant terms for different roles within groups.

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One of the things I loved about your book was you talk about the the sizes of groups, because, again, this is different from boys, you know, and that you can have groups that tend to be between, you know, two to six, and the there are dynamic differences between each of those types of groups, which will play out in difficult ways.

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I mean, why? Do these group sizes even matter? And again, everything I'm saying here is entirely taught to me by girls, and the group sizes thing is something that I revisit every single time I talk to girls. And they really enjoy talking about it, and they have a huge amount to say. And I think, to be honest, I would revise the two to six. I'd say it's two to four now, so if you're in a duo, and they tend to call them duos, not pairs, if you're in a duo, the advantages are that you're closer, that you have to get on.

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There's a kind of, you know, code, sort of beneficial co dependency there. The disadvantage is, if your friend is not in that day, etc, threes are very popular, but there is always that sense that one person is being left out. But I often think that each person within that three looks at the other two and thinks that they're closer and finds a reason for themselves to say, Well, they're both in the choir, and they're always talking about that, but the other girls are saying, But you both played netball, and you're always talking about that, you know? So that's quite a revelation, actually, when they kind of realize that everyone can feel like they're the third wheel, when actually they're not, you know, but you have to look after each other when you're in a three. And I think that's the great strength of being in a three. Our parents often kind of say, Oh, I really wish my daughter wasn't in three, because they were always talking about the dynamics of that. But if you're getting on a mini bus and there's two seats at the front, one at the back, you can't just ignore that. You've got to talk about it, you know.

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Can't just, you know, somebody's going to have to be left interesting and that on the return journey. Therefore, we need to distribute that differently, so that that person has their fair share with the other person. Just to interrupt as a parent, what we can do is we can have those conversations with our kids about, how do you manage that group dynamic, to just help them? Yes, but I think also just, I think it's a great topic to introduce to your daughter, with your daughter, and just listen to what she has to say about it, because I think you'll find half an hour later you're still talking about it.

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And it's not an area where I would think, as a parent, I would necessarily want to offer advice or guidance. I think it's an area where you would gain huge kudos, and huge breaking down of the generational disconnect by just saying, Wow, this is really interesting. That tell me more about what it's like to be in a four. Totally agree more about what you know and your experience. I can remember when you were in primary school, used to be in a three then. So tell me about that, and she will just talk and talk and talk, and at the end, she'll turn to you as a parent and kind of go, that was the best conversation I've had with you for years, and you, as a parent, probably said very, very little indeed, you just listened, but it gave you an enormous insight into the moment by moment, kind of granular experience of your daughter, and how she's in a three now, but maybe she's a four, and there's a huge debate going on, should we ask this other girl to join us? But she kind of has already and and so on and so forth. And just listen to that, but I would say about fives and sixes. I mean, on the whole girls agree that fives exist, but they're not very stable. And I think a six falls into the bracket of bigger group for me. And you definitely get bigger groups. I had a lovely interaction with a girl a few years ago where she said, we're a group of 17. And I said, that's, that's, that's a big number. How does that work?

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And she said, it works very badly.

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And she said, Well, it's okay, but we do fall out a lot. And I said, Oh, that's a shame. And she said, so what we've decided to do is we've decided to have no beef Thursdays. Oh so amazing. I love it. Just absolutely adored that. But I think that the advantage of being in a bigger group and not and quite often people, the girls, will say, Yes, we are a group of 10 or 11, you know. And then somebody will say, but you know, are we? Are we including Ella in that? Because I'm not sure, you know. So yes, it's still fluid. But if you're in a looser, bigger group, and you are a little bit at sea with your smaller subgroup, then you have permission, because you're in the bigger group, to go across one of the other groups within the big so, you know, maybe you're in a pair, and your friend isn't, but you're within the bigger groups, you can go and join a fourth of the day, you know, and be a temporary member. So that's where the bigger group sort of, that's, that's how it plays into the.

