Do You Wonder about Boys?

I wonder about boys. I've wondered about them about them just about as long as I can remember, as a matter of fact - and then I had one.

My son's nearly four now, and I'll admit up front, his gender absolutely is NOT the root of all of my parenting puzzlements.

In spite of the fact I just finished reading Michael Gurians's The Wonder of Boys, I'm no expert now. But I am a little um, do I dare say, wiser?

Like Gurian's The Wonder of Girls, Boys is written in easy-to-digest terms while the book presents plenty of data.

One of the reasons I like the book (and Gurian's style in general) is that Boys does NOT go down the "men-are-from-Mars" road. Instead, the author has skillfully selected a few choice phrases that are in the general vernacular while neither talking down to or over the heads of the "typical" reader. Smart guy, that Gurian.

Speaking of smart, Gurian spends practically no time discussing IQ test or how-to-handle-gifted-children, and does not head into any lengthy discussions of "lost" boys.

That said, I especially enjoyed Gurian's coverage of "The Way Boys Feel: Feelings and the Brain," where he describes eight common ways boys process their feelings and emotion. Yes, one of them is "going into the cave." Several of them seem quite closely related, I'll admit - the action-release method and the physical-expression method, for example - still, I nit pick.

As in The Wonder of Girls, Gurian again addresses most of his information to mothers. (Sorry, dads.) There is, I'm glad to report, no talk of the "artful" mother in Boys.

Overall, I'm glad I read the book, and I may pick it up to re-read in the future. While I do NOT feel the book is a handbook or reference to keep on my own shelf, Gurian's obvious knowledge and presentation style are a nice combination, and too rare, in my opinion, in the overcrowded parenting/pop psychology market.

Two thumbs up.