Hold on to your hats. When it comes to your son’s understanding of God, the first glimpse of God he gets is from your face. As a baby, his world is concrete. What he sees exists and what he doesn’t see doesn’t exist. As he grows older, though, he starts to have a sense that there is more to life than he can see. Many young boys hit age four or five and begin to comprehend that there is a spiritual element to the universe. But since their young minds are still unable to completely grasp abstract concepts, they blend the abstract with the visible. That means that your son will look at your face and through it, figure out some things about God.
He doesn’t believe that you are God, but he will form his opinions about God from being in your presence. If you smile frequently, then he may decide that God is friendly. If you are trustworthy, patient, and kind, then he thinks that God probably is, too. The impressions that he forms about God can be both positive and negative, fluctuating with your mood, from day to day. So, if you have a particularly sharp temper, he may believe that God can be mean. If your son hears you say “Stop that right now!” a lot, he thinks God is a disciplinarian. The good news is that these impressions will change as your son matures and develops more sophisticated thinking. If we have misrepresented God (which we of course all do), it is likely that as your son matures, he will come to understand that God does things a whole lot better than we do. In the meantime, there is much we can do to shape our sons’ lifelong appreciation of God.
Even though your son’s image of God is shaped by your behavior, most boys will say that God is not a woman. Many boys picture him as a huge man with a flowing gray beard who floats in the sky, because they have seen drawings like this in a book. But boys also know that God is more than that. They understand that if He is real, then He must have a personality that they can relate to. That’s where you come in. Because your son trusts you, receives love from you, and feels close to you, he finds God trustworthy, loving, and kind, and feels that he can be close to Him as well. In short, your son sees God through the prism of his relationship with you. He spots many of your character qualities in God when he thinks about Him. This is a good thing because in many ways, you are the first one to help him understand the concept of a kind and loving God.
According to the Old Testament, Yahweh is neither male nor female, and over time, your son will come to realize that God isn’t a really big guy with a long white beard floating in the sky, nor is he a woman who wears jeans like you. He is a Spirit, with both female and male attributes; so your son’s vision of God, with you reflecting God’s personality, matches that melding of male and female.
The renowned psychiatrist Robert Coles wrote a wonderful book called The Spiritual Life of Children. In it he describes the delightful approach that many children take toward God, their openness toward—a simple trust in—the spiritual dimension of life. He writes about their curiosity and the depth of thought that even very young children have about God. Young children, Coles writes, form opinions about God’s personality and create images of what He looks like. They wonder about his kindness, why He allows bad things to happen to people, and what heaven looks like. Having cared for thousands of children in his psychiatric practice, Coles makes the important observation that all children have questions about God and want those questions answered.
Approaching the subject of God from a strictly theological standpoint isn’t a great idea with sons, because boys want more than just ideas about religion. They want to know in concrete terms about faith and how it can help them. So you need to be bold enough to start talking with your son about your faith. God, heaven, spirits, and souls are all part of your little boy’s (or big boy’s) world at some point. As a very young boy, he will begin to ask some difficult questions: Is heaven real? Is God real, and if so, does he like kids? Does he have teeth and does he smile? We don’t place those thoughts in our boys’ minds; they simply appear. It is human nature to wonder about the nature of God, and to explore the spiritual side of ourselves. Regardless of your adult beliefs about faith and spirituality, your son has an inner burning to have those deeper questions answered. And here’s a big secret: At a certain age, your son wants to hear what you have to say about these things, more than he wants to hear from your pastor or rabbi. When it comes to faith, in my experience, mom is the one who has the ability to transform her son’s spiritual life.
I find this phenomenon utterly fascinating. We read in psychology texts that sons look to male role models for identity formation, and this is true. We have long been taught that because boys are visual people, they need to see adult men in motion in order to figure out what life as a man is like. Boys see behaviors and they try them on. If a son sees his father speak with a kind tone in his voice, chances are excellent that he too will speak kindly. But when it comes to God, our sons watch us—their mothers—to form their opinions about God because we are the wellspring of nurture and emotion. If boys look to men to secure their identities in big matters, why would it be that those same boys look to their mothers to figure some things out about God? Based on interviews with hundreds of men regarding their experiences as children, I think that there are several reasons for this.