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Dynamic, but really, in essence, the vast majority of girls are in a pair of three or a four.

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Yes. And it's interesting because I've seen, I've seen the six Yeah, with one of my daughters, and it, what it actually I when I was sitting down chatting with them, and I explained the queen bee wannabe kind of concept and the roles.

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There was a lot of recognition there. Yeah, both of mine have ended up in fours, yeah. And it's really, really empowering.

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It's a really positive experience for them. So it's a very interesting thing, because, of course, you can, you can have two and two, you know, when you roll a bus, you have two and two, but it, but it, you know, it's very fluid. And yeah, that's yeah. And so one of the things you actually highlight is, is this issue of blending, and that when girls you see, we, I think you mentioned it in the book, that in when there was a question asked on Twitter, what would you say to your 13 year old self? You know, all these parents are saying, Oh, be yourself. Just just get you know, just be, be who you want to be. And we all sort of fantasize about how, because we become capable of doing that as adults, most of us, some of us never do. But actually, you try and say that to a teenager, and you're totally missing the point, because blending is critical. Yeah, it really, really is, and it's a shame that that's the case, because so often you look at your daughter and you see, you know, fabulous qualities in the way that she treats her siblings, in the way that she talks to her grandpa parent, and you know, she is noble and she's bold and she's self confident. But if, if those qualities and her particular interests don't align with the interests of the groups at school, they are, sadly, something that she's going to have to keep, mostly for her home life, because it's all very well, you know you're really into horses or whatever, but if nobody at school is into horses, then you know you can't talk about horses, or indeed, actually, if nobody is particularly interested in talking about their relationship with their grandparents, then again, that you know all that work that you do as a young person to to support your grandparents, and the kudos you get from your parents for doing so is not really a topic of conversational or something that you can rely on as as a kind of as a personal strength, yes, and it's social suicide to try and force it into the the conversations and you've kind of sliced and diced the types of experiences of girls slightly differently. So you have mentioned the queen bee, and that, interestingly, you said, is kind of attempts to both control and disrupt social interactions to manage their own anxieties.

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You do talk about girls in the water, and this is something we actually I think I remember us talking about really early on in the podcast, and how it's it's like you, you you feel like you're in shark infested water.

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If you don't have a friend, if your girl, you go up to senior school. It's terrifying. And you feel like you get into any lifeboat, any lifeboat, just to be out of the water, because it's so terrifying. And I have witnessed this time and again, but that, you know, we've got these various different roles.

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How can we parents support so, for example, you know, if you've got a child that's actually more of a leader, who, you know, some girls would say is bossy. You know, we're sitting back. We're saying, okay, we can, we can label these roles that these girls have, but how can we support them to understand how better they can manage themselves at school without telling them because, because the whole thing is, we need to listen, don't we? We need to listen as parents and empathize, but, but how can we do anything to support our kids becoming more of a hopper, like for somebody who will just move to different groups and not feel she's got to be attached to something? Yeah, yeah. And it's a very, very kind of dangerous area in the sense that, you know, that that people reading queen bees and quick people reading my book sort of say, oh, but you're stereotyping the girls, and that's very frustrating as an author and as the leader of girls involved.

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Because I'm not, you know, I'm absolutely not. But it's hard to imagine putting together an entire kind of way of supporting girls that doesn't mention some of those kinds of behaviors, because they can be very, very problematic. But back to your sort of question of how we can do that. I think, as you say, there is no telling of the girl is there. You can't tell her, because that, even if what you have said is a massively true and B actually completely puts your finger on on the spot, she wants to reject that because you've said it so, you know. And that's her biology talking, you know. It's not her just being difficult and perverse. It's her biology saying, No, I'm a separate human being from you. I am emerging through adolescence into adulthood, and part of that is to reject everything. Yes, unfortunately, you know, and when she's 25 she will turn around and say, you know, that thing you said when I was 15, that was spot on. And although I shouted at you at the time, I did go away, and I did take on board your advice. So that's another aspect of this. So what I have always done with my own daughters is to try very much to use, as it were, guided reflection. So I would just kind of hold.

