Transcript of Dr. Michael Gurian: Why Boys Are Struggling — The Male Brain, Screens & What Parents Can Do New

Part of why men and boys are receding from culture, part of why they are isolating and are lonely, is that there is so much overreaction to everything they do. Because you think about, think about all the cancellations. What we're doing, what the culture is doing, is canceling, you know, it's 99% men.

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Before we start the conversation today, I want to deliver a personal message. Every day, families across America lose someone they love to an overdose. Many of those deaths are preventable when communities have the right education, resources, and support. That's why I've partnered with the CDC Foundation through their COPE, Community Overdose Prevention Efforts, campaign and committed to matching every donation dollar for dollar up to $25,000. I've spent my life helping people recover from addiction, but if we can get to the place of prevention first, this would help save so many more lives. I hope you'll join me in supporting the CDC Foundation's overdose prevention work at CDCfoundation.org/cope. You can also visit the link below in the show notes to donate. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I sit across from families every day who are watching their sons slip away from anxiety, isolation, addiction, and mental health struggles. And the question I keep asking is, did this start when the drugs showed up or did it start way before that? Today I'm joined by Dr. Michael Gurian, Who spent his career understanding how boys grow into men. I want to connect the dots. What happens early in a boy's life that quietly sets him on this path?

Thank you for being with us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for fitting us in.

Thanks for having me.

Of course. What's the exact moment boys start to break? Is it parenting, school, or culture?

They're all important. Truthfully, I put culture. So, my work is nature, nurture, and culture. So, the way I would answer that question is we look at nature, we look at nurture, we look at culture. So, nature is what they come in with, male brain, boys, male genes, testosterone, all those things that come in that are relatively immutable. And then, nurture is the wraparound family, usually nuclear family, et cetera, And extended family that's kind of taking care of that nature. So, I talk about Nurture the Nature. That's one of my books, Nurture the Nature. What works best is figure out who that is, nurture that. That's what's going to work best. Culture, third, right? And I would say least, has the least influence until the kids get to be teens, late teens, adulthood. Culture is having more influence there. Um, so some things—

Do you know where I see it, Doctor? I'm the blame the parent guy. I've always been the blame the parent guy, right? For the most part. But I shifted with the culture and the social media, right? And now I think that that's the most important. What do you, what do you think?

Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say most important, but incredibly important. I mean, I'm, I'm definitely on record as one of those people who've since the smartphone has been coming out and saying, nope. I mean, like Saving Our Sons, Minds of Girls, 10 years ago I wrote those books saying, nope, got to keep the kids off of this. This is damaging to the brain. So, for me, it's a brain-based issue. It's damaging to the brain. So, that's no doubt about that. Early on in life, though, it's more the nurturing systems and the parents and the school systems that are, many of which are not on screens yet, but they're not understanding boys. And, and in not understanding boys, it's hard for them to take— to nurture the nature of boys, to take care of boys. And certainly the culture comes in where the culture pressures systems to act in a way that would be difficult for the boy. Okay, so divorce, fathering— let's say we have a divorce and let's say the father's gone. Okay. That's a huge trauma for the development of boys, girls too, but for the development of boys. So, in those, and then often moms will just say, yeah, I don't understand these guys.

I'm shutting down, trying to shut down what's naturally boy, and that's having an effect on these boys. But I, as a mom, don't even realize it until someone tells me.

Give an example. How so?

Well, I'll give an example, what I call aggression nurturance, which is quite different than empathy nurturance. Aggression nurturance tends to be a more male way of doing it where we use aggression to nurture. So, rough-and-tumble play would fit in that category. Paternal nurturance, the way fathers tend to nurture, would fit in that category. Nurturing male development through games, through sports, through Anything that involves aggression. And boys, of course, doing it to each other, throwing darts at each other, shooting each other with BB guns. I mean, all of this stuff is aggression nurturance. The behavior looks frightening because aggression is confused with violence. So, and aggression is not violence. Aggression is healthy. Violence is not. So, often moms and female teachers, they don't understand aggression nurturance. Um, and they shut it down. They punish kids for it. They overly discipline.

Is that, is that what they refer to as the pussification of America?

Okay, so I of course don't use those terms, but, um, no, of course not.

Those are— hey, doctor, those are my terms. I'm not getting canceled.

So I'm not, I'm not, uh— oh no, I'm not afraid of getting canceled. I just, I just wouldn't use that term. Because what I think you're getting at with the term though is that we are afraid, especially women and female culture are afraid of males and of male energy, boy energy, afraid of it, don't realize they're afraid of it, but are afraid of it. And so, have a reaction to it that tries to shut it down.

Isn't that unusual? Isn't that unusual though, right? Because you have these women that want to be heard, not fixed. You want them to speak their love language. You want them to be consistent, right? But then you also want a real man, right? And the balance that you walk for these young guys today is just untenable. No?

