Question Series | Lost Leaders

Welcome to The Question Series, where we give you a Sweethearts & Heroes perspective from questions and discussions we have with real people. Have a question of your own? Send it our way—you might just see it featured in a future post!

Thank you for your work with us at [our school]… I think what you do is at the heart of good education. For several years I have made the circle an integral part of how I run a classroom. But I am lucky because I teach Spanish and it is a natural fit.

I would like some advice on next steps with this specific situation. I understand that what you were doing was offering perspectives, healing the damage, and bringing the class back together. My concerns stem from the history of the student… For much of his education the student was accompanied by a one-on-one because of his antisocial behavior. He has made tremendous strides and the teachers and the students are proud of him. But what he did is part of a pattern and the way he gets away with it is to cajole and threaten friends who snitch on him. This incident crossed the line for his friends so they snitched on him. But his lesser transgressions are a daily occurrence.

The first thing we did on Thursday was to process in circle in our classes. The students shared this history with me. They also asked for strategies to help stand up for themselves and get help from the teachers if he starts again.

What do you advise we do to empower the students to create and keep a safe environment?

Again, thank you for your help.

We can’t thank you enough for reaching out. We talk about this all the time, but there is a lot to unpack here.

Let’s Start with Play

When it comes to the importance of early childhood play, most researchers believe that children must be socialized by the age of about five or six (5-6), or they will have a very difficult time in life. Children socialize each other. Period.

Check out our article that discusses the different ways in which children learn social norms.

In our society today, we have eliminated an enormous amount of free play in children. The age of independence for a human mammal begins around the ages of four and five (4-5) when they leave their mothers and wander off to pair up with children within two to four years of their age.

Older children monitor safety, but dangerous or ‘risky’ play is crucial to development. This is the original usage of scaffolding; older children use scaffolding behaviors for younger children. This comes from Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development.

It’s also extremely important for older children to be compassionate towards younger children in age-mixed play. This is also one way younger children learn to alleviate suffering and difficulty in others, building the neurological structure by watching and modeling behavior (something we know from studying Macaque monkeys and discovering mirror neurons).

There is also great research on aggression in play and how it is socialized out of (or should I say ‘tempered in’) individuals with high aggression markers in their personality. Dominant rats must let fewer dominant rats win at least 30% of the time, or the less dominant rats will terminate engagement; losing all the time doesn’t feel good. If the aggressive rat doesn’t yield, no one will be left to play with.

Let’s Shift to Aggression

If this student has had one-on-one aid because of his antisocial behavior, he probably has a high propensity for aggression (even if it’s not physical). Most people use the word ‘antisocial’ incorrectly; it truly, according to the DSM, means someone who is averse to or hostile towards society. Once a child exits very formative years of socialization by peers, making that correction is challenging but certainly not impossible. We see this in young people being enlisted in the military.

I believe Fyodor Dostoevsky (the Russian writer who wrote Crime and Punishment) spent his early life having the ‘rebel’ in his soul suppressed. He was a young man off the rails who was spared death through a crazy set of events and ended up in a Gulag camp. Many years of hard labor channeled his aggressive characteristics.

It’s humorous to think of applying this method to any measure of the same degree, but I hope you understand my point: rebelling and being refined through the fire (whatever that means) is just what some young people need.

In our modern society, aggression is typically not viewed positively. However, if used correctly, aggression has tremendous utility; it's the old sheepdog analogy. The world needs sheepdogs, or the wolves will control society. I believe this student does have the proclivity for good; my guess is that he just does not have that model.

Check out this little clip I saw this morning on a little kid modeling behavior.

It’s Part of the Program

I'd recommend John Medina's great book Attack of the Teenage Brain if you have some free time. There are great bits about this magical program that automatically runs in every young person’s brain. It’s unstoppable. They become very behaviorally prickly, challenging to deal with and seek novel sensations. This program is designed to drive them out of their pack to find a new pack, as it’s not advantageous to reproduce with your pack at home.

Of course, I might also venture to say his home has other challenges. I don’t know this student’s history with men, but my guess is it’s been rough, or he does not have that in his life like so many. The only role models young people have are often driven by what they watch online. Young people inherently will set very unhealthy social norms amongst their peers; this is just the jockeying for position on that hierarchy to see where they fit in and get attention, and we have dysregulated this natural system in our world today.

The male brain, in particular, is primarily driven by dopaminergic mediation; it is a master neural regulator and a significant driving factor in the male brain. It pushes them towards seeking agency. It’s also why video games have become a proxy for many of their lives. Agency is an individual’s capacity to have/develop/discover their power and resources to fulfill their potential.

Young men search continuously for agency. If you compare that with young women, primarily driven by oxytocin (another master neural regulator), the female brain and physiology are more connection-based. This neurophysiological gift is to think and respond for the collective, being connected, understanding emotion, compassion, and empathy. Women also search for agency, and young men need floods of oxytocin, but it is gained differently.