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Up a mirror to that behavior and just kind of leave it there. So sort of say so what you're saying is, then when this happens, and your response, excuse me, when this happened, and you respond like that, is that accurate? Is that? Is that how it is that what you're saying?

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And then just to kind of re reword it for them, and then feed that back, and then when she hears those words coming at her, she's going, Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. That sounds completely nuts, but, but the parent hasn't said, Well, clearly, that's a bit odd, isn't it? I don't think you should react like that. You leave it you. So the dot, dot, dot aspect of parenting, I think, is vital.

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And I think, yes, you know, you can learn to zip it at the right moment. Then the power is there.

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And sometimes even that means, like, so I'm just reflecting.

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It's like just getting this.

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This is that, and that's right, good, okay. Oh, by the way, shall we have a drink now, you know, and move on, so that she is left with that moment of being forced to reflect on something. But you're not actually asking her to say anything at that moment, because you've actually changed the conversation at Red Bull, yes, and her brain will continue working on the and I think in my episode talking about how to talk to kids, I think I called that active listening. It's kind of feeding back to them so that they can you're saying, Oh, do you mean this? And I love what you're talking about in the book about how how to talk to teen girls. So when a girl comes home and tells her story about a friendship problem, we as parents often hear this conflict. We focus in on the conflict, and we think, oh, we need to rescue or adjudicate, you know, like fix something.

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No, no, no, no, no. And so you say, focus on the emotion. So can you just expand on that?

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Before we move on to boys, let's just expand on that. Best way, best practice. I think, I think there's a the one sentence takeaway from this. This part of it is my niece said to me, I wish I'd known when I was growing up that my when I came home to tell my mother the story of my day, I'm not telling her because she needs to know, but because I need to tell her. You know, such a simple sentence, isn't it? But that's it. You're not listen. You're not there to hear the story or interpret the story unless, of course, it's genuinely hideous and it's bullying is going on, in which case, obviously it's a completely different situation.

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But most of the time, it's that she said this and then I said that, and blah, blah, blah. So your job is to just listen and understand that beneath that story, much of which won't be true to be frank, is the emotion of I am seek, seeking, trusting, of love, of friendships, and that is, I, you know, I'm not feeling good about that right at the moment. And I kind of digested more recently my kind of advice to parents in that moment into three strands. One, as you say, active listening, not easy to achieve, but lots of kind of remarks about, oh, yeah, that sounds really tough. And tell me more. And all those kind of things do not fix it.

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And secondly, then when, when you feel that that section of the of that part of the day is beginning to come to an end, when this is a natural cadence in her ranting, you know, that's when you affirm So, that's when you say, Do you know what I just want to say, how much I love you. I just think, most incredible. Yes. Well, you know, and she might kind of go, Mum, Dad, what are you saying that for? Because I mean it, because I want to, because you are, you know. So quite often the teenagers, both boys and girls, will kind of ostensibly reject that affirmation. But actually, of course, they don't get landed. They absolutely love it, and a big hug at that point, and then distract. So listen, affirm, and then distract. So the distraction thing is really important, and it comes very much from my understanding of my son who who has suffered from OCD through his life, and how you know, you go through the OCD thing, and then the way to get through that moment is to distract yourself, to do something else. And this is part of CBT as well, isn't it that we have the thought, and it's a horrible thought and it's making us very anxious. And so we pull our thinking away from that onto something else. So the high value parenting at that moment, I think, comes in saying, Listen, I love you, which we've done that, but let's make a cake, let's watch a movie, let's go take the dog for a walk. And it's up to you as the parent, I think, to make that suggestion, because she, at that point is, you know, still quite distressed. So if you just sort of say, What would you like to do, she's, I don't know what I'll do, you know. And also don't say, now, do your homework, that would be a mistake.

