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Why do so many boys struggle in elementary school—and why does it often start so early? In this episode, Suzy Shaw explores the academic, behavioral, and developmental challenges many boys face in the early school years, from kindergarten frustration to discipline referrals and reading resistance, with author Jennifer L. W. Fink.
This conversation offers practical strategies for moms who want to better understand, support, and advocate for their sons. From confidence-building and school communication to creative reading solutions and recognizing developmental differences, this episode is packed with insight and encouragement for moms raising boys who may feel misunderstood in traditional classrooms.
Jennifer L. W. Fink is a mom of four sons, author of two books about raising boys, and a freelance journalist with more than 20 years of experience researching boys’ development, behavior, and education. Through Building Boys, Jennifer helps parents better understand the unique challenges boys face in a world that often misunderstands them.
Drawing from both personal and professional experience—as a married mom, divorced and co-parenting mom, homeschool parent, and public school advocate—Jennifer offers research-based insight and practical strategies to help parents support boys with greater confidence and understanding. She is also the co-host of the ON BOYS parenting podcast.
The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Consult with a qualified professional for specific guidance.
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I have sat in a back-to-school night the first week of school with my husband and listened to our son’s third-grade teacher tell us, “Your kids are not going to have a good year.” As we looked at each other, our hearts sank, and she was right. It was a horrible year for Exuberance, and a lot of kids in the class, primarily the boys. And that wasn’t our first issue in elementary school. His older brother, Ernest, had his challenges, too. But the fact that she said it out loud to a room full of parents was kind of astonishing. And it turns out this isn’t just one classroom or one teacher. In many schools, boys make up the majority of behavior-related calls home and discipline referrals, and it often starts as early as kindergarten and first grade. So if your son is struggling or already says he hates school, you are not alone.
Today I’m talking with Jennifer Fink, author of Building Boys, Raising Great Guys in a World That Misunderstands Males, and the First Time Moms Guide to Raising Boys, Practical Advice for Your Son’s Formative Years. She’s also a nurse, a writer, and a mom of four boys who has navigated these challenges firsthand, including making the decision to homeschool her own boys for several years. We’re going to talk about what’s really happening in those early elementary years, and why so many boys struggle sooner than we expect, and how to positively advocate for your son.
Jenny, welcome.
Jennifer Fink: Thanks so much for having me talk about this today, Suzy.
Suzy: I appreciate you being here, and also for sending me your books. This is the Building Boys, and another one for first-time moms. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your inspirations to write the books.
Jennifer Fink: My inspiration was very similar to yours. I had boys. And by the time I had two boys, a formative moment in hindsight, there was a point where both boys, they were lying on the floor, sprawled the way kids sprawl in front of the TV, watching, I think it was Sesame Street or something. Their dad was home. I was home. We were sitting on the couch. We were probably having our own adult conversation. And for no apparent reason that I could tell, the boys just randomly got up and started running and jumping up and down the couches, chasing each other, jumping, tackling. And I’m looking at them like, “I don’t understand this. Why? Why?” And their dad’s like, “Yeah, that’s normal.” And that was sort of my beginning. There’s something different here.
Suzy Shaw: Why speak when you could just tackle somebody, right?
Jennifer Fink: Right? There’s something different here. So I started learning more about boys, really, to survive my own life, to have some understanding of what’s going on and coping mechanisms that I could use as I parent my own boys. And as my oldest, then got into school, and we started running into some of these issues that you’ve already mentioned in the beginning. I think that’s when I went a little further down. I learned a little more.
I had already started writing, transitioning from nursing full-time as a career to also writing. And I, at some point, pitched an article about boys and learning in school. And I got to interview people who were already working in the field, learned more, and everything just snowballed and grew from there.
Suzy Shaw: So in those earlier years of elementary school, what was your experience like, and what kind of issues did you have?
Jennifer Fink: We made it until first grade. No, kindergarten. It was kindergarten already. When my oldest son, who, of course, is my first kid to go to school, started saying he hated school. I was not prepared for that in first grade, in kindergarten. I mean, in kindergarten, how do you hate kindergarten? I expected that I would hear that at some point. I think every kid at a certain point says, “I hate school.” I was thinking middle school. I was not thinking kindergarten.
