boys and girls

Socially, I'm severely intrigued right now by the vast difference I see between the adolescent boys and girls I work with right now.

I work in a co-ed boarding school, wherein the boys and girls see each other often but don't have privileges to really interact with each other. Having worked for the past 5 years with pregnant 14 year olds, I'm happy we keep the students physically at a distance, while at the same time I worry about the skewed social development that's taking place.

Because of the restrictions the students seem are in a position where they yearn/hunger for opposite sex peer interaction but are given little. This seems to lead to gross misunderstandings in communication. A boy who likes a girl but can't ever talk to her starts to look for ANY sign that she could be interested back. She gives him a larger portion of Jello while serving lunch one day (like), she doesn't peer report him to staff when he accidentally swears (like), she's wearing a blue shirt (his favorite color) (like). In an effort to create something (out of nothing) the little things that happen each day become interpreted to fit the young man's delusions. If the next day she does report his bad language he wonders "what happened?" Yesterday we were in love and today you're a "bitch." He then gets his feelings hurt and goes around telling the other boys "She's a tease and a bitch."

As a therapist I then end up in a session with a crying girl and an indignant boy who have no idea how things got where they're at. In an effort to set policy that would limit interaction between sexes we have instead opened Pandora's box of misunderstanding and sudo communication, glances, looks, smirks, winks, and the ever popular passing of juvenile notes. One client tried to drop a note in a peer's jacket but instead it landed on the floor and eventually into the hand's of the teacher (classic right?).

I, as a new employee in this environment, am interested in advocating for some sort of change in policy that allows the sexes to mingle in a supervised and therapeutic way so the students can grow socially. Some of these kids are a little too good at talking to future romantic partners (I'm not so worried about them) but the kids who call people bitches or freeze up when I (a female) say hello, need some major help.

I have many observations about my new job and in general my teenage clients.