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Here's your award Exactly, exactly. So that point, you say, look, boom, let's, let's do something else. And she said, Oh, quality time. So I love the Gary Chapman stuff about five love languages. I'm sure you've come across that. Have you come across that? Yes, everyone, pretty much, everyone, has. And if the people listening to this haven't, I won't go through it now read, well, you don't really need to read the book, do you just because it's just the five.

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Look it up on Google and they just start thinking about the five way.

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In which he talks about, in particular, I think, from a parent to a child, that parents often want to express their love for their child through acts of service. You know, I do pick up your socks, I clean up after you, I cook for you. I I, you know, I'm your taxi. But the child is saying, Yeah, I kind of take that for granted. I know I shouldn't, but I do, and I would love it if actually, we have more quality time together. You know, that would be the way, 100% Yeah, yeah, 100% I think that's actually saying, let's look at those five languages. What would you like, and also, actually, then for the parent to say, well, this does go both ways, darling.

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You know, you said to me that you'd like more quality time.

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Definitely, we can work on that, but I'm your parent, and I would love it if you said, mummy, thank you, mummy, daddy. You know, I really appreciate the stuff that you do for me and affirm me as a parent occasionally. Yeah, you know.

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And that's and that's teaching them good, good skills for the life, really, isn't it? Yeah, I want to, I want to, I want to move on to working with boys.

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Because, gosh, what an interesting book we've I've had a few episodes where I've tried to kind of grasp this whole boy culture masculinity. I hate the word toxic masculinity. I think it's, it's really damaging.

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You talk about creating cultures of mutual respect in schools.

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And you should go right in there, right at the start of the book rape culture. And you know, as a result of now, I think this happened over here in the West, and we've got lots of listeners who are not in the West, but it that the whole me too movement and the the I think even that was started by the girl who started writing about the rape culture in schools, which was a massive, you know, all the schools went, Uh, right. It was really tough moment, I think.

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And, and actually, I think it was everyone's invited, wasn't it? And you say, we have to start by acknowledging that the strategies school used to shape boys, relational cultures are not working, and I'm seeing this a lot in schools, and they're going well. I didn't Well, what are we supposed to do? So you talk about relate relational cultures and the way that boys relate to each other, and you know what is underpinning why boys and men might behave badly towards women, and you say it's to do with their own relationships.

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Can you expand on that?

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And one person sort of heard me saying all this, and kind of criticized me for saying that somehow I'm not blaming the individual boy. And I think that's, that's a bit harsh. I think what we're trying to do is to find, as you say, the source of this, where does it come from. And I think if we go back into pre adolescence, if we go back into sort of 910, 11 year olds, you know, they they they don't feel like that. They don't behave like that towards the towards girls. And they kind of could, if they chose to, you know, in the playground, they could in primary school, they just, it's not in their instincts to behave like that at all. When they become adolescent. Beginning of adolescence, that's when the value systems start to consolidate. So previous to year, seven and 11 year olds, the value systems that they adopt are very largely the ones that they are given. You know, as a parent, you will, you know, we we behave like this, and as a yes, we behave like that. And if you don't, I'm going to massively disapprove of you, and I'm going to make you feel bad about breaking that value system. But when you're adolescent, of course, your biology is telling you to rebel, and so you are naturally going to reject those value systems, and you're going to replace them, very by and large, with a value system that works for you, but also for your mates. So you become a group at that point.

00:28:45.099 --> 00:29:29.599
And that group can be quite a small group, or it can be year group wide, which in a big school might be no 250 boys, and that culture of the way that we relate to each other, what we say to each other, what we find funny, what we find acceptable and what we find unacceptable, forms in year seven, and it forms through key moments of somebody trying something out, trying trying to use a very strong obscene word and and how do people react to that? You know, the first time that somebody uses the C word, you know, are we all going to laugh and think he's a real lad, or are we going to go and go, I don't know, why using that word?

