7-10 year old boys are the most neglected children

[Sunnytimesarecoming]

I work in children's safeguarding and I see it all the time. Boys at this awkward ages are often neglected, abused and forgotten. They're past the age of being mummy's little cherub or daddy's little soldier. They're less likely to be outgoing or chatty. They're less likely to be fully embraced by step parents.

I see them at school and it feels like for many of them, the school system just doesn't fit their interests or learning style.
Some almost need that rough play almost hourly. Some just feel pushed towards being men when they're not ready to, or don't know what that means.
I really feel to tackle all the shit related to toxic masculinity we need to do some sort of intensive work with this age group. It's when many young boys start displaying anti female, aggressive type behaviours. Even ones from single parent, all female households like mine.
But what would that look like?

I really do not think this is true,
As someone who grew up in a very poor area what I saw was very young boys being indulged far more than very young girls. The boys will be boys attitude. These boys already start with significant disadvantage and this attitude, that I still see, does boys no favours. Because once they get beyond the very cute 5 and 6 year olds outsiders are no longer happy to put up with poor behaviour. And the boys feel the impact of that disapproval.

There is an issue with school for less academic children and jobs for those who struggle with literacy and numeracy, but that affects girls and women as well. The difference is a lot of those women end up doing jobs like cleaners that many men will not even consider.

Poor children in general are failed by education system.

Iv 3 boys and I wish there was a middle school system as non of them were ready emotionally for high school at end of primary. It would have benefitted them to stay on a more nurturing setting for another year or two, letting them be kids a bit longer, playing with toys

I'm strongly academic

I work best if exercised every day
When I was small it was walk to school and run around the playground until let in - and I pretty much still do that every morning at my grand age

The two - physical and mental exercise should not be incompatible

It's not about being everything to everyone, it's about responding to your clientèle & recognising that we don't live in a society anymore where kids who don't do well at school can find manual jobs in industry. Some do, but many flounder.

I have 3 boys- one at university, one in 6th year, & a pre-teen- and the more I'm on this Earth the more it breaks my heart that if they'd been born to other parents, where I work their chances in life would likely be incredibly different.

I also found at this age of 7-10 year old boys, some mothers who have the boys will be boys attitude still see them almost like tiny children who can do no wrong. I was accused of picking on an 8 year old boy who had a history of bullying, because she could not believe he would do anything wrong.
There are really lovely boys of this age that anyone who does not dislike children really take to.
I think it is the conventionally unattractive non academic girls of this age that really get ignored.

I think the whole narrative around boys and men has to change. We've all seen it on here, the bias against men, NAMALT is a bloody word, men are so often tarred with the one brush. And adverts often have the hapless helpless man doing something stupid and being a figure to mock.

As a mum of boys i hate it. Equality seems to mean its now acceptable to portray men as stupid and no one seems to question it.

@midgetastic I agree. I always took the philosophy with my children that they were like puppies, they needed to run around crazy every day. Most children do not have enough just run around time and that impacts their concentration and ability to take part in school.

Many parents do not discipline their boys.

We have a year of 25 with two boys who are absolute nightmares. At every party, they are fighting and just being rude and difficult... Neither parent steps in and deals with the behaviour. They constantly say, "Oh there're young.... blah blah blah". But soon, these 6 year olds won't have any friends, and will not be in our school much longer, and will most likely be a mainstreams schools problem. The parents are taking no responsibility to raise their sons. You simply do not see this behaviour in the girls in the class.

I'm the mother and now grandmother of girls, not a teacher etc and so have no direct experience of these issues.

Wasn't the Scouts founded to provide boys with exactly this male influence? Men and boys going off camping and doing whatever they did. But now, as I understand it, men have substantially withdrawn from being Scout leaders and it's now mainly women in these roles. Boys having female influence is great & needed, of course, and I don't want to dismiss the women who take on these roles, but boys need men. They need good, decent men as role models.

I think research shows that both boys and girls have better outcomes if they have a consistent adult male in their lives (I'm assuming here that he's a good man and not in & out of prison etc).

So I'd ask how can we encourage more men to be positively involved with boys? Have they been put off by the paedophile sports coach/scout leader image? What can be done?

I really love this age group - a really fun and interesting ages, girls and boys, but they still want to spend time with you!

Now you mention it, I do think schools probably struggle a bit with the approach.

And boys are too young at this age to see themselves as fundamentally different to the girls, in the way some people expect.

I'd ban the phrase 'boys will be boys' from any school I ran. It's just an excuse for bad behaviour which, ultimately, does boys no favours at all.

@Rightsraptor yes it was always men who ran scouts, women used to not be allowed. But men now will not step up and do these activities.