Gotcha. No, I hear you. It's very— we're in a very difficult situation where because of the fear of males, and there's a lot of reasons for that fear, and a lot of that— you're talking about culture— a lot of that is coming down through academe and through through media, you know, where males are just portrayed as being bad, patriarchal, domineering, you know, all these things. So, and violence. So therefore, people are afraid, women are afraid. And, but they still want males. We still want to mate, right? We still want to reproduce. Evolution is still very strong in us. And so, women do want to mate and reproduce, and they do want strong men, men who are resilient. And so, I mean, you're right. What you're getting at is right. The guys are in an untenable situation. And, this is part of why they're withdrawing, receding, why we have more mental issues, more anxiety, more depression. They are hit with, on the one hand, we don't want you to be male. We would rather we could engineer you to be female. But, on the other hand, as you're saying, they're hit with, yeah, but you got to succeed, man.

Yeah.

You got to have ambition.

I want you to walk me through the Gurian Method. What is it? How does it change the way kids are taught and raised?

Yeah. So, about 30 years ago, a little more, I started using brain scans, right? So, all of my work is brain-based and I'm looking at scans of male brains and female brains and showing these to audiences and showing how different the male and the female brain are. And so, the first thing is we train everyone— teachers, parents, counselors. I'll give an example. If you give me a chance, I'll give you an example of a counseling office, kind of how that changes. When we study the brain and we look at the brain, we see that, for instance, the female brain has word centers on both sides, right? The male brain mainly has word centers on the left. The female brain connects words with feelings and memories and emotions, which are in the midbrain, connects them on both sides. Males on one side. So, let's take— that's just one difference, but I'll give you another one.

How does that manifest? What's the practical effect?

Yeah. I'm going to give you the frontal lobe and then I'll show you how it manifests. So, the other thing is that the female brain is operating about 80% in the frontal lobe, which is impulse control, executive function, et cetera. Male brain is operating in gray matter areas further back.

Right.

So put those together, and then you look at a classroom or you look at a counseling agency. I'll use counseling. Counseling is set up for a person— and I'm a therapist, so I can admit this— it's set up for a person to come into an office, a small space, sit in a chair for 50 minutes, and get into the frontal lobe and process emotions through words, right? How do you feel? How do you feel? How did they make you feel? For 50 minutes. So, very few men on average stay with counseling, right? Because it's the wrong method to get at what's inside of them.

Why?

Why is it the wrong method? Because their frontal lobe is not active. They don't have as many word centers connected to emotives and memories, and they can't they can't answer these questions and they get frustrated and they feel, you know, unheard. So, we change counseling.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. What questions?

How do you feel? What do you feel? How did that make you feel?

So, they just can't name their feelings and they're frustrated because they don't know why.

Okay. I mean, I think it's deeper than that, but fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So then, what we do is we train counselors to change that. So, for instance, I, as a therapist, I always invite any of my clients to walk with me for the first 15 minutes. So, it's still a 50-minute session, but we're going to walk for the first 15 minutes. Very few women take me up on that, although some do, but almost all the men do, right?

Right.

Okay. So, they're already now, they feel better understood because we're walking and we're side by side. And, rather than having the territorial instinct freeze their brains, which it will do if I'm sitting and looking them in the eye, um, we're not looking them in the eye. So, therefore—

That's a great intervention. That is magnificent. I never even thought of that. That is beautiful. Go on.

Yeah. So, then, another thing we do is, um, objects. So, the male brain is much more tuned to objects moving through space, um, than the female brain is. And, to access emotives, emotions, they become an object walking, but they also need to move objects. That's a lot of what the right sides of the male brain does. So, we throw a ball back and forth when we're back in the office and we're talking, now that they got to watch the ball and then their whole— or talking stick, some people use that, which is fine, any object that's moving. Well, that keeps the brain going and now they're able to access more of what's going on, right? So, those are just 2 strategies that completely alter that 50-minute session.

Do me a favor. Do me a favor. Tell the audience about the talking stick because that was beautiful. And, if we're talking about the same talking stick, then I think that's a great way. And I've done that in my family too. When we all get triggered, I just walk over and grab something, a banana. This is the talking stick, right? Whoever's talking, everybody else shuts up until this, until the banana is passed. Right?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. We hand the stick back and forth. And many times what I use is a ball. And we throw a ball back and forth.

Oh, that's cool.

Because, you know, guys like, it's like a little, their brain's gotta be awake to catch that ball, you know? So they, so they are attuned, you know, they're attuned and then they catch it. Talking stick's a great one. A banana. Yeah.

How much of addiction is actually a downstream problem of boys never learning how to deal with their frustration, rejection, or failure?

Addiction, of course, they gotta have the genes for it and those genes have to be triggered. the genes get triggered, could their sense of failure trigger it would be how I would interpret then what you're saying. Is that, is that what you're asking?

Well, I see what you're saying about the addiction gene. And sometimes there has to be a trauma to set that off.