00:29:26.420 --> 00:29:36.500
I mean, you know, I don't find that funny. So why? Because being funny is incredibly important, and also not just in language, but also on in sport.

00:29:36.500 --> 00:29:59.500
Because obviously sports incredibly important. It is for girls too. Someone scores a known goal. What do we do about that? You know, are we going to get very angry with him? Are we going to actually amplify his incredible discomfort at that point, or are we going to have a little bit of empathy and realize that it could just as easily have been you that the ball bounced off your knee and into the goal, and it wasn't your fault, it wasn't his fault.

00:29:56.740 --> 00:29:59.920
And actually kind of go, never mind John.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:19.380
Much, you know, happens to all of us. Why don't you score the goal up the other end? You know, let's go. So these are critical moments also, of course, designed very much by the most influential boys in the year group. So there are all of these kind of factors that come together into a great melee at the beginning of year seven.

00:30:16.259 --> 00:30:42.819
It's pretty much a blank piece of paper these boys come to their new school. Many of them will know each other from primary school or whatever, but it is like a complete reset, and it coincides with their psychology also kind of doing pretty much a massive reset at the beginning of adolescence, by the end of year seven, all of these questions around, how do we respond to girls and to football? And all these things have been answered. And it's it.

00:30:42.819 --> 00:30:57.220
We are pretty much locked into a culture. So what I'm proposing is that that is the moment, particularly in the autumn term of year seven, that we get stuck in there with the boys and the girls together, and we create.

00:30:58.299 --> 00:32:33.019
In the book, there's a series of lessons, all of which are using guided reflection to hold up a mirror to how the boys are and how they are quite likely to become and get the girls involved in saying, Yes, can you please not haroosh down the corridor in such a way that actually we get bumped all the time, because that's really upsetting for us, and the boys are going, I didn't realize You felt like that. You know what we do? You know so and there's this big conversation that's going on throughout all the girls and all the boys in that year group about how the boys are going to be, and let's now use the word masculinity. What version of masculinity are they generally going to adopt, and what's the dominant version of that, so that by the time eight and beyond, it becomes obviously unacceptable to abuse a girl, and somebody who did that, someone who, by the time they get to year 10, has decided to send a nude picture of their genitals to a girl, all the other boys would kind of go, I have no idea why that's acceptable, and it's not, and we are going to punish you By just not talking to you for really quite a long time? Yes, wow. And you you separate them into sour so with the aggressive, overtly sexual side and gentle, which is, you know, treating each other with dignity and compassion. And I think it's so important that we reflect on the fact that it is a cultural it is to do with being part of a group, but boys are different in the way that they try and be part of a group. And you say in the book that this, the friendship structures are much sort of broader, yeah, and that the currency is is different.

00:32:33.019 --> 00:32:52.299
And I think this comes back to so for girls, it's fear of being in the shark infested waters and not having a mate, like they need a friend. Boys, you say it's shame. Can you talk a bit more about like how shame shapes boys and their feelings of friendship? Absolutely. So what?

00:32:49.539 --> 00:33:02.220
What girls are frightened of isolation? Boys are frightened of isolation too, but it's nothing like as painful. What boys are frightened of is humiliation and being shamed.

00:32:57.940 --> 00:34:27.500
Which? Means the same thing. So so much of girls behavior comes from that fear of isolation, in the same way that so much of boys behavior also comes from the absolute fear of being shamed and being humiliated. So once you I mean, it doesn't take very long to say to the boys, you know, you're all frightened of humiliation, aren't you? And they're kind of harmful, you know, a bit. But then one boy, and it's in the book, said he was only nine years old when he said this to me. He said, Yeah, but we don't want to talk about humiliation, because it's humiliating to talk humiliating, you know? I went, gosh, yes, thank you. What an incredibly wise thing to say. So what we need to do in those lessons that I'm talking about in the autumn term of the year seven is to gradually desensitize those boys to that and make them aware that when they do humiliate somebody as a joke, as part of banter, that if they go too far, actually what they've created there is a genuinely horrible moment for that other boy, and he, or may well, want to come back at you with something equally really horrible, and then off we go, and it becomes a kind of an arms race. Now, the weird thing about that is that banter, which is a subsection of humor and banter, I think it's really important just to be really clear what we mean by banter. Banter banter is the exchange of humorous remarks.

