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Abundant Practice Podcast
Episode #693: Working With Challenging Boys, feat. J. Timothy Davis, Ph.D.
00:27:38
Today’s guest, , Ph.D. joins me to explore his work with boys who are often labeled as “challenging”—and why that label doesn’t tell the whole story. Drawing on his clinical expertise and his experience as a volunteer firefighter, Tim shares...
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Foreign.
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Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm Alison from Abundance Practice Building. I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping therapists build sustainable, joy filled private practices. Just like I've done for tens of thousands of therapists across the world. I'm excited to help you too. If you want to fill your practice with ideal clients, we have loads of free resources and paid support. Go to abundance practice building.com Links all right, onto the show. So I've talked about therapy notes on here for years. I could talk about the features and the benefits in my sleep. But there are a couple things I want you to know about therapy notes that doesn't typically make it into an ad script. First is that they actually care if you like their platform. They don't only make themselves available on the phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your hair out when you get stuck. They also take member suggestions and implement those that there's client demand for. Like Therapy Search, an included listing service that helps clients find you internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome measures to keep an eye on how your clients are progressing. A super smooth, super bill process, real time eligibility to check on your client's insurance. In my conversations with the employees there at all levels, they all really believe in their product and they want you to love it too. Second, they are proudly independently owned. Why should you care about that? Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved, the focus shifts from making customers happy to making investors happy. Prices go way up. Innovation plateaus. Making more money with as little output as possible becomes the number one focus. With over 100,000 therapists using their platform, they've been able to stay incredibly successful and they don't have to sacrifice your experience to stay there. You can try two months free@therapynotes.com with the coupon code Abundant. Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Allison per, founder of abundancepracticebuilding.com I'm here with Dr. Timothy Davis and I'm excited about this conversation because we're going to be talking about like healthy masculinity in boys. How as therapists we can help parents kind of guide and support their boys without getting super burned out engaging in a bunch of power struggles. And for those of you interested in boys mental health, this is a niche that could absolutely. It could use some more therapists who know what they're doing. So thank you so much for being here, Tim.
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Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate being on your show.
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Yeah. So tell me some of like why is this such an area of interest for you? What have you found in your research and your experience that you wish other therapists knew?
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Well, I've been in the male development world since I was a fellow at the Harvard Study of Adult Development back in the 90s, and I've been interested in male development since then. In my practice, I have a specialty, working with boys who I call challenging because their behavior problems are a challenge for their parents, their teachers, their siblings and their peers. And it's been a journey of learning and discovery for me. I was trained in the one on one model for child therapy. So like child therapy is a little mini version of adult therapy. And I found that it just didn't work with my clientele. So I had to go out and learn things that I didn't learn in grad school. So from occupational therapists, I learned about CO regulation, I learned about sensory sensitivities. From family therapists, I learned about understanding the boy in his family context and the importance of family dynamics. From educators, I learned about the importance of the school context. So I started going to school meetings and talking to teachers and talking to special educators. Challenging boys cause marital problems. So I've done three levels of Gottman Couples Therapy training to learn about how to help parents navigate the differences that they have in their instincts and backgrounds about being parents, which become magnified when they've have a child with behavior problems. And then I've had another unusual place where I've drawn lessons from, and that was my time as a volunteer firefighter. So these things, I bring them all together in my approach to working with these boys.
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B
Amazing. And I've. Is there like an age group that you typically focus on for boys?
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A
I'm typically working with kids who are in elementary school. So that's when they're. When the demands of school academically and the demands of school for behavior regulation, you know, sit in your chair and do your work. Start exceeding what these boys are capable of managing easily. That's when they tend to. Their parents tend to reach out to me.
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B
Right. And so I've got an elementary school kid right now and thinking about the neighborhood kids that she runs around with. And most of them are pretty regulated, but not always. And as a mom to two girls, I find that sometimes the way I respond to them, if they get dysregulated in my house is maybe not exactly what they need because I'm so girl attuned. Are there some ways that you support boys differently than the way we might be supporting girls?
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Well, I mean, Coincidentally, my. My practice with boys complements the fact that I have three girls as children. I think that in the time that I've been practicing, and I've been in practice for almost 30 years now, life has become harder for boys. Yes, the schools are less and less a place where the need for kids to get out and be active has been respected. So there's less recess time, there's just less movement that's permitted generally. There's less hands on work, which boys tend to prefer. So life is harder for boys than it was back in the day when we said, you know, boys will be boys and kind of allowed more of that rambunctious behavior. Now we're in a turning point culturally. I mean, we don't want to say boys will be boys to forgive hurtful behavior.