I'm teach in the East End of Glasgow, so similar but different, I imagine. I don't have any specific literature, it's just my/ colleagues' observations over all these years. Unfortunately the solution really is just massive funding: more specialist teachers; more resources, lower class sizes; social workers in school; more social workers; well-paid, highly qualified nursery staff; more community nurses/ health visitors to focus on 0-5; funded community centres for activities for 0-5, 5-11, 12-14 and 15+; a living wage; funding to get people back to meaningful work; accessible apprenticeships; Internet education...my list could go on.

I'm passionate about young people, & I love my job, but I do see so many being failed.

@ssd , we portray men as stupid, as you only need to come on here to hear how many men are feckless and terrible husbands, who expect the world and give nothing of substance. Or just leave single mums with their children and pay little to no child support and see their children twice a month... We have pandered to boys for far too long, and now they are single, uneducated and failing men.

We have started to raise girls to not put up with the shit that boys were able to get away with for so long. But we haven't raised our boys to match this.

Parents need to start taking responsibility for how they raise their sons.

Conversely, our local Scout group has a male lead & many young, male assistants. All 3 of my boys have been through Beavers/ Cubs/ Scouts- last one in Scouts at the moment- and I am a huge fan of what they do.

My 2 eldest have excellent role models at rugby, they've played since they were very young, and my youngest at karate. It was very important to us that they had those (in addition to dad/ uncles- but not everyone has those).

All children need strong, male role-models, but particularly boys from the age of around 7. Steve Biddulph's highly acclaimed book 'Raising Boys' had a profound effect on me. It details why boys need good, male role models. My sister gave it to me when my eldest was born, it has been updated constantly & is still a best-seller. He also wrote 'Raising Girls', which is excellent too. I've bought these as gifts regularly over the years.

They aren’t clients. That’s what I mean. We’ve lost sight of what education is.
There should definitely be more practical courses available (especially post 16) but if the education system were more focussed on its actual job things would be better for everyone.

No. But saying schools are wrong for prioritising academic learning over sport is too far the other way.

@Sunnytimesarecoming
Do you not feel girl's experience this too. There is often more of a pressure on girls to conform, not make a fuss. Until they are old enough to by sexualised by society obviously.

It's common knowledge boys are more likely to go onto have careers/achieve a higher earning potential. And that girls are often sidelined in sport.

Females are more likely to be dismissed when they have health conditions. Unlikely to be taken seriously when they are sexually assaulted .

I'm not saying it's not correct but I think there's a lot of issues with how girls and boys can be treated in childhood and how they treat each other.

Who still has higher earnings? Dominates management? Which sex is the standard for medical research? Which sex is the standard for design and safety in, for eg, cars?
There are definitely things we are doing wrong in the treatment of (and portrayal of) both sexes, but society is still overwhelmingly geared to men.

Based on my family I thought it was low expectations and very late interventions in schools and given current condition of state education only likely to get worse.

DH was obviously bright - still encountered low expectation but could blow past them.

My brother and I both had SEN - it was somehow more acceptable that I could plod along before excelling later - where as he was lumped in with early naughty crowd and did sort of give up. Niece never excelled but still manage to avoid the poorly behave crowd a secondary and avoid being labeled a problem child herself. So I do think there's a cultural labelling issue there as well.

DS really struggled - summer born - we stepped in at home with resources and time to support. The number of times we were told it would just magically click with summer born boys - who worse affected that summer born girls and I say that having both - what I noticed was it clicked with parents who put support in outside school - though how that was done was varied. I wonder if this is why some minority communities have sons that do well as well - as they value education so put time and resources in outside school.

So I think white working class boys that don't immediate excel unlike other groups don't get support outside school (like middle class boys tend to).

So I think it explain why working class boys in single parent families get worst hit - it's a resource issue time and money is more scare - often in worse state schools anyway and then family background attitude to education is not picking up the slack if there are problems.

I largely agree with this. It is absolutely true that poor white boys are the ones who are struggling the most academically, but I think it's the result of a much more complex series of things including this attitude of "boys will be boys" that then permeates all the way through with lower expectations for the boys and so on.

Right from infant school, there's this expectation for example that the girls will be responsible to help mitigate the boys' behaviour and it is INFURIATING. It's not helpful for the girls and frankly, it's not helpful for the boys either.

Girls are at significantly at more risk for sexual abuse crimes than boys in abusive homes.
I really don’t think either sex has it any easier and would actually argue girls have it worse to some degree.
Boys have a lot less pressing on them in society whilst growing up whilst girls are pressured to look a certain way, be a certain weight , behave a certain way etc.

Less pressure

As a black woman/sister to three black boys and having grown up very poor I agree. My siblings and I all worker extremely hard, felt othered and a need to do well. Also pushed by cultural expectations.

Society in general still favours men imo.