00:34:23.420 --> 00:34:27.500
Okay, it's gotta go both ways.

00:34:27.739 --> 00:34:37.460
And the remarks are, are designed to have a very gentle form of humiliation, you know.

00:34:33.139 --> 00:34:45.820
So you just kind of like, you know, yeah, just calling the very tall boy shorty is a kind of in a very, very mild version.

00:34:41.079 --> 00:34:49.360
So actually, the mechanism of banter is designed to desensitize boys to humiliation.

00:34:49.900 --> 00:34:59.920
That's what it's for. Yes, the problem is how regulates the banter so that a doesn't go too far and B most importantly, and this is genuinely What is different.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:36:17.639
Different about the male species of human beings is that now that pornography is so prevalent, the banter, which has always had a sexual element, you know, we've always got laughed about your mom's bum or something like that, you know, but it's been relatively mild to sort of dirty jokes. Things being relatively mild. Now those dirty that that sexual element of banter has become crazy, horrible, grim, ridiculous, inappropriate, and that's therefore leading the boys to become very desensitized to the idea of what's appropriate sexual talk and what isn't. And then that leads them, I think, to to then abuse girls in a way that you know doesn't even feel like they're doing it, because the pornography has kind of perverted their mind. It's not just the pornography, it's the talk about pornography. I think the point I make in the book, it's the talking about it. So that, you know, within within some small groups of boys, if you were to listen in to what they talk about, I bet you'd find that sort of 80% of the time they're talking about pornography, as in, they're sort of saying, Oh, you see that girl in your 11th and then they say something massively inappropriate about that or or somebody else's mother or a female member of staff. And you're going, you know what you talk about girls in that way all the time. And they're going, we don't mean anything about it.

00:36:15.119 --> 00:37:29.840
It's just, it's just what we do, it's just how we talk. And you're going, Yeah, but it's pretty grim, isn't it? You know, really, if your grandmother was listening, she wouldn't be happy, would you? And you'd feel ashamed of yourselves. And they kind of go, Yeah, it's really difficult to pull back then from that, because that's how we do it. We make each other laugh by making these remarks. And it's said, my feeling is that we need to prevent it from happening in the first place by getting the boys in year seven to realize that that kind of talk will get out of control. And when someone starts to use stronger language and stronger sort of anecdotes, imaginative anecdotes, that the other boys are going, No, don't do that. I'm not until I'm going because I don't want to hear that stuff. You know, it's just, it's horrible and it sounds what's interesting about that is it sounds to me like because the whole thing about banter is, you know, taking the piss out of each other, yeah, and, and, like you say, you can actually win hierarchical status by having good banter. It's a very powerful, empowering thing. And actually, I was talking to my husband about this last night, because he's in a group of men, and I look at some of the things they say to each other, and it just horrifies me. Sometimes. I say, you just said that. That's just we, I would never talk like that to each other as women.

00:37:30.860 --> 00:38:32.300
And he says, No, but that's just we've known each other for years, and we all know that it's kind of and I think you were saying in the book that actually right at the top of the hierarchy, that kind of thin slice at the very top, they are able to give out and suffer really quite aggressive, painful banter. But that's a that's a show of pride, that's like, we're, this doesn't hit touch the sides, but we're betides Someone who's lower down in the hierarchy, who tries to say something like that to someone who's higher up. And you know, is this moving around in the hierarchy? But what you was, but what interests me about what you've just been saying about pornography, is, I suppose, the one thing about that is it's kind of using that kind of language about banter, but you're not actually trying to attack the person. You're using something else that's outside of that friendship group, which is a bit, possibly a bit safer, yeah, I wonder whether that's, you know, part of what's behind it, because it's not, you know, like you can gain power from it, but you're not actually endangering yourself by picking on something specific about that person. Yeah, exactly. It becomes Yeah, objectified.

