The role of frustration in the halted lives of our young men

How did we get here? Young men are falling behind at alarming rates, with a simultaneous attraction to the mantle of toxic masculinity.  While much has been written, not enough attention has been paid to the internal psychological and developmental histories of these boys. We are compelled to take a closer look at some of the parenting practices contributing to these difficulties, as well as some solutions and strategies.

One common characteristic that I see in these “stuck” young men is an inability to tolerate frustration. I will illustrate this with a past patient, whose identity is concealed.

Jared, age 21, has been an enigma to his parents. They feel they have given him everything they thought he would need for success. They provided him with private school education, opportunities for extracurricular activities, regular family trips together, and felt he received “plenty of love and attention”. Yet, he has failed out of college twice. He didn’t turn in assignments on time, and once the coursework became more difficult, he seemed to stop trying. Falling into partying in his fraternity, he failed to even notify his parents that he had basically stopped going to class altogether.

At the same time, opportunities were presented to speak with a therapist, as well as to consult with a psychiatrist. It seemed like he never “really got any traction with it” and according to him, “therapy doesn’t work for me”.

After finally having had enough, Jared‘s parents brought him home to live. They agreed that he would find a job and have the responsibility of working full-time until he could “get his act together”.

Yet, the most that Jared seemed able to do was occasional shifts at DoorDash. He felt like doing other basic jobs was “below him”.

Jared‘s case is similar to one that I have been talking about frequently. Young men who are stuck in adolescence and stuck at home.

In talking with Jared and his parents over time, it became clear that Jared had no ability to tolerate frustration. He quickly gave up when the work became difficult for him. He often concluded “I just suck at math” or “this is just boring”.

It didn’t take me long to see the pattern. Jared could not tolerate frustration. In fact, he had never developed this skill even as a kid. Frustration made him feel very anxious. He felt the anxiety as stress in his body. He became unable to calm himself while in this state, and his reactions were quite intense.

Even as a young boy, his parents admitted that it was very hard for them to see him struggling. So, they would often end up doing things for him, they admitted. For his part, Jared would then feel momentarily relieved.  But importantly, this also carried some element of buried shame when he gave up on things or complained loudly enough to have them taken off his hands. He could not sit with the feeling of something being hard, having to struggle, let alone failing. This translated into a lack of a feeling of capability that extended into many areas of his life.

Teaching frustration tolerance to kids is a critical part of emotional development and a critical part of parenting our young men. When our boys begin to really struggle with something, it is critical that they work through and develop the capacity to live with the discomfort. This area between not knowing something and learning how to master it is a “learning space” as Dr. Becky Kennedy describes it. It is the working through problems and difficulties in a painstaking step-by-step way that mastery becomes possible.

We can see as adults the benefits of doing so in a program such as Elon Musk SpaceX. Recently, a massive rocket simply blew up upon launch as many scores of others have done. The launch crew broke into applause. They have learned to accept and expect failure. Failure means getting back to work, but it also provides an opportunity to learn.

It is in this learning space that our brains secrete adrenaline and noradrenaline. It is in the space that neuroplasticity can occur. This is how our brain changes. In feeling like we are up against something insurmountable, but finding ways to conquer it, we literally begin to induce brain changes. If we do not do this or develope a capacity to do so, our brains simply won’t change and adapt. We cannot master anything.

As a result, kids can end up like Jared. Not only does he lack the capacity to tolerate frustration, but he is now convinced that he really is not any good at anything. Yet it’s like picking up a difficult sport for the first time such as golf, or starting to learn piano. We all suck. We don’t have the skills because we haven’t developed any of them. We haven’t worked through them.

As a parent to a young child, there are several actionable steps that can be taken. I’ve used these with all of my kids as a parent, but have talked about the development of a resilient self with many parents in my office.

Some steps involve the following:

  1. Normalize the stress feelings. Find age-appropriate ways to talk about frustration as a normal feeling. Reframe it from a place of shame into a place of challenge.
  2. Teach kids how to use a body and brain map to become self-aware of the signaling they feel when they begin to stress during frustrating times. Practice breathing through it and relax into it before returning to the work.
  3. Break the task into small steps while staying calm.
  4. Model calmness and emotional regulation for your kids as you are trying difficult things. For example, pick up a new hobby, sport, task for yourself and model what it’s like to learn how to do something from scratch.
  5. Identify the emotional reactions and open up avenues of communication for your son (or daughter) to talk about the struggles.
  6. Intervene by brainstorming and asking questions instead of giving answers or doing something for them that is possible for them to do themselves.
  7. Boundary setting with expectations: Don’t allow escape hatches. If parents work as hard as they can at their jobs, dealing with boredom, frustration, and normal stress, kids are expected to work as hard as they can. They don’t need to be perfect. They do, however need to continue to always try their best.

While in school, school is their job. If, like Jared, they are no longer in school, they must be held to a standard of work and expectation for better performance.

Bringing together the need to develop emotional regulation while working as hard as we can, builds resilience and new confidence.