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Tomorrow we will be releasing our October E-Journal, and with it the next article in the series on “Just Guys”. One of the books I’ve been reading in the course of this research is Michael Gurian’s The Purpose of Boys: Helping Our Sons Find Meaning, Significance, and Direction in Their Lives
One of Gurian’s propositions is that boys need to be led to purpose by intentional adults who surround them in the process. Throughout the book he includes helpful lists of questions for parents, mentors, and others invested in developing boys as they journey toward manhood. Below are a few questions pulled from those lists.1
- What is the most important thing you did today?
- What will be the most important things you do when you are a man?
- What kind of work do you want to do when you grow up? What interests you the most right now?
- What is the role of a man in today’s world?
- When does a boy become a man?
- What are the ways a man loves his family?
- Who are your heroes? Why?
- What do TV shows tell you about what defines a good man?
- What do your friends say a good man is? Can you ask them?
- What do you need from me right now?
- How do you want to help people? Whom do you want to help this week?
- Whom do you like playing with the most these days? Why?
- Do you have someone in your life you trust enough to talk with about anything bothering you? Would you come to me for help?
- What parts of yourself must you manage better? Who can help you manage these parts of yourself?
- In what ways do you think your community needs your gifts?
- What makes you different from your friends? In what ways are you the same as your friends?
- What gives you the most joy in life?
How about your own mentoring of guys toward purpose? What would you add? Change? Delete?
- These questions are found in lists on pages 23, 42, 61, 150, and 188-9 in Michael Gurian, The Purpose of Boys: Helping our sons find meaning, significance, and direction in their lives (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009). [↩]
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September 30th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius
October 4th, 2009 at 9:10 am
[...] questions for mentoring guys. I want to check out that book as [...]