Why your son might be struggling to stay afloat—and how you can fix it

In July, US academic and author Andrew Reiner visited New Zealand to talk at six boys’ schools. Reiner, author of 2020′s Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency, now writes about his visit, and offers solutions to the problems boys face, academically and beyond.

Everything hinged on a few honest words, creepy-looking white masks and getting hundreds of boys to go along with both. Let’s just say I had my work cut out for me.

I flew from the US to take part in a speaking tour of six boys’ schools in Christchurch, Auckland and Tauranga. The talks were the easy part. The harder part? Facilitating 15 workshops for hundreds of boys from Year 7 to 13.

My assignment was one I could easily fail: Getting boys to write on these masks, or on pieces of paper, words they rarely, if ever, uttered aloud. Most New Zealand boys — actually, boys everywhere — believe these words should never see the light of day.

Before I could get the boys to even consider thinkingabout these verboten words, I had to prime the pump. First, I walked them through a presentation about courage: the most celebrated forms of it (many of which require risking physical injury) and suggested that perhaps there were other forms of courage they had never considered.

Next, I presented clips from The Mask You Live In. This riveting documentary grabs viewers by the collar and helps them get inside the heads and hearts of boys and men who have struggled beneath the yoke of the old-school masculinity messages forced upon them when they were young and vulnerable.

These sound-bite stories left many younger boys’ mouths agape and it quelled some, not all, of the laughter and talking from older boys. Another part of the movie sucked the remaining resistance out of the rooms: a scene featuring a teacher and boy advocate, Ashanti Branch, sitting in a circle with five or six male students who looked to be 15 or 16 years old. Branch held up a piece of paper.

On the front of it, he asked each boy to write words that described the “face” they showed the world. On the back, he asked them to write words that they didn’t feel “safe” showing the world – the words they believe should never see the light of day.