Right.

Okay. That I get. I wrote that book. But aside from that, There are exceptions to that, and the exceptions really are the majority. When I now understand this isn't anecdotal, okay? I've given 10,000 people back to their loved ones, so it's more like field research. So if there was a study, my research or my experiences would be based on that study. That's not what I see. In fact, I see what I see. Mostly is the struggle that boys have, right? And women, they have these struggles. Their basic needs weren't met as a child. And I think that's most of it, right? Their basic needs weren't met as a child. And then because they weren't— what's the word that I want to use? supported, right, through their, through their family structure. They leave all of these outside influences to influence that child. And he doesn't hear anything about, you know, I tell my son all the time for no reason at all, I am so proud of you. And he'll say, why? And I'll say, because of the man you're becoming. I've never— and then I talk about it. I say, the discipline that you have in your life, I have one friend, my buddy Stuart, who has the discipline that you have.

I've never seen that in a 13-year-old. Never. Okay. I'm literally in awe of my kid. Okay. And I let him know. And what that happens is he's got the validation from his dad and boys listen differently when their dad is speaking to them. Right. All right.

Oh yeah.

And so he doesn't need that outside shit anymore because he had his parents and specifically his dad letting him know, okay, how proud he was. And, and that, and there's, and there's 12 other ones that I do, but that's just, please.

Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, I, and I, I'm the same kind of father. My kids are grown, I have grandkids now, but I'm the same kind of, you know, always tell them what I'm proud of and, and specifically what I'm proud of rather than just great, you're awesome, great job, you know, specifically praising for what I'm proud of. And that's very important to do. Um, and then just the presence of the father, as you're saying, is, is huge, is absolutely huge. Um, uh, and then for, so for addiction, so the loneliness that I think you're talking about, the loneliness, the isolation they feel, the failure that these kids can feel as they're entering early adolescence, that, that is a trauma that is going to, that can trigger those genetics. So you and I will have a different language for saying the same thing, which is that can, that, that is, constitutes a trauma. If the father is gone, that is a trauma. That's exactly right. If the, if the mother was beating them or the father was beating them, or, you know, and, and if their basic needs, like you said, are not met, like Poverty, for instance, is a trauma.

It's a triggering trauma. So, so yes, those things all can, can trigger it. And they're— and what they're addicted to, as you know, what they're addicted to is that this thing is— this is giving them the dopamine hits in their brain. This is giving them their brain joy.

There is no one in my family, no one with alcoholism, drug addiction, any type of substance use disorder. But the beatings and my grandfather passing and losing the home and the father leaving to start another family and, you know, leaving the home to get repossessed that his family was in, like those things were traumatic and I lost, I just didn't have the tools at the, at that time. And so I lost 2 and a half decades to drug addiction. But I didn't have the gene. It was just too traumatic. Do you see what I'm saying?

Well, it was, it was there somewhere, but that doesn't matter. It does. It doesn't matter.

You—

that was your experience.

That's right. And I'm not married to anything. You're— I've got you as my guest, and I'm just trying to give you what's going on with me and my experience. so that the viewers can get the whole story.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you've said it, all of those traumas, and what the brain is trying to do with addiction is it's trying to get the dopamine hits. I mean, literally, that's what our brains are trying to do.

For sure.

Because we are getting so much darkness over here, family tragedy, it's whatever, whatever is happening is very dark. And we take this substance and we go, hey, I'm having joy now. Of course, it makes it worse. But, but at the moment, we're having joy.

Yeah.

And we start doing it.

It starts off all fun. And then it graduates to fun with problems. And then it graduates to all problems. I hate this question that I'm going to read next, because, okay, because it's wrong. Okay. But I'm gonna ask it anyway. Are we over-therapizing boys and under-disciplining them?

Oh no, I think you're right. We are.

We're over-therapizing boys.

Okay, so you and I will use different language, but I will say the same thing in a way. We— okay, a lot of boys do need therapy, but they're not going to get it because it's just not set up for them. They're not going to go to therapy the way it's set up. So we actually— we could help more boys But what you're getting at is also true, that we are so concerned as a culture and then in our nurturing systems with what someone feels, like with what a child feels. Oh, you feel this? Okay. And so then that, of course, we're doing therapy, right? We're constantly trying to help people figure out what they feel and name their feelings. And we're in therapy with them. And often we are not providing them discipline. And if we don't provide them discipline, then they can't develop self-discipline. And so, you know, we're not helping them to regulate their feelings. And so they can't self-regulate, being more therapy language. And that's the key to it. We really do need to be providing these boys with discipline, not abuse, obviously, but with discipline. And they will develop more character.

They will develop more resilience. And, you know, will they need therapy?

Yeah, sure.

But they'll still have resilience.

