Working Effectively with Men
By Dr. Edward Gooze
I have worked with fathers [and my own disabled child], and have seen programs not be as effective as they need to be because therapies and presentations were not tuned to the processing and perceptual uniqueness of adult males.
Most men/fathers are goal-directed problem-solvers and women/moms are process-oriented relators. Men do not process information on relationships and feelings anywhere near as well as do women. You can either lose a male’s attention, or insure that they won’t gain anything from presentations that don’t have strong "what is the problem and how I can solve it" elements. Furthermore, providing adult males with information should be loaded far more heavily into the visual modality than the auditory/verbal modality. There are verified brain-based reasons for this. Additionally, the males/dads need to be taught how to ask proper questions before they go off on a search for answers. A prerequisite question to be asked, before truly useful answers can be obtained will contain the following traits:
It will contain "What", "How", and the pronoun "I".
It will name a behavior that the questioner will take.
It won’t ever contain the words "When," "Who," or "Why" (e.g. - "What can I do differently to reduce the number of arguments I have with my children?"
Visual reminders for better fathering behaviors are placed throughout important family environments, and these better fathering behaviors are practiced daily so that they can become habituated and anger-proofed.
Finally, fathers are helped to remember the successful father’s mantra: "I will ask for and pay attention to those behaviors I want from others, and will ignore and prevent those behaviors that I need to reduce or eliminate."
The discussion of feelings and relationships can be introduced once fathers have gained better control in their families and are having feelings of success and appreciation of themselves and important others. This work with feelings and relationships comes AFTER improvements in father responses have been obtained, and are not pre-requisites improvements in fathering skills.
These ideas are based on current Brainscience, Neurodevelopmental Sciences, Biosexual Research, Learning Sciences, and Resiliency Theory.
Dr. Ed Gooze
Austin, Texas
We thank Dr. Gooze for his permission to re-print this article.