And to be honest, I kind of brushed it off for quite a while. Just the reassurances and the, I hate to say I did this, but this was where, no, you don’t. You don’t have a lot of friends at school. Look at all the fun things you do. It did take me until he was in first grade to really kind of sit down and listen to what he was saying, and then combine that with some of what I was observing. And when I sat down and listened to him, ultimately, he was both bored. He was struggling on the playground. He wanted to play elaborate make-believe games, and some of the other kids just wanted to tackle each other, which is totally fine, except that there was also a school rule against tackling each other. And my kid had a very strong sense of right, wrong, and justice at that point that allowed for no gray spaces. And if you are a boy in kindergarten and first grade, that does not make you a lot of friends at that point in time.
So it was kind of a culmination of all of these things that made me, again, I did research, and I looked kind of long and hard, and I found out, huh, mine’s not the only kid dealing with some of these issues in kindergarten in first grade.
Suzy Shaw: I was really surprised to learn that boys consistently make up the majority of school discipline referrals. So from your research and your experience, how common is that?
Jennifer Fink: So distressingly common. No, I did not experience that with my oldest son. And spoiler alert, although you alluded to it in the beginning, we did ultimately pull him out of what I call school school halfway through first grade and then homeschooled for a number of years.
The next of my children to go from kindergarten through the system was my youngest one. The older ones did those early years at home. He, oh, we ran into this all the time. I got more calls and emails from school about bad things than good things. Thankfully, at this point, I knew that we were not alone.
So statistically speaking, Suzy, this starts even earlier than kindergarten. It starts in preschool. Boys make up approximately half of the kids in preschool in the United States, as you would expect based on demographics. But they make up 80% of the suspensions from preschool. Note that from preschool, the statistics are even more alarming for brown boys.
For so many kids, their first experiences with a school setting are getting in trouble, getting kicked out, which forms this foundation of you don’t belong here. Academically speaking, boys end up lagging behind girls all the way through. Now again, we’re talking broad generalities. We are not talking about every boy, every girl. The best research that I found so far, when boys enter school, kindergarten or first grade, they’re a little behind. And I’m putting air quotes around this because I think we need to look at what our standards are, what we are expecting when people come in. They are a little behind girls in terms of reading. This gap broadens as boys go through school. It broadens.
Boys are more likely to be at the failing end of the class. Girls are more likely to be at the A’s part of the class. Boys are far more likely to be in the special ed programs. They are more likely to be in the school office. And there is even really good research to show that even when boys and girls do the same things behavior-wise, the boy is more likely to get in trouble and or harsher trouble compared to the girl. And on the academic side, girls and boys, even when they do the same work, and they’ve done this in studies where you know you’re blind, who did what work. Teachers will judge the boy’s work when they know it’s a boy, not as good and not give it as high a grade as they would to a girl who did the same work. There is unconscious bias going on here. And that’s important to know. And that’s not at all what you are thinking about when you send your beautiful, innocent, enthusiastic, exuberant child to school for the first time, right?
Suzy Shaw: Right. My oldest, I call Ernest. And in second grade, he was like, I’m done. I’m not going to school anymore. Second grade. And I started to dig into it. And he was not finishing his morning work and was being punished by having to stay in during free play.
Jennifer Fink: That’s such a big, such a big common thing that happens to boys, and it almost never actually helps the problem.
Suzy Shaw: Well, it makes the problem worse because of all the things, you know, getting some energy out. That’s the thing that’s going to help save you. And I did go in and sit and talk with the teacher, and we came up with a solution where she understood that that is not a good solution for him to punish him in that way. And that he can bring the work home, whatever he’s missed, and we’d do it as part of our homework, which was difficult too. But, you know, still better. And your most boys, if you ask them what their favorite classes are in elementary school, they’re going to say gym, lunch, and free play.
Jennifer Fink: Lunch and recess, lunch and recess, lunch and recess. That’s it.
