It’s a hard thing to watch a 14-year-old boy cry.

I’ve been teaching middle school for a journeyman’s 11 years, and, let me tell you, there is no lack of emotional turmoil for kids that age.

Tears well up because homework was forgotten or a lunch was lost. A shoulder hits too hard in the hallway. A teacher’s reproving stare cuts too deep. Friends lie about each other.

Let’s not even talk about body image. Or the Internet.

Middle school kids cast around stinging personal insults quite casually. To an adult, it seems like they’re playing badminton with lawn darts, so often we’re amazed the injuries aren’t worse than they are.

Can kids also be playful, kind, compassionate and brave? Skilled, subtle, generous? All of these things and many more, but that’s a story for next time. Today, we’re looking at how young men react to pain.

Watching a teen boy cry is wrenching. He’ll be so terribly distraught, with a visible struggle playing out across his face. Embarrassment and emasculation war with emotion and sensitivity. In some way, this boy has been wronged, hurt, humiliated or stunned. Something has touched him in a way that he needs to express. He’s in pain.

In the eyes of his young male peers, his choice of reactions is limited.

Anger roots one path. Punching. Cursing. Throwing. Storming off. Defiance and struggle are acceptable to the pack. “Fight back.”

Diffidence marks the other choice. Stony stares or rolling eyes. Sullen shrugs. The ubiquitous “I don’t know.” These also draw approbation from the peer group. “Never let them see you sweat.”

If you don’t believe me, reread “The Catcher in the Rye.” You’ll have a new appreciation for Salinger’s teenage antihero.

If the playground is all that boy has been taught, he doesn’t know another way to react. At least not one that won’t lead to further embarrassment or distress.

It takes a man a long time to be able to define himself without comparison to other men, to be able to say, “I stand for this. I act this way. I do not stand for that. I do not act that way.” Until that time of realization, the “masculinity” of the playground holds sway.

If the playground were all we were talking about, maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal either. Those minor dramas pale in comparison to the real emotional traumas that teens (or all of us, really) deal with. Acrimonious divorce. Grievous illness. Unrequited love. Unexpected death. We’ve all ridden such troughs and crests as best we could at the time.

In my experience, at least, anger or diffidence is not a healthy reaction to such hardships. How does a boy hemmed in by demands to be strong, to be tough, to fight back tears learn another way?

Men look to other men. We learn from women, too, but the first model of behavior has to be that of those like us. Boys watch the boys around them. Adolescents, especially, watch the men around them. How do those men react to stress? What earns their approval? How do they treat women? What do they say? What don’t they say?

When do men cry?

We cry when we’re hurt. Physically. Emotionally. We cry when we’re overwhelmed. When there’s no good choice of action. When the pressures are too great.

We can cry when we’re happy or overjoyed or inspired, too, but many men shy away from that, holding to the expectations put upon them by other men.

Boys observe that they should not be vulnerable to hurt. Suppress physical pain. Fight back tears. Walk it off. Ignore emotional pain. Don’t let it touch you. Hide your reaction. Toughen up.

Boys want to be strong, so to develop their emotional intelligence, we have to talk to them in ways that let them hold onto that strength. If we, men especially, show the strength to disclose our emotions, boys can resonate with that. Tell them the truth, and invite boys to solve problems, to be part of a solution. It gives them initiative and purpose to marry with their emotions.

Don’t ask a 13-year-old boy how he “feels” about something. He doesn’t want to tell you, as if he could verbalize it anyway. Ask about actions and reactions, about causes and effects, about choices and alternatives. Making decisions and considering options is a form of power he can recognize.

Physical activity is crucial to boys, and often that energy is stifled. Recognize that rough play is part of growing up for boys. They need to test themselves, usually against each other, but also against gravity, challenges, rules and expectations. We have to teach them to be reasonably safe and to prevent harm, but we have to let them find their boundaries, too. Just because boys scrap doesn’t mean that they hate each other. Such skirmishes are not adult situations, but we expect boys to act like adults in them.

Asking boys to stifle those physical instincts is no different than the playground’s strictures on their emotions. Repression breeds confusion.

It’s easy to look at a “tough” boy and assume that he isn’t feeling anything. That’s very unlikely. Much more likely he’s denying his emotions: suppressing them, masking them or reviling them. That boy needs permission to explore those feelings, and that permission only comes from other men.

From other men’s actions, really.

Telling boys that they can express themselves doesn’t work. It’s just words. Boys need to see action, to hear other men share their own experiences, to recognize the truth. It won’t necessarily have an immediate effect on their behavior, but it will put another piece of the puzzle in place.

Eventually, a boy collects enough pieces to create his own identity, not live in one forced upon him. As William Wordsworth noted in his poem, “The child is the father of the man,” a boy is a foundation. His education in every aspect of his life informs, or “fathers,” the man that he will be. We’re not trying to create perfect boys; we want to foster the growth of capable men. Let boys gather all of the necessary pieces of manhood, and they’ll build themselves into the men they were meant to be.

— James Cardo teaches English composition at The Harbor School.