Okay. So as far as being disciplined is concerned, of course, they're underdisciplined. Okay. We've lost all track of that. Forget the fact that parents don't get down on, on their children's level, put their phone away, you know, connect with their kid, make them feel like they're the most— forget all that. That's not happening. Okay, which is what they need. And if they did get that, okay, then they'd be, um, uh, they wouldn't need as much discipline. Okay. Uh, and the fact that when they were disciplined, okay, they'd be more right-sized about it. But the part that I have a problem with is over-therapizing. I don't think, I think, I think therapy is the ultimate luxury. I think it's how elegant people deal with their stressors, and it's a language, and it helps them right at the beginning. I'm going to give you an example. I'm 30 years old-ish, in that range, and my buddy tells me, because I'm unhappy, tells me to go to a therapist. And I'm a drug addict, a raging drug addict, and he tells me to go to a therapist. He hooks me up with this woman. Her name was Margie Fedding.

Rest your soul. Okay. And she wrote a book called Perspectives on Addiction. And this woman saved my life. And I went to her every Friday at 1 o'clock. And after, after 11 months, she looks at me and she says, sweetheart, are you getting anything out of this? And I said, no. And she said, well, then why do you keep showing up every week on time without fail? And I said, because I'm slow, but I'll get it. I've been here before because the same thing happened to me in AA for about a year, year and a half. It's a different language. I didn't get it, but I showed up for the community, right? At about 15 months, it clicked. I got it. And I gave her a hug and a kiss, and I thanked her for her service. And I said, listen, I'm gonna go find a man to take— to teach me how to be a man, to take me the rest of the way. And I've had John for 20 years. I see him 3 times a week. I'm the most over-therapized person. I mean, I own arguably the finest clinical team in history and I need it.

So I love the fact because yeah, they're, they're not going to get it optimally, right? But it's going to sink in. Some of it is and some of it, right? Some of it has to sink in. You cannot unring a bell. Right.

Yeah, I see therapy as mentoring. When I— it's, it's the system that we have in place now, um, you know, and, and it's, and it's a working system. It's systematized. Uh, at the same time, to me, it's best when it's a mentoring system, which means it's a nurturing system in which we're mentoring. And that would be why I think people, when they get something out of it, they're getting something out of it because they're being mentored. And we do need that. And you just referred to it with, you needed the community, you need the contact. That's a lot of it is the bond and the contact. And then there's a transfer of wisdom through that. And so if people want to call it mentoring, I'm fine with calling it mentoring. It's just that it's called therapy now, you know?

And we can call it a— we can also call it a therapeutic alliance because, you know, the truth is, the truth is, you know, Look, there's a lot of good therapists as a whole are the salt of the earth. They're generally the best people. They're most of, most of my friends are therapists. I mean, they are good souls. Unfortunately, there are what, just a few percent in single digits that actually have the ability to help anybody. And I think that's what you're talking about being, it's, it's not Systemic, it's, it's systemically bad.

What I would argue is that it's actually that the way therapy is done does not work for males. If, as it gets shifted though, a lot of those people that you, that were not successful, let's say that you're talking about, they become successful because they're now providing mentoring. Take the word therapy out. They're providing mentoring to boys, young men, and men. that those boys, young men, and men need. But in the way the system is set up now, come in, we'll talk for 50 minutes, that can't work for most guys. So therefore, we look at those therapists and go, they're not very good. I think they're, they're deep-feeling, good people, but they're, they're in a system that doesn't work for males.

I think we're saying the same thing, but I'll leave it at this. Okay, therapy doesn't work once a week. It doesn't. Okay, it just doesn't. Not for somebody like me.

Okay.

Okay, it just doesn't. All right. If a 15-year-old boy is anxious, isolated, and glued to a screen, what's the next 5 years of his life look like if nothing changes?

Yeah, he's gonna probably— he's gonna probably have a social anxiety diagnosis. He's probably going to be become depressed and end up with a depressive disorder diagnosis. He had— we have to get him off those screens, have to have a 1-month detox at least, and got to get him off that.

In 5 to 7 years, okay, uh, he's never talked to a woman, he's never gotten laid, uh, he's turned from aggression to violence, okay? I mean, this ain't all the time, and it's not even the majority of the time, But, you know, that's a recipe for that, right?

Yeah, absolutely. The plague right now, and it has been building for the last, say, 20 years, and then the smartphones and the screens have basically hardened it, calcified it, is male isolation. So, as males get more and more isolated, males need constant relational contact. Females need it too, but they go get it. But males need it, but they don't necessarily go get it. And so, then, this is a brain thing. I mean, this isn't just a, I don't know, amorphous. It's the brain. The brain needs this. And so, if kids are on screens, that is isolation, even though they'll say, well, look, it's an interactive video game. I'm interacting. Nope. That's still a form of isolation from the brain's point of view. So, we have to be in the same room with people. We have to be on the same streets with people. We have to be in the same cars with people. You know, we have to be with people. And those relationships are what will then shape and socialize males. If we don't have them and if they go into screens, then yeah, we're into loneliness, isolation, depression, anxiety, etc.