Suzy Shaw: You know, because I don’t want to feel like we are saying poor things about teachers, I want to share a story of Exuberance in second grade. And he, his teacher, had flagged me down and said he’s reporting that he can’t do math because he, the numbers are spinning on him. And so we took him to have his eyes checked, and it turned out he had no issues at all with his eyes, and he did not need glasses. And so I explained that to him on the way home, and he totally fell apart. He insisted that he needed glasses.
Jennifer Fink: This is one of those parenting moments. There are things that we think we are going to have to deal with. You never expect that telling your kid that their eyes are good is going to result in a meltdown.
Suzy Shaw: You know, it was, now I feel like I’m really leaning into the crazy, right? So now I am literally getting him glasses, you know, at one of those very quick glass shops because I can’t give him something without safety glass in it, for Lord’s sake. I mean, his name is Exuberance, right? So we give him the glasses, I send him off to school. I forgot to mention it to the teacher. So I see her, I don’t know, a week later, and she’s like, “Wow, the glasses are great. It’s making such a difference.” And I was like, “Okay, they’re not really glasses. They, he doesn’t really need glasses. He thinks he needs glasses. I think he would prefer to wear a cape.” But without the cape, he’s decided, look smart, be smart, feel smart.
And so, fast forward another couple of weeks and the teacher flags me down and she says, “The glasses are the greatest thing. I’ve ever had in my class because when I see him hold the glasses out and stick them on, I realize I’ve just lost about half the class.” So I back up and teach everything a little bit again. And so that, I mean, that’s a story of a fabulous teacher.
READ THE MATH GLASSES STORY FROM SUZY’S BOOK MOTHERS OF BOYS SURVIVAL GUIDE
Jennifer Fink: And a fabulous parent. And, I mean, you were in this situation where I do not understand what’s happening. I don’t know why it’s happening. There is no playbook for this. You are making it up as you went along, but you were looking at and listening to your son. And when you do the math, pun slightly intended here, when you do the math, if he thinks glasses are going to help, and if we can get him, you know, a cheap-ish pair of glasses. And yeah, of course, you had to figure out how to get safety glass because we’re talking about like a seven- or eight-year-old boy. They’re not known for being careful.
Standing ovation to you for figuring that out. And then you had this continual dialogue with the teacher, right? The teacher was open to that as well. I love everything about that story.
Suzy Shaw: So what did you learn, you know, about advocating and working with the school and the teacher, you know, to make your boys successful?
Jennifer Fink: You know, I just said something that I think is core to all of this. And so many people, moms, parents, educators included, there’s so much we don’t know about boys and about male development. Teachers don’t learn this. I didn’t know it until I had boys and went looking on my own, for instance.
And I think this is key to all of it. Boys and girls develop at different paces. It’s not so much that there are like these inherent differences that boys are good at this and girls are good at that. And you know, the two never shall cross. It’s not so much that. However, biologically speaking, boy babies developmentally are weeks behind where girls babies, where girl babies are when they’re born. And when I’m talking about full-term infants, I’m talking about babies that are born at, you know, that 40-week or whatever mark of pregnancy. Boys are not as mature. They’re hearing their vision, their brains, their coordination, not as mature as girl babies at birth. That difference continues through life. Boys develop more slowly than girls.
So that by the time we have our kids in early elementary school, right? The girls ‘ brains are the part of the brain that handles reading, writing and language is more mature than the boys’ brains, similar to the part of the brain by about a year and a half.
Now, by adulthood, we get to the same place, but also think about all the teenagers that you know; there is a dramatic difference between a 15-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy. And it’s not just immaturity, which we often think of as kind of mental immaturity or stupidity on the part of boys. It’s not, it is biological, it is cognitive. But because we don’t acknowledge that, we don’t teach that, we don’t factor that in.