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Right.
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But we want to respect the differences between boys and girls and for example, the kinds of activity level that they need. I mean, as far as handling them in your house, I mean, you have to set the limits and have the rules that you have. The kinds of boys that I'm working with are ones who are kind of on the extreme end that they have a hard time managing a lot of the ordinary demands of life that other kids might need some nudging and encouragement sometimes to do or even sort of holding a firm line, but they can manage it. But these boys have problems with hygiene. They might be adamantly opposed to brushing their teeth. They have a hard time with transitions, going to bed, going to school, getting off their devices. They have a terrible time handling frustrations. If they lose a game or they can't get what they want, or they're told no, they have very difficult time kind of generally meeting the expectations that kids who are their same age typically can meet. Okay. And what sets them apart, what makes them really challenging, is that when parents try to do the thing we're all taught to do, have firm, consistent limits, it causes these massively escalating power struggles that just make everybody feel terrible.
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B
You'd mentioned the way that schools have changed so that there's less of an outlet for that energy. What are some other changes in our culture that you feel have led to what now ends up feeling very escalated in the home and probably in school too.
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I think that screens are obviously a massive problem. And you know that at the time that screens were introduced in the school, I think everybody thought this is a good idea. You know, we live in a computerized world, so we want to have our kids be familiar with these devices. But this has been terrible. For boys, because they're. When it comes to screens, a lot of them, it's like a moth to a flame. And so there's all of these opportunities for battles at school or battles at home over the boy's drive to want to be on these devices and the parents or the teachers trying to limit their access.
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Are there particular things on screens that are making this worse, or are there some things that are maybe safer and more appropriate?
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Well, I think that's a great question, because screens covers a wide range of activities. I mean, of course, at one extreme end, we're worried about kids being exposed to things that would be inappropriate. You know, pornography is so easily accessed today. You know, if we take something like video games, you know, it depends a lot on the games. And there's kind of. It's a mixed bag because in this day and age, a lot of the social connections that happen between boys might be them meeting up online and playing a game together. So generally we'd see that as a positive thing. If the games are especially violent in content, then that is a source of concern. Yeah, I think YouTube is a wide range of, you know, some of the content is educational and some of it is quite harmful.
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I think about how young some boys are exposed to these ideas of masculinity on YouTube that maybe they weren't searching for.
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Right.
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But it ends up in their algorithm and it starts to become what they expect boyhood or manhood to look like, even if they have other examples in their life.
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Yep.
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Are you helping boys that young sort through what masculinity looks like maybe in their real life versus what they're seeing online?
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Well, the. The kids that I'm working with that their understanding of themselves as boys or future men really isn't the primary concern for them. I think they have a more general feeling like they're a square peg and the world is full of round holes and all of the grownups in their lives are constantly trying to ram them into these round holes. And so there's kind of this transition that happens that's very worrisome where they go from being a child with a problem. So somebody, a human being. We all have problems, we all have things. We work on to feeling like a problem child, like, I'm a bad kid, I ruined the family. It would be better off. I've never been born. I don't think for these kids, it's necessarily gender based. I mean, it's. There are more opportunities for round holes because of the changes that have occurred in schools. But the Kids that I'm working with, masculinity is not primarily an issue for them.
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I'm thinking, too, about, like, the impact of screens, burned out parents. Right. Often we'll hop on our phones and scroll away if we're feeling a little crispy or we feel like I just need something to downregulate me a little, even though that's not what scrolling ever does.
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Right.
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And how that lack of eye contact, feedback, connection with our kids can ramp them up more, make them feel more like they're not accepted, they're not loved. Just how it becomes this kind of cyclical thing of even if a parent's trying really hard sometimes some of the things that we are now accustomed to doing as a part of our daily life can be harmful if we're trying to support our kid.
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Absolutely. And I think that that's a really important observation that a lot of parents don't quite understand is that how we relate to our devices models for the kids something about how they should relate to theirs. It means our attention is distracted from them and often in moments where we have an opportunity to connect. Also, I find in the kids that I work with that they don't respond well to authoritarian approaches. I mean, most kids don't. But a parent saying, hey, I'm struggling with my phone, or, you know, I'm struggling with being on Facebook too much, you know, these things are so tempting. Let's work together, because I notice you're on your device, too. And a lot of kids, especially these challenging boys that I work with, respond to that approach much more than, here's the new rule we're going to. This is how your phone is going to be handled, or this is how your Xbox is going to be handled going forward.