My point is that this student is searching for his power and using his resources to discover his potential. Add to this the fact that he is entering a phase where he should be getting ready to ‘kill his father.’ That sounds horrible, but it’s a metaphor. Many young men at this age get in their father’s face and assert their dominance. Again, this is entirely natural and simply their programming.

So, What to Do?

I’m sure you appreciate all of this, but I’m not really answering your question.

I have many suggestions for the other students, but I don’t think that is the direction of value here. As adults, we can tell them to be patient with him and use some other strategies to understand but not condone. However, there is a good chance they will continue to ostracize him, and he will continue to spiral into the abyss and vortex of domination and isolation.

Harry Harlow’s work on attachment, isolation, and socialization of primates has fascinated me for years. His research, though controversial, revealed profound insights into the effects of isolation and the power of connection. While much of his work revolved around understanding and even attempting to “fix” depression, his most striking discovery was the role of young monkeys in rehabilitating isolates.

Harlow’s experiments showed that monkeys raised in extreme isolation became socially crippled, unable to reintegrate with their peers. However, when introduced to much younger monkeys—essentially toddlers—the isolated monkeys began to engage. The younger monkeys, non-threatening and persistent, coaxed the isolates into, wouldn’t you know it, play and socialization, breaking through barriers that nothing else seemed to touch.

I believe this principle has real-world applications, and I’ve witnessed it firsthand.

Channel the Gatekeepers

Here is just one example:

Years ago, I was asked to work with 5th and 6th graders at a small school. When I entered the room, the students were already seated in a circle, with their teacher in the back corner. As I stepped inside, a young boy lifted one cheek and let out a loud fart. My eyes shot to the teacher, who nearly leaped out of her chair.

With a subtle gesture, I asked for her to hold back, and she politely obliged me.

I turned and asked the boy, “Woah. Can you do that on command?”

He froze, unsure how to respond.

That moment set the tone for the day. I spent the entire time working with this group of 10 or 12 students. I learned that this boy was being raised by his grandmother and had no relationship with his father.

Despite his disruptive tendencies, there was something more to him.

By the end of the day, I had these older students working with 1st graders. I placed the boy in a small group and observed from a distance. From the bleachers, I noticed the teacher watching him closely. Tears streamed down her face. When I walked over, she turned to me and said, “I have no idea who that young man is.”

She watched him manage a group of rowdy little boys—anticipating their tricks, redirecting their energy, and keeping them engaged. He wasn’t the troublemaker they had labeled him; he was a natural leader.

The system had been handling him all wrong, trying to make him passive and submissive when, in reality, he was a gatekeeper.

I was just in a school this year where I met an 11th grader whose father was murdered when he was thirteen (13). When I met him, he was literally being reprimanded by an administrator for his ‘disruptive’ disagreement with the PE teacher. He spoke his mind with little respect for the authority figure. Again, this can be totally natural. John Medina has the answer to that.

I stepped in and had a great conversation with him because I saw his leadership and aggressive personality — the exact same that I had growing up; the difference was I had a great father.

As I spent some of the day with this junior, having him follow me through the halls and sit in Circles, I saw a young man most of the students respected. Not out of fear but out of leadership (albeit slightly misguided). I watched most of the 7th and 8th-grade young men knuckle up with him, and I watched the stars twinkle in their eyes whenever he acknowledged their presence.

This young man is the gatekeeper.

The gatekeepers are the ones that set the adaptive healthy and unhealthy social norms, the ones that many of the students in the school admire and look up to. It is an interesting combination of some ancient neurological circuitry — the prestige and conformity biases. This young man was just not leading in the most positive way in the incident with the gym teacher.

But I hooked him. He was starstruck with me and forced me to take his number and every connection to his social media. He was doing with me, a former UFC competitor, what the younger students were doing with him. I told him exactly what I thought: he could use his powers for good or evil, but it was his choice.

This is precisely what I did with the young man in your letter before the Circle began. I looked him in the eyes and told him I was not there to make him feel stupid. I told him about some incredibly stupid things I did as an 8th-grader.

As he broke into laughter, and the tears nearly instantly evaporated, I told him that the only thing he must be able to do is to stand in front of the mirror by himself and know that he had screwed up. I told him this is how we learn, by screwing up, by getting in trouble, and by humbling ourselves.

I told him he was a gatekeeper and could use his powers for good or evil.

Every person, and especially every young man, has this propensity at some level.

I believe Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “The battle between good and evil runs through the center of every man's heart.” But again, this lesson is not going to fix him.

Harlow’s monkeys taught us that sometimes, the key to breaking isolation isn’t force or discipline but the right kind of social influence—persistent, playful, and unthreatening. Maybe, just maybe, that applies to humans, too.

Ultimately, he needs a strong role model, but it’s very difficult in today’s world, and his neurological construction is so far along. I know you know this, but now it’s becoming even more difficult as he is hitting that program that is supposed to have him defying older men (the father). They need figures in their lives that they cannot dominate or fool. People who can show them their ability to lead and receive validation from their peers they likely didn’t get or are not getting.

The question is, who is willing to commit to this young man?

Don’t forget that every commitment requires sacrifice.