Now let’s add back… kindergarten, first grade today are very different from the way they were when I went to school. When I went to school, the things that you were learning in first grade are things that now kids are expected to do in kindergarten, sometimes even in preschool. In preschool, they’re asking children to write their names. If your fine motor is such that you’re not great at holding onto a pen, that’s really, really hard for you. So we are continually taking boys and putting them in these circumstances that aren’t a good fit for their abilities. And then they get the message that they’re failing. It’s not that the expectations are wrong; they are failing.
So I paint that as the background. When it comes to advocating for our boys in school and helping them through this, sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you get a teacher that is very open-minded and, yes, understands that taking away recess or free play is harmful to the child and will work with you. And other times, you are working with a system that is not responsive, a system that is static and for reasons that perhaps are even out of the administrator’s control, they can’t change, they won’t change. That’s really, really, really difficult.
Suzy Shaw: I will say that in this other school, after that horrible reaction with the third-grade teacher, I did go in and I talked with the guidance counselor, and we had a very serious conversation about male teachers because the boys had never had, neither one of them had ever had a male teacher, and they had two male teachers in fourth grade. And I’m like, you have got to give him a win. Give him a male teacher. And that changed everything for him, wanting to go to school. I mean, just to be able to have somebody say, ” Wear your favorite football team sweatshirt.” And then they all talked about football for a minute, right? Those little shifts, having a male was really, really powerful, and there just aren’t very many men teaching.
Jennifer Fink: There are fewer male teachers today than there were. The numbers have been declining, and it’s not good. It’s not good for our boys. It’s not good for our girls. Girls need to see male teachers as well. And I don’t think it’s good for our men and women either. I think that, you know, it is good for men to work with and be in contact with children.
Because of my writing, I’ve also written for education. I mean, teaching does not pay what it should. Teaching is not an appreciated position in a lot of places. It should be, but teachers are getting blamed left and right and put in situations, no-win situations, very similar to our children. So unless and until we change those things, yeah, people aren’t going into education that could be great. And that’s really hard. That’s really hard for all of us. If there are male teachers in your school, yes, fantastic. If your son, if your daughter has access to that.
You know, one of the reasons why I wrote my book, Building Boys: Raising Great Guys in a World That Misunderstands Males, is that when you are parenting, you don’t have time for the systems to fix everything. You can advocate for your son. You can do your best to get him into as great an educational environment as possible. But very often it’s not going to be ideal. And you still are tasked with how do I nurture this child in this less-than-ideal environment? And I’m here to tell you, it is 100% possible. Even if school is a struggle for you, little things.
Suzy, you mentioned like, where your favorite football team jersey is at school, right? And you can talk about football. A female teacher could do that too. It may or may not have the same impact. Another thing that happens so often to our boys in school is that they get these messages, both spoken and unspoken, that what they are interested in is not okay at school. Not okay. You cannot swing sticks around on the playground. You cannot tackle each other. You cannot and should not, don’t even try to write a story or draw a picture that has any kind of violence in it because you will likely get in trouble, called to, talk to the teacher, your parent will get called in, and the school counselor may get called in.
How do I know? Oh, because it happened to me. There are stories in my book. I mean, my kid, I got a call from the teacher because he drew a picture of a shark attacking humans. Okay, like that is the plot of “Jaws.” Big worldwide movie. So boys get these subtle messages that the things they are interested in, there’s no space for them at school.
And one of the things I have found that parents can do is make room for and welcome your son’s interest as much as possible. So even if he can’t talk about or read about whatever his interest is, whether it’s like knights and dragons or World War, whatever, which yes, does involve killing people, sadly, or motocross or dance, whatever his thing is, you can still go with your son and get books from the library and read those books and share those books and let him read, write, talk about whatever at home, give him space and time to pursue his interest so that even if school is not necessarily a safe and nurturing place for him, he has a place where he can be all of him. And I think that ultimately makes a difference and then gives our boys the resilience to deal in these situations that are sometimes challenging for them.
Suzy Shaw: I 100% agree. You know, some of the things that I did during that period were to get more involved in school. And even though I was working, I volunteered to read in the school classroom. I would go on field trips. I tried to get to know the teacher. That same guidance counselor, whom I begged to give him a fourth-grade male teacher, which she did, told me that elementary school was just tough for boys and that they begin to catch up in middle school and by high school, you’re going to be okay. And so I did find at least that knowledge, and as empowering a little bit.