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We have rigid rules around screens in our household, but that doesn't mean that as adults, we follow them. And so what I've done is train my daughters. Like, I've talked about how social media is meant to reel you in and keep you there and how it'll kind of hijack your brain a little bit sometimes. And so if they see me on my phone scrolling, they have like, full permission to say, it's sucking you in, Mom. And it gives me a moment of like, oh, I don't need this. This is not helpful. My kids are right here.
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Right. So that you're all working together, and it shows that you respect them.
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Yeah.
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You want to hear from them.
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Yeah.
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I think that's really great. Yeah. That one of the things that I find myself saying to parents Is, you know, tragically, some of the greatest minds of the millennial generation were devoted to figuring out how to make phones addictive rather than to, you know, scientific discoveries or some other more socially beneficial pursuit. So, yeah, these. These devices are very, very tempting.
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I'm thinking about the overlooked piece. I think of the boys that you work with and how so many people are just like, I don't know what to do with him. He's just out of control.
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Yes.
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Our systems are not set up for these boys like our school systems. How can we as therapists support when the systems are so, in some cases detrimental to just like these boys finding peace and having what they need?
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A
Yeah. So I think the first thing when parents come in and they're struggling with a situation like this is to use our basic therapist toolkit is to have empathy. These people are going through something terrible. And in our culture, we give parents way too much credit when kids do well and we blame them unfairly when things go bad. And so these are people who. They're dealing with these repeated, challenging episodes that happen at the worst time. They're trying to get to work right in the worst place. They're at a restaurant or in a supermarket, or they're at their friends for family get together. And they feel like their personal challenge of the parents authority that the kids saying, I don't have to listen to you. Which some kids say, but I. It's not something to take literally. So it's just having empathy for that. So the first thing I try to do is just to like, set this basic understanding that this wasn't caused by your bad parenting. You're not a terrible parent. I cannot begin to tell you how many parents in the first meeting say, you probably think we're the worst parents in the world. Well, no, I don't, because I know that this situation, you didn't cause it. And Stanley Greenspan, who was kind of eminent child psychiatrist of the last century, he has this quote that I love that I'm saying all the time to parents, which is, you're not the cause, but you can be the solution. So I want to lay that groundwork of taking away blame, and then I want to help them understand what the causes are and which is going to help them know what problems to focus on. And to go back to your question, it'll help them when they go to school. So with these kids, emotion regulation is a huge issue. And that when I. When I meet with parents and I take a history, it's not that, bam. The challenging behavior Problem started in elementary school. I hear a story about an infant who was difficult to soothe, who cried a lot, who had a hard time getting to sleep. I hear about a toddler who had, you know, epic tantrums. So what I've learned over the years is that most of these boys start off life with a temperamentally based vulnerability to experiencing negative emotions intensely, easily. And they linger. So that's a really tough spot to be in life because it makes you very vulnerable to emotional flooding. And then the other main area of lagging skill development that these boys frequently have is in the area of executive functioning. So if you can go into the school armed by a therapist explaining why your child is having these struggles. And it's not willfulness. I mean, another one of, I probably stole this from somebody, but I don't know where. But I always say it feels like willfulness, but it's really a lack of skillfulness. So if we can go into the school and say, we're on your team, we're not looking for a pass for our child's behavior. We're looking for a partnership. We're working on these. We're trying to help him learn the skills that he needs to handle these situations. And we want you to work together with us. And we have found, and the science supports this, that harsh, rigid discipline does not teach the skills that our son needs in order to be able to manage the challenges of life without being challenging.
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Mm. It's interesting how there's a willingness we all have to have the bandwidth for, to support. Right. Like, I'm imagining a teacher who's got a classroom full of kids and parents having that conversation with the teacher. And honestly, like, the teacher's bandwidth probably makes or breaks what happens next.
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And teachers vary widely in terms of just how naturally gifted they are at dealing with kids who don't fit the mold.
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Right.
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So I think it's important to acknowledge that. And, you know, when I'm at a meeting with a teacher, with parents, I will be sure to point out, look, I understand you're not just educating Johnny. You've got 25 other kids that you have to teach, and his behavior is making that more your job, more difficult. So we're. We're aware of that. And. And we're here. I'm repeating myself. But it's. It's so important that the schools feel like the parents are partners. Because if you go in with this kind of like, you got to do this or you got to do that, well, the teachers feel disrespected. They've built their careers around educating children. They see themselves in this socially positive way. And if you come in and you're sort of criticizing what they're doing or challenging them, that feels terrible to them. We want to respect that. They want the best for everyone. They're doing their best, and we want to work together.