First, mothers, in general, are more comfortable talking about God with our boys. In fact, most mothers are more comfortable than fathers talking to kids about all the tough topics—sex, drugs, and faith. As I have noted, it comes down to the fact that where the man in our son’s life may be more action-oriented, mothers are driven by a desire to communicate. That’s how we bond. Even if we think we’re not ready, or comfortable, talking about spiritual issues with our sons, we’re there, available and easier to talk to. We have no choice but to come up with an answer that will satisfy them. When we’re at the wheel of our car, driving them to school or coming home from a baseball game, and a small voice from the backseat pipes up, “Mom—did Tabby go to heaven when we buried her in the backyard?” we can’t avoid an answer. Whether we like it or not, the subject has been broached. When we are tucking their wet-haired, squeaky-clean bodies into bed and a quiet voice asks, “So, Mom, does God float or walk up in heaven?” that’s another perfect opportunity to begin a spiritual discussion with our sons. We want them to have the answers they’re looking for, so sometimes we have to plow through our hesitation and find something reasonable to say when the questions start.
Second, we are usually the ones who haul their bodies to church on Sunday mornings. Maybe we had Sunday school lessons or learned the catechism, and we want to pass a religious foundation on to them. It’s usually mom who is the conscience of the family and understands that sometimes, when life beats you up, you’ve got to have God to hold on to. During tough times, we have looked for answers. Sometimes those answers came from Sunday school lessons learned long ago, like “kill them with kindness, thereby heaping flaming coals upon their heads,” and sometimes they came from believing that God is real and good and is there to help us. We want our boys to be prepared for life. Getting them to church helps them accomplish that.
Third (and this may make many fathers mad), perhaps our faces reflect the humility of God a bit more clearly than men’s. This humility is born from the fact that most women are forced to adapt and change more frequently than men. We get pregnant and gain sixty pounds during our pregnancy, give birth, and then lose the weight. We work, take maternity leave, then go back to our jobs or become stay-at-home moms after having been a working woman all of our adult lives. I added up the average number of changes that mothers go through over their lifetimes and calculated that we undergo a major life change about every three years. Having to adapt to change makes us malleable but tough. Women tend to face their difficulties head-on because we know that enduring bruises in silence doesn’t work as well as talking about them. Our sons see this. They see us bend and shift and communicate our thoughts and feelings. They watch how we respond: Do we turn to friends? Do we pick up the phone? Do we pray? They watch because they instinctively know that we can show them what to do when they are in trouble.
For many sons, curiosity can begin as early as age three. A hamster dies and they mourn, asking, what will happen to Slinky now? Will he rot in the ground, fly to another planet, or evaporate into the clouds? Even preschool-aged boys will surprise you with their thought processes, and will question more abstract concepts like what lies beyond the stars or how can God be real if He’s invisible. Other boys might begin this intellectual quest around second grade, or the moment they experience hardships, like being bullied or watching parents divorce. If a young boy’s world starts to crack around the edges, he begins to see that trouble sits next to happiness. How close will the two get? he wonders. And how will he cope?
We have to keep an eye out, because while boys see mom as the source of answers to their spiritual questions, this is also the time when they begin to worry about losing you. When they begin to realize that life brings pain as well as joy, they also then understand that their mother could get hurt, or even die. This can be terrifying, but many young boys are reticent to mention their fears out loud. So we mothers need to recognize that inside his tender little heart are worries that he can’t articulate. That’s why it is important that we take the lead in addressing spiritual issues; because he can’t. We must have our radar up so that when fear or disappointment strike, we are ready to engage him with some answers about God and how He can help him weather the storms.
If we are ignorant, or afraid to address spiritual issues with our sons, they will turn to others to find solutions, and while that may be well and good in some situations, it may cause trouble for particularly vulnerable boys. They will be looking for answers, and they will find them. They might turn to coaches or teachers, but they might also turn to their friends. And some friends will have plenty of information to teach them that will make your hair stand on end. For instance, I have seen numerous teen boys who, when struggling with school, girlfriends, or home life, turn to friends for advice. Sometimes these friends don’t have the boy’s best interests in mind and their solutions will be more harmful than helpful, like offering drugs to help them “get through” the tough patches in life. So we mothers need to be there to offer help first. The most powerful thing that mothers can do is to give our sons solid emotional, intellectual, and spiritual roots.
Realizing that we are our son’s spiritual mentor is daunting. We are his first experience of God, yet our first awareness of our own spiritual lives was long ago, so as adults we may feel confused about how to talk to our sons. What we must do is look at life through the lens of a little boy; think of him as someone pulling at your pant leg. He doesn’t hear the homily we hear or the Bible lesson from the pew. He just sees his mom and makes some very simple decisions about God based on what you say and do. For sons of all ages, faith begins in that basic manner.
Kenny’s mother taught him about God. Now in his forties, Kenny agreed to sit down with me in order to give me a glance into his relationship with his mother. Right after I thanked him for allowing me to interview him, he told me that he was nervous. Peculiar, I thought. Why would he be nervous? He wasn’t sure, but I suspected that he was worried I would peel scabs from some old wounds. He was right.