So you’re talking about maturity and development and fewer males, and is there anything else?
Jennifer Fink: The early years, elementary school, part of why elementary school is so, so challenging for boys is that the focus is so heavily on reading and writing. Reading and writing, reading and writing. And yes, there’s math, but it’s still a very written thing. And the whole idea in school is that we concentrate on these things because you’re learning to read up until about third grade, but then by third grade on, you’re going to be reading to learn. This reading is foundational to the learning process. Little boys primarily learn by doing. They learn by doing.
I just wish that we could flip the school system, that we spent those early years allowing kids to continue to learn the way that they’ve been learning up until that point, which is pretty much by like trying things, seeing what happens, trying something else, exploring, that we continue to curate and encourage their curiosity. And then when they started expressing an interest in reading and writing, we worked on those things. That’s not how our schools are structured right now. And I do think that is another part of why our boys struggle in school. They want to learn. They are curious. If you have ever watched a preschool-aged boy, a toddler boy, they’re exploring the world constantly.
If we found ways to continue to encourage that, rather than saying sit down, do this, and here’s the boundaries of acceptable behavior, I think we’d get better outcomes for our boys. I don’t think so many of them by first grade, by second grade would be saying, I hate school. For what it’s worth, there are places that do that. They’re not super common. They’re not everywhere. For those who have access to it, like forest schools, nature schools, I think those can be fantastic options for boys and girls, especially in those early years, if that is available to you. It’s not everywhere.
Suzy Shaw: One of the things that we did was create a boys only book club because the boys a boys only book club because the boys didn’t want to read. I didn’t feel like they were being offered stories that they were interested in. And The Spiderwick Chronicles had just come out. And so taking the girls out of the equation who were primarily great readers and just having it be this small group of third grade boys, where each one after one of these books, they would, each one would have to say something that they liked or didn’t like about the book. I gave them a bunch of snacks, and then that was it. I mean, that was like the book club. And then they went out and played.
Jennifer Fink: Was it something you did after school?
Suzy Shaw: It wasn’t a part of the school. It wasn’t part of the school, but it was so successful with my first son that when we switched schools to a new elementary school, I went and pitched the idea to the librarian to do it for the entire school. And because my background was, you know, television, video production, I said, look, I will create a video book report from the winners of third, fourth and fifth grade. So you all pick, let the kids read the books, turn in their book reports and then whoever wins will record it and play it for the school.
Jennifer Fink: That’s a great idea. That was such a positive experience that the whole school got into it. There’s another mom that I know, and she did the same with her boys.
She has two sons also, and she started a book club for boys. She started with her older one. And I think her son was a little older than yours when they started, I’ll have to check. And it went on for years, and then ultimately did the same thing with her younger one. So I think that is a fantastic idea. And another great example of how parents can kind of fill in and supplement what is going on in school. Absolutely love that so, so much.
One thing I ran into with my oldest son in the early grades, he loved stories. He loved listening to stories. He was very motivated to read. However, he was frustrated because the books that he could read at that point were so boring and stupid and not the interesting things that he wanted to read. And when we made the decision to homeschool him, one very frustrating day, I was trying to get him to read aloud because I thought this is what you needed to do. This is how kids learn how to read. This is all I’d ever heard. He got so frustrated. He blew up. He got mad at me. I got mad at him. And that’s when he finally said, he hates trying to read aloud. He just wants time for his brain to figure out the words instead. That made perfect sense to me. That made perfect sense.
Some of the books I was reading aloud at that point were the Junie B. Jones books. Did your boys get into those at all, Suzy? (No.) One teacher at school had started reading them, and he loved those books. So we had some of those books at home.