A lot of these kids don't even know how to talk to a girl.

It's true.

They just don't.

It's true.

And, um, uh, they're not even sleeping, uh, uh, with each other at the frequency that we did. The birth rate is going down. When they get those AI girls, okay, to look real on a robot and feel real, over time, the birth rate's gonna just decline like you wouldn't believe. Okay, because guys can't talk to women. And if you can have a woman like your ChatGPT gas you up all day long and tell you how fantastic you are, that's where we're going. That's where we're going.

Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm adamant that we should be having some guardrails on AI. And of course, we won't because We won't. So we are going in this direction, and it— and we are— what's going to happen is the pool of males who are going to reproduce, you know, that pool is going to get smaller and smaller. And I, I think it's possible— I hope we stop this and deal with this— but if we end up in that situation, then we're looking at 30, 40 years from now where we're going to have to have one male is actually going to be impregnating, you know, more females just so we have kids. Well, but we shouldn't get there. I mean, the thing of getting married and having a family and having children, that is really a great way to go. So we need to stop this where we're just getting more and more isolated males. And there's one thing women can do, women and girls can do to help a lot. And that is to, to be less overreactive. Sometimes I watch The '70s Show pops up, you know, on the streaming, and I, I click it.

And, and I go, and so I'm born 1958. So that is really close to my age. The, I think it's one year off, right? So I look at that and I look at how the males and the females are interacting in, and now it's TV, but I'm going to use it as an example. The females do not overreact to these guys. And, you know, in other words, every time a guy does something where he goes, Oh, I love you in that, in that Catholic school outfit. Okay. She doesn't go, oh my God, you know, you're, you're shaming me and you're, you know what I mean? So there isn't that overreaction.

And in the '70s, in the '70s, that wasn't part of the lexicon.

Exactly.

You're shaming me.

Right. I think it's— we've just moved. And I, you know, I sense that you would agree with this. We've— our culture has moved. This is where culture does really matter. It has moved in sort of a post-feminist era. to a sort of extreme of feminism. Um, not really the feminism I signed on for as a young feminist, you know.

That's right.

In the '60s and '70s, which was equality for women. This, this kind of feminism is, uh, so hyper-reactive. And so, um, how is it that people are going to have relationships if females are, are hyper-reacting to a 17-year-old boy who, by the way, doesn't have the impulse control. He's just trying to relate.

Most of the time when a woman, whether it's a girl or a young woman or a mature woman, most of the time when she is activated, it's deserved. It's the guy's fault most of the time. Okay, that's just how I see it. Look, if it's hysterical, it's historical, right? So if you had a long outstanding relationship with somebody, and for the first 5 years it was tough, but then you, you got your bearings. She's already like, I'm— I've got one foot out the door.

I don't actually think that men or women are at fault for most of what happens. I don't think there is fault. I think what we're doing is we're interacting. Boys and girls are interacting. Men and women are interacting. But we've, we've created partly because of therapy, partly because of media, for many reasons, we've created a sense in human relationships that we are at fault and you're at fault. So, if I'm the woman, well, you, the guy, are at fault because I feel, huh, I'm not sure how I feel about that. So, you're at fault. I would say no one's at fault. she's having feelings she's having. She has a right to those feelings, but it doesn't mean he did something wrong. And when he's having feelings, um, I obviously— if someone's abusing someone, right, we're not in that category though. We're in normal interrelationships, which is what I'm actually trying to get at, where we, where we have to just stop faulting each other. And, and so that means women have to say to guys, okay, that made me feel weird, but no, I'm not going to say you're at fault for that.

I just What are parents getting completely wrong right now when they think they're being supportive?

If I had to pick one, because I always, you know, okay, I got to pick one. I guess the one I would pick is that we parents are, are being trained to care about the minutiae of feelings in our kids at every moment, what they're feeling. And I think that to some extent, that's a mistake. we need to care about how their feelings fit into a system and a society. And so, if— I certainly am glad to listen. I raised kids, grandkids. I mean, I love listening to what they're feeling. But then at a certain point, I have to say, okay, so you're feeling that, and what are we going to do? How does this fit? Rather than the feelings ruling the thought process. family or the culture. So, if a child is feeling something— so, I see our culture as saying to parents, and so this is a mistake I think parents make, as saying to them that those kids' feelings should run the family. And I don't agree with that. They get their feelings for the moment they had the feeling, and then, you know, we're running the family. So, maybe that, if you had to have me pick one thing, I guess I'd pick that.

If you have a son, if you have a kid, he's 11. Okay, so he's going right, he's at that sweet spot, right, where he's moving right into middle school, right, where it's going to get real for him, right? It's going to be offered drugs, he's good, right, all that stuff. Okay, how, how would you, okay, as an expert, deal with your kid to keep him on the right road?