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Absolutely. Yeah. And you've written a book. Can we talk about that?
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So I wanted to be able to reach a wider audience, and I can see in my practice with the lessons that I've learned over the years. So I wrote a book called Challenging boys A proven plan for keeping your cool and helping your son thrive. And in it, I kind of weave the theme of the lessons that I learned from firefighting. And one of the most important lessons I learned in firefighting is that firefighters stay calm and act effectively and efficiently in very, very stressful circumstances because they have a plan. They're not winging it. They're not making it up in the literal heat of the moment. They arrive at the scene knowing exactly what they're going to be doing there. And so with the parents that I work with, I help them make an emergency plan. It turns out that these challenging behavior episodes occur for most kids after a relatively few number of triggers, just one or two. So I help them identify what the triggers are, and then we can build a plan around. Okay. When. When you're. One of the cases that I mentioned in the book is the kid that I called Josh, and he's 8. He was having gigantic meltdowns and escalated power struggles in the house. And he was crying, hitting, running away. Once it got so bad that he had one of his legs fully out the window of his second story bedroom, and he was threatening to jump. So his parents, of course, were overwhelmed and beleaguered. And so what we did is I have parents keep a log, or I call it a parenting journal, where they write down records of all of the challenging episodes, and then that becomes the data where you can identify the triggers. So what we learned quickly is for Josh, it was transitions, getting him off his video games, getting him to bed, getting him to soccer practice, or soccer games. So now we know where the problems occur. And it was. We also learned something really interesting, is that his parents attempt to be firm and hold the line. Didn't get him to soccer practice, didn't get him off his computer, just escalated things. And we also learned, surprisingly, that the biggest problem was actually getting him to soccer practice or games, because they felt more free to be flexible around bedtime or the Computer games because nobody else was involved, but they felt a responsibility to get him to practice or games. So armed with that data, we were able to make an emergency plan where it dramatically reduced the frequency and intensity of the challenging moments.
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B
Yeah, I love the being able to couch it in firefighting, like that experience. It also makes me think of how important it is for us to be regulated right. If a firefighter showed up to my house freaking out, I'd be like, oh, no, you're the one in charge here.
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A
I tell a story in the book about that, too, because as a firefighter, you. You're wearing your air on your back when you go into a fire. And that air bottles are rated for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but it really depends on how fast you're breathing, how long they last. So the first time I was inside a house where there was a fire, my air bottle lasted me 10 minutes, even though it was rated for 30 because I was breathing so hard in the situation. So, yeah, the being. That's one of the skills that firefighters learn is how to keep their breathing under control, how to stay regulated so that their precious air is going to last through the time that they need it. So that's something for parents, too, is helping them learn strategies to regulate themselves. The plan makes an enormous difference. Part of what can be so triggering for parents is they're in these moments and they don't know what to do. And so they're just kind of throwing things out. A threat, a punishment, a bribe. But when they have a plan and they're executing what they've decided to do ahead of time, it makes it much easier to not get swept up in the drama of the moment.
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B
Absolutely. I'm going to make sure that we have a link to your book in the show notes so that it's easy for people to find, because it sounds like it would be good for therapists who are parents, therapists who are therapists, therapists who see parents.
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A
I think that. I mean, it's written for parents, but it also. It's a roadmap that therapists can use to walk parents through making an emergency plan. And then the second plan is a prevention plan, because firefighters don't just fight fires, they're also working to prevent them. I got a great example this week, sort of randomly. My youngest daughter's an RA at her college, and so she was at RA training, and the fire department came to RA training, and they taught the RAs how to spot fire hazards. They filled one of the dorm stairwells up with you know, training smoke that's non toxic and they showed them how to evacuate kids from the dorm. So that's the ultimate goal of firefighters is no fires ever. And so that's another part of what's talked about in my book is, okay, so we, we know how to manage things when the child's melting down. And then we also learn how to teach him the skills that he needs to handle those situations going forward.
- [26:49]
B
Right. Amazing. Well, Tim, thank you so much for your time today. I really hope that therapists got a lot out of this. I hope they pick up your book and share it with their clients because it sounds like it could do a lot of good.
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A
Yeah. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
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