00:38:32.360 --> 00:39:59.920
Exactly, yes, yes. But when the hormones kick in and the libido picks it kicks in, then we suddenly find ourselves in a very different place. And I think that's where, if we make that explicit in a guided reflection way, they can then self regulate. So let's go through that, because that's what really interests me. So we're saying we're now in a situation where you say, actually it gets set around sort of year seven, it you get this culture embedded. So we need to get in quite early. We can't get in too early, because some kids are still quite young before they are, sort of, as it were, entitled to sex education, because, you know, it's part of this is going to need to be talking about the sexualized banter. You can't really do this without talking about that. So I kind of say you can prepare for it in years five and six. But the sad, very sad and an almost tragic thing, I think, is that some boys will be accessing pornography in year five and six, and they are, I think we're not entitled to have professional teachers supporting them through that experience, and, you know, making them understand what it is they are seeing, because the rest of the class are not seeing that stuff, and so you can't talk About but I love that you say in the book, actually, if you're a parent and you're handing your child a device that can access the internet, you've got to have these conversations. And I say that time and again, that if you the when you think, oh, is my child ready to have a phone or have an internet connected device, you need to then say, Are they ready to have conversations about pornos?

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:03.119
Sexting, all those things. If they're not then it's not yet.

00:40:03.119 --> 00:40:30.079
They're not ready. They're not ready. It's as simple as that, really. But so, so when you talk about guided reflection, I'm a parent, how would I do that with my my son? Around what around looking at pornography, pornography or masculinity? I mean, presumably it's a similar sort of process, or should we focus on pornography? Because that's one of the things you're saying is really problematic here. Well, it is and it isn't.

00:40:30.079 --> 00:42:11.519
I mean, pornography is very problematic, and accessing it much to young is very problematic. But I suppose I'm looking at it more from an educators point of view, and the effect that it has on the cultures of the boys. So my speech that I made to the boys and girls in year seven was, look, you know, there is adult material out there, whether you access or not that is kind of up to you, and it's up to your parents. It's not up to me, because I can't change whether you do that or not, because I don't have any controls over but what I am saying is that if, if, if you are in that bracket of people that that choose to watch, that you can't bring it into school, it cannot become part of the conversation, which is then very, very shocking to the people who don't want to talk about it. So, you know, a mother rang me up and said, My daughter's just come home from from school. She was in year seven, and asked me what a blow job is. And I've gone, you know, that's that's wrong. It's just straightforward wrong for a girl of 11 years old to sort of suddenly be forced into understanding what that is. And so for me, it was much more about about, yeah, what you're talking about? So I think I'm going to sidestep that question, yeah, that that each family is going to have to make its own mind up about access to the internet for boys and when they finally do, what they're going to do, about their exploration and discovery of pornography and how it changes their thinking when they do and I'm not sure that there is a hard and fast rule about what to do at that point. I think each family No, and I like your point, because I think, I think the guideline needs to be, actually, we need to have an opinion like, the thing is, we stumble into this stuff without really having thought about it.

00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:33.500
And it's not fair. It's not fair that we're stuck in a situation where we're in a society where you have to consider these things, but we do and and actually, I, what I love is your the phraseology there, because I use that with vaping. I use that with drugs, where I say, I know I can't stop you. I know that this is not in my control. But here's why I'd like you to really think about these things and what it would mean for you.

00:42:33.800 --> 00:42:49.119
And I always say to them, if you access this stuff, if you're you're getting engaged in this, it's going to infect you with a mindset that maybe you don't want and maybe stay away from that, but with boys like you, say, being part of that group and social caches so, so important.