The key to raising this kid, any kid, we'll take 11 years old, but any kid, the key is a 3-family system. A 3-family system. A nuclear family, however that's set up, but a nuclear family. Make sure to have father influence, male influence. An extended family system, which might not be your relatives, they may live far away, but coaches, mentors, et cetera, close, close. That one teacher who he's very close to, right? So, that's the second family. And then, the third family system is institutional. So, it's schools, churches, Boy Scouts, it's institutions, sports activities, athletics. You raise him in 3 families, okay? So, he can't be isolated because he's got 3 families wrapping around him. And then, the other thing you do is because he's 11 is you keep him off screens. So, you know, no video games on school nights. Yes, on the weekends, not on school nights. No smartphone. People do that all the time. You mean, how do families do that?

Yeah, how do you get— how do you keep your kid off TikTok? Or, you know, my, my kid does YouTube, but he teaches himself new stuff all day long. Right. So that's how he learns. But, you know, and he doesn't do social media yet, but, you know, a lot of these kids do the social media all the time. Okay. How do you keep them off of it?

Well, he's, he's our child, right? He's 11. He's our child. We're the parents. So there's no, he gets no smartphone. He gets no, he can have an index phone to communicate with him, but no smartphone. No, no video games on school nights. No, nothing. No, no device in his room at least 1 hour before bed. No devices overnight.

My kids get straight A's. I don't know how to do that to them. My kids are— I've never had a problem. I've never raised my voice, and I don't know how to do that to them. I just— I— then I'm— then I'm the one who screwed up.

Well, I'm not saying you're screwed up, but you asked me, What would be best case scenario for raising an 11-year-old? Best case is 3-family system with all of that relationship, and then protect them from too much screen time. So, 11. So, Saving Our Sons is one of my books where I laid out a grid of time for every age group. 11 years old, 2 hours a day at home on screens because the schools probably already have them on screens 2 to 3 hours. So, you know, so in that 2 hours, yeah, I mean, he can watch something. He can— he's gonna watch stuff, but just not social media. TikTok for an 11-year-old is basically poison for the brain. So, gotta keep— at least keep him off TikTok because it all moves too quickly. So, what his brain has to do is create brain bypasses, and that's why you get anxiety, depression, ADD, ADHD later.

That's why you can't focus on anything for longer than 3 minutes anymore. Like, you just can't. Is your attention span the way it used to be or no?

Probably not. I mean, when I'm— when my gray matter is focused on something, I'm really attending to it. But yeah, I mean, I can't remember back, but I suppose probably I had a better attention span before I had a smartphone. And I have a developed brain, right? It's— this is— this is— I mean, it's hard on us, our attention, but The problem for us, the problem for the kids is their brains aren't developed yet. And so, that's why it's just like they're smoking 20 cigarettes a day and it's affecting their brain development.

What's the one thing that a parent can do right now to make an immediate impact?

If we had to pick one thing, here's what it would be: nurture the nature. Okay? Every parent, every parent, look at who your child is. Cut out the noise. Cut out all the media and all that. Cut out the noise. Look at your child. Who is— and we're talking about boys— who is my son? What are his assets? What are his gifts? What are his ragged edges that we need to work on? Nurture that and keep that as your focus. Nurture the nature. What's the nature of this guy? That's going to be my focus. And, what's going to happen is because you're doing that, the parent is going to make sure that he has male influence, healthy male influence, going to make sure of it because you can see that his nature needs that.

Exactly. What are the 3 non-negotiables you would enforce in his life right now?

So, keep good control on screens, especially TikTok and fast-moving images. So, social media, keep control of that. Number 2, make sure that he is moving around. Make sure he's got athletics. Make sure he's got— he's going for runs. He's got to get at least— he's 11. He's got to get 2 to 3 hours. He's got to be outdoors exercising, et cetera, per day. The body and the brain need that. So, make sure of that. That's non-negotiable. Food and nutrition to me is a non-negotiable. You know, make sure he's eating right. And, if he whines and says he wants chicken nuggets all the time, just say, no, you're not getting chicken nuggets all the time. Sorry, you're 11, I'm the parent. You're going to get— to me, food and nutrition, athletics, and then if he's away from screens, it's going to hit another area that's really important, which is to be in relationship, constantly in relationship, and learning in relationships. So, that means he's going to have relationships. And also in school, he's going to be learning in those relationships, right? And so, we're teaching him to value those relationships and to be developing himself via the relationships.

So, we're not just saying, go to school, do your homework. We're saying, establish bonds at school, establish relationships at school because the more you trust that person, the more you will learn from that person.