And I will never forget, I can only read so much at a time because, like every busy parent, I have other things to do. One night, he’d gone to bed. The other ones went to bed. Their dad and I are trying to do grown-up stuff, get stuff done. And he comes sneaking down the stairs, and it’s very late at night, but he finished the Junie B. Jones book all on his own. We gave him that time, and he was motivated enough that when he was ready, he figured it out. And I’m sharing this because there are other avenues to get to the same place. He was frustrated with reading aloud. We kept reading aloud to him and still gave him ways to access stories that were interesting to him.
He also struggled with writing a lot. The physical act of writing that’s hard for a lot of boys. Yeah, we had that problem also. One of the other things that I did at that time was, it’s different now because now you can use technology to do this, but I allowed him to dictate stories to me. I would type it because he could write mentally, he could compose sentences, he could compose stories, but he really struggled with the physical act of writing. It took time for his brain and body to catch up. And yes, now he can write things both with the computer and with his hand, and he’s a perfectly functional grown-up.
Suzy Shaw: They do catch up. They do. One of the things I also found is that if there was a behavioral issue and they were acting out in class, that often was because of frustration and their fear of falling behind. And then, trying to get to the root of what it was, we could then get him a tutor. And we did that even in third grade. We put him in a program to help catch up and that made a big difference in their attitude towards school. Do you find that also?
Jennifer Fink: Yeah, boys, broadly speaking, will act out instead of telling you what’s wrong. They may not have the words themselves; that’s part of it. Key for parents and teachers to keep in mind. Boys don’t want to do badly, ever. They don’t. They don’t want to get in trouble at school. They don’t want to not be able to do their assignments well. They want to do well. So if there is something that is happening repeatedly, it really is worthwhile to take some time and spend some time with that boy. Don’t necessarily lead with, “Hey, you’re not finishing your assignments. You can get there.” But try to listen and figure out what’s going on in his head. How is he feeling about whatever? Because he likely has more frustration inside than you know.
And very likely a lot of shame too. He might not know the word shame, but he’s probably not feeling good about himself. And you said it so beautifully before. You said, “This kid needs a win.” Yes, our kids all need wins. When you go too long between wins, you feel really bad about yourself, and you start to assume you are the problem.
Suzy Shaw: Right, right. So I want our listeners to know that we have done podcasts and we have resource pages on reading, helping your son be a better reader and also communication for elementary school and boys of different ages. At the end of every podcast, I asked our guests to give us a guiding thought, a mantra, something that an elementary school mom might be able to say to herself during those moments. Do you have one?
Jennifer Fink: Believe in your boy. Believe in your boy. Believe in his inherent goodness and his ability. He might be struggling with fill-in-the-blank right now. It will not always be like this. Believe in your boy and believe in yourself. That’ll get you through. It will.
Suzy Shaw: And I also just want to add, you know, the MOB, the Mothers of Boys, to have a community of friends that you can speak honestly about issues and collaborate on solutions is very, very powerful.
Jennifer Fink: Hugely important because so many of us moms of boys, we don’t expect this when our boys hit school. When they start getting in trouble, when they start struggling, we think we are doing something wrong. We don’t realize it’s a systemic problem and that most of the moms of boys are dealing with the same thing. So we try and solve it on our own while also feeling bad. Instead of being honest, where everybody could feel better. And as you said, we can work together communally to find solutions that work for our boys. Talk with the other moms of boys.
Suzy Shaw: And that’s the motivation really behind both of us, writing our books. Tell us specifically about each book and where people can find them.
Jennifer Fink: The first one I wrote was First Time Mom’s Guide to Raising Boys. That is primarily aimed at moms of boys, basically kindergarten through age eight, available on Amazon. Building Boys: Raising Great Guys in a World that Misunderstands Males is also on Amazon. And it is coming out in paperback this summer. Right now, it’s currently out in audiobook and hardcover. The paperback will be out in August. And one of the things that I want to do with that is do more interactive book studies and conversations with that. So stay tuned because I may be sharing news about that as the summer goes on, as we get closer.
Suzy Shaw: Fabulous. And I hope you come back and talk with us about older kids.
Jennifer Fink: Yeah, I would love to. Terrific.
Suzy Shaw: Thank you for joining.
Jennifer Fink: Thanks, Suzy.