00:42:50.619 --> 00:43:06.119
And just just before we finish, I just wanted to mention because you did actually mention things like football, even, even in things like football and the incredible role that our PE teachers can play with boys as girls as well.

00:43:06.119 --> 00:43:49.900
But, and you're saying, you know, you see it out on the field all the time where there's behavior, where someone will fake an injury or they'll and the way that we respond to this actually, is teaching our kids what our ethics are. We're giving them guardrails, but perhaps not the ones we we want, and without really thinking it through, yeah, I think, I think there is a massive message that I would want to give to parents around professional football, which is that the professional game has has a terrible ethic, a terrible value system where cheating is, is the is the name of the game, and you hear the commentators say it all the time. He, you know, it's a professional fan.

00:43:47.320 --> 00:44:24.619
He took one for the team. You know, you would expect him to pull that up, that person down there, well, he was putting his shirt, but not so much. You know, it's just about cheating, and that's the game, and we're not going to change that. But what I would want as a parent would be to sort of say yes, but that's for that's professional football. If you're going to play football, you're not going to behave like that, you know, you're not going to feign an injury, you're not going to pull a shirt just because it's an event and try to do it so the referee can't see it. That's just called cheating, and cheating is wrong, and cheating is you know, ultimately, what you know, erodes everything in life, whether that's personal relationships or society itself.

00:44:24.800 --> 00:44:45.099
So let's not take on the value system of of professional football. And if you're going to go and watch again with your son or your daughter, don't pile in on the kind of the booing of the opposition because he fell over or whatever, because it has kind of in even in more recent years.

00:44:42.039 --> 00:44:59.440
I kind of tell anecdote in the book. Don't I going to see a game with my brother, and we're sitting with the with the home fans, and we're away fans, and it was just really quite uncomfortable, even just sitting in front of a man and a woman in their 40s with their two children, one age 10 and one age six, or something like that.

00:44:59.500 --> 00:44:59.920
Even though.

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:17.940
Was quite uncomfortable in terms of the language that the man was using, and then the boy, age six, was kind of mimicking, and I was just going, this is horrible. I don't understand why you need to kind of be so tribal about this in a way that's just really unhelpful.

00:45:17.940 --> 00:45:42.880
And it's just spoiling the spoiling the enjoyment of everybody there. So yeah, I think professional football has got a lot to answer for, but you can just say to the boys, yeah, but that's that we're going to ignore, that we're going to enjoy football for what it is, but we're not going to allow those values to infect us in any other way. Yes, and the message being that we can't expect our boys to be better than we are just not going to happen.

00:45:43.420 --> 00:46:29.360
Andrew, this is this is fascinating. I could talk to you all day. Such an interesting discussion. Thank you so much for joining us. If people want to get hold of you, how would they do that? Yes, I've got a website, girls onboard.co.uk, is probably the best one. I'm just developing my own website. Andrew hampton.net which is not really fully functional yet, but I'm more than happy, genuinely, to receive a message from a parent and then organize a zoom call in so much as what I've got to say is of any value to them. You know, humbly, I'd be very happy to listen to a parent and sort of give them my perspective if that's what they want. Amazing, amazing. What a great offer. And thank you so much, Andrew, hopefully we'll see you again.

00:46:26.480 --> 00:46:31.519
Thank you very much, Rachel, it's been a great pleasure talking to you. My pleasure.

00:46:31.519 --> 00:47:03.960
That was Andrew Hampton and his books, and the links to his work are in the podcast notes. I've read both of his books, and I use his insights every day. If you found this helpful, go on, please like and share it with at least one other person right now, and it would just be amazing if you gave us a five star review. You can find all of the other episodes on www dot teenagers untangled.com where there's a keyword search and you can email me on teenagers untangled@gmail.com and let me know what you Think.

00:47:01.179 --> 00:47:04.260
Have a great week. Bye, Bye, for now you