Do you know what I like, Doctor? I like, I want to minimize the problems and I want to enhance the probability of thriving in my kids' lives, right? So as every father would, good father would. I've resigned myself to the TikTok thing. Okay, and the Instagram thing. But what I, but what I insist on with my children is I've had the conversation. I'm like, you know what? A lot of this is mindless, but there's also good to it too. So what I want is I want to put some things in your feed so that you're getting educated and that you're not just, you know, dumbing down. And what I've done is the, what, what I've chosen to do is Good mental health and relationships and also financial literacy because they don't learn that in school. And, you know, every father, okay, every good father has only one job, which is to make certain that their children are okay in the world before they're gone. Okay, that's it. The end. And how old are your kids?

Uh, mine are 33 and 37.

Okay, so you did it. You won. Your kids are okay in the world without you. My kids are small. I haven't won yet. I got started real late. So, you know, I'm just negotiating with God constantly. Just get me to 80, man. That's all. Everything. I don't care. Just get me to 80. At what point does normal teenage behavior become something parents should actually be scared of?

Um, yeah, I, I always say when I'm asked that, I always say, You know, you, you make a line in your mind as a parent on what— where danger is. Make— find your line where danger is and, um, and, and make sure that line isn't too, you know, repressive, right? I mean, guys, let, let guys develop, you know. They're going to take risks, okay? They're gonna, um, they're gonna say mean things to their friends and it's, you know, great. They're gonna one-up their friends and their mom's gonna go, why do you do that? Well, That's what they do. Okay, so, so put the line for danger in a realistic place and a real place, and then that's where you hold. So when they go over that line, then you correct, you know. Otherwise, you let them develop and you let them socialize each other, because that's what human beings do. Kids raise each, each other. Parents raise them and kids raise them, raise each other. So let them be in relationship. Set the line for danger. And then elicit the help of the other parent. Like, that's the line we set that we got to correct that.

The benefits of a skinned knee.

Oh, yeah. Skinned knees, broken bones. I mean, all that stuff's going to happen. And the point you're making is part of that reactivity, part of why men and boys are receding from culture, part of why they are isolating and are lonely. is that there is so much overreaction to everything they do. Because you think about, think about all the cancellations and all the canceling of words like that. What we are doing, what the culture is doing is canceling, you know, it's 99% men, it's 99% males. 'Cause males have a sense of humor. Males are constantly one-upping. Males are constantly labeling. And usually it's in fun and sometimes it's not, but usually it's in fun. And they're, you know, all of that, all that gets canceled.

What gives you hope when you look at the next generation?

Um, what gives me hope? You know, what gives me hope is they're the next generation. And I think evolution is really strong. I think the power of— people could say God, that's fine with me. Or we could say evolution, whatever it is, it's really strong. And I do think that we are starting as a culture, we're starting to understand how we are letting our boys down, how we're not really helping them. I think the culture is starting to go, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, let's come back to these boys and help them. And I think that that's a strength of evolution. So, I have hope. I think things are going to get better. I do think though that AI and tech, if anything, is going to impede it. It's going to be boys and men being so far steeped into AI and tech that, like you said earlier about robots, that they will leave relationship, that they will not be in relationship. If that happens, then I don't have a lot of hope.

But I know some guys that as soon as an AI girl looks real and she feels real, okay, they'll never speak to another woman as long as they live.

Yeah, that's dangerous.

To me, what happens if you're approaching 60?

I'm just— What do you mean? Well, I'm 68. I, I can, I can answer that. Well, yeah.

All right. You married?

I, I am. My wife passed away, um, from pancreatic cancer. We were 40 years. So, um, she passed away a couple years ago. Yeah.

And you still say you're married. That's the most beautiful thing ever.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, we were incredibly close. I mean, obviously 40 years, and, um, and then it was very sudden. Pancreatic cancer. It— when she was diagnosed, she was dead 6 weeks later. It was just a, a total decimation.

How are the kids?

Uh, they're, you know, they're fine. They're having children. I mean, they're— we all, when we get together, we still raise a glass in her honor, and, and, you know, they think of her And I think of her. So, yeah.

Who do you go to now when something great happens? Who do you share it with first?

With my kids and my friends. I have a big network of friends. We've been together, like my men's group, we've been together 38 years, you know. So, I do have others. I have my kids, I have grandkids. So, that's where I go. I haven't established any new relationship. I'm really not looking right now. If it happens, it happens. But I'm— I really have, you know, a pretty significant network. I work, I have my coworkers, you know, so I, I have places to go. It's not like Gail, but I do have places to go. Yeah. Okay.

Is there anything else you want to tell our viewers? Is there anything that we left unsaid, anything that you want to touch on?

I guess what I would say is that is what I have learned, what our team has learned is training like gurianinstitute.com. You go there, there we can retrain ourselves to be boy-friendly. We can, we can retrain ourselves to have education that works for boys. Like it happens all the time. So, Like, don't, don't feel defeated. You can see a son who's in trouble. Don't feel defeated. You know, get the resources, retrain yourself, you know, to do the best you can. It's available. It exists. We're not alone.

Give young men today dating advice because they're scared to take the first step.

I mean, I do do this. What I say to them, and they resist, but what I say to them is, Go do it even though you think you might get in trouble. Go do it, but just do it verbally. Like, so just ask the question, you know, will you— I would like to talk to you. Will you talk to me? I would like to take a walk with you. Girls are— I'm going to assume heterosexual relationship here. Girls are— they like to talk. They— if they have any interest at all in this guy, They'll, they'll be actually honored that he says, let's take— can we take a walk and talk?

That's not the line. That's not like— you don't— a guy doesn't walk up to a girl and say, I want to talk to you. Would you like to talk? Okay, it's like, that's not what they do. How would they— guys don't know how to approach women anymore. They don't know how.

That's how in our present era. That's how to do it in our present era. Because you can't go up and just kiss a girl, and you can't touch her now, and you can't, you know. So that's how to do it now.

But you can roll up and start talking to her without asking her if you can talk to her. You ask her if you can kiss her. You don't ask her if you can talk to her.

Oh no, that's fine. I mean, you just asked me what advice would I give. That's fine. They could try that, and that's going to work in some cases. I'm just saying that this can work well because One, the girl really wants to talk. And 2, it disarms, right? So now she's not having to repel, right? She's able to say yes. And then they take a walk and talk. And it's already working with what's inside her, which is verbal. She's going to tend to be more verbal than he is. But luckily, luckily, the thing that guys tend to want to talk about is themselves, right? What they know, what they know. So, um, what they care about— football or whatever it is. Um, and if they can talk, then an interaction starts to happen, right? Because she starts to respond, and then she asks a question about something other than, you know, what he started to want to talk about, which was himself. Uh, she might ask about his family, she might ask about his siblings, you know. And anyway, then they're in an interaction. And because to date, this first step has to be, how do we interact?

We got to somehow interact. And so in this era, I think actually it's a good idea to try to tap into the verbals that she more naturally wants.

It just— one thing that I learned just recently, and you would think that I would have known this, but it just isn't the world I live in. You know, I'm not a big dater, but I did— I went on a date with someone 4 months ago. And I thought it went great. Okay. And she did too. But the next day, to her credit, she said, you know, I just want you to know that we spent 3 hours together or about 3 hours together. And you didn't ask me anything about me. And without missing a beat, completely true. I told her, I said, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I was just nervous.

Right.

And it all went away. And then I made the decision. And now that, you know, I've been on another couple dates since, I just want to ask them questions about them and get them talking. Okay.

Right. And that's what'll happen.

Have an intellectual curiosity. Which I never did, right? It's like I'm there trying to show you I'm good, right? Instead of let's see if this fits. And you know, the kids today, they're really, they have integrity. They don't lie. They're not afraid. Okay. They'll tell you, um, yeah, uh, I can sleep over tonight. but tomorrow I'm going to be with such and such. And you're like, really? Like, for our age, we're like, that doesn't work. But these kids today, a lot of these kids today have both boyfriends and girlfriends or multiple, uh, partners, and they've got integrity about it. Like, in our day, we'd be lying about it because we'd be afraid To tell the truth. Here they actually honor it. And if you can deal with it, you get to hang. And if not, you don't.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's, that's really cool, isn't it?

Well said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, I like, I like the verbal interaction because I think it creates the relationship and then, and then a guy learns pretty quickly that he's going to have to ask questions too. Because he does this, and the first or second time, whenever it gets to his brain, he goes, oh, uh, actually that date didn't continue because I just talked about myself for 2 hours. So then he, he learns experientially, okay, the next time I need to ask questions. And then when do I ask those questions? And, you know, all that. He learns experientially. And I think that's how guys learn. So I think that it's important for them to be in it. In the conversation.

Okay, well then I'm really slow because it took me till 4 months ago to learn that. Okay, because I would go in completely just, just unaware, winging it. And that's not the way you walk into a date. The way you walk into a date is the way you approach, approach business, right? You have a strategy and you You don't go in there, uh, unprepared. That's not saying that this is a business call. It's saying that if you don't go in with intention, okay, then you can't, you know, uh, uh, expect the result you want, right?

It's just luck, right? Yep.

Right?

Yep.

All right, good. We helped, we helped a bunch of kids. I don't think we helped them stay off drugs, but we helped them get dates, and that's good. Right, which will, which, by the way, hopefully will keep them off drugs.

There you go. Love it.

Because they've got the connection.

Love it.

All right. How can people find you, doctor?

Go to gurianinstitute.com. G-U-R-I-A-N, gurianinstitute.com. That's a great way. That's all our programs, especially for schools. Of course, people can go to michaelgurian.com. It's my name. And then Wonder of Parenting podcast. But I think the mothership is gurianinstitute.com. That's where the— where a lot of work is being done.

Listen, you've been a blessing to the audience, to me, and to everyone you touch in your world. You are a real man, okay, with substance. And I'm grateful that you came in today.

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