Kenny told me right off the bat that he adored his mother. She was a teacher, very religious, and cared for anything that was breathing, especially if it limped. When he was growing up, creatures and folks of all ages came and went from their home. Usually, the family was never forewarned; his mother was always collecting needy folks. I probed for any tone of lingering resentment and I can honestly say that I couldn’t find any. Certainly, if it had been there, Kenny had rid himself of it.
Kenny described his mother as boisterous, outgoing, and firm. She teased him frequently, and while he said that he liked her style of affection, I wasn’t convinced. I could swear I heard his voice break when he told me some of the “jokes” she had cracked when he was only twelve. “Oh—you’re just the family La-Z-Boy,” she’d say, and then poke him in the side with a smile that said “you know I’m kidding—sort of.”
I knew before I interviewed Kenny that he was a man with a strong Catholic faith. He spoke openly about it and seemed excited to discuss this part of his life. Equally important, he seemed proud to tell me that he had gained his faith from his mother. As a child, Kenny’s mother regularly took him to her charismatic Protestant church. By the age of fourteen, Kenny said he’d had enough, so he stopped going. His friends didn’t go to Sunday school, his sports events were frequently held on Sundays, and he just thought that his mom was too old-fashioned making him go. And after a while, he said, he began to doubt God. As a young teen, he became aware of the suffering in the world and began to question two things. First, he wondered if God was real. Second, if He was real, why wouldn’t He do anything about all the starving people in the world? Because of this, he told me, he “left religion and God behind” until he was well into his twenties.
His mother, Caroline, continued to take folks into their home throughout his teen years. She told him that Jesus would have helped them, so she wanted to do the same. One might think that a teenage boy would have sneered at his mother’s behavior and beliefs, but Kenny didn’t. Even though he had cast aside church and religion, on some level he knew that this was important to his mother and that helping those who were less fortunate was the right thing to do. I could sense the pride he felt at his mother’s example of faith and kindness toward others.
Learning that he left the church at fourteen, I was curious how he had circled back around to it. He immediately told me that his mother helped him find his way back to God. Since I had assumed that he left church because his mother had burned him out on religion (this was my bias, I later realized), how was it that she helped him find his way back? What did she do to transfer spiritual anchoring onto her son?
“You see,” Kenny began, his tone turning abruptly somber, “when I was ten, my sister was diagnosed with cancer. It was hell for my mother. For years, my sister lived through chemo; she lost her hair and she endured a lot of physical pain.
“My dad couldn’t handle her illness. All of the responsibility fell onto my mother. I felt so bad; I could see how painful it was for her but I couldn’t do anything about it. But what I also saw was that after years of caring for other people, having her own daughter get sick forced her to love on a different level.”
Kenny’s voice grew quieter and harder to hear. It was clear he loved his sister and I could sense that even though she’d died many years before our conversation, talking about her death was difficult for him. I offered to end the conversation but he insisted that we could continue. I was glad, because as a mother, I wanted to know how his mother had gotten through such anguish. My questions became selfish because that’s what happens to us mothers. We want to know that we could survive, if the unthinkable happened to us, God forbid. So we ask those who have gone through the hell before to pass on their survival skills. And I could tell that Kenny’s mother definitely had those. Seeing her skills in action had changed his life, and little did I know that hearing her story would change mine as well.
“I will never forget the last day of my sister’s life. She was only twenty-one,” he began. “She was in the hospital and my mother held vigil over her. I didn’t hear my mother complain, oddly enough. I would have thought that she would have screamed at God, but I don’t think she did. Just moments before my sister died, she got out of bed and stood up in front of my mother. I watched as my mother wrapped her arms around her and told her goodbye.”
Kenny became silent again. I imagined his mother holding his sister and I imagined myself doing the same to one of my own precious daughters. Would I have had the strength to hold my daughter in her dying moments and not scream at God? Even the thought made my heart race. Part of me believed that I would go crazy if one of my children died.
I said nothing and waited for Kenny to continue. “My mother sat back down and my sister slipped away. I can honestly say that the look on my mother’s face was one of complete calm. Her skin, her eyes, everything about her exuded peace. I think what she was really doing was handing my sister over to Jesus. Yes, she was saying goodbye, but I believe that in her mind, she needed to literally take hold of my sister and then hand her over.”
As a physician, I’ve witnessed a lot of death, and I can honestly say that I have found many deaths to be “holy” experiences. My own father lay in a coma for several days before he died. Just before he took his last breath a nurse saw him open his eyes with a startled look. He was looking at the ceiling. She was so taken aback that she asked, “Wally, what do you see?” She said later that the look on his face revealed that he was seeing something beautiful. I have had children with terminal cancer lie in hospital beds and tell me that angels came to their rooms at night. One twelve-year-old boy said to his mother, who wasn’t particularly religious, that Jesus had come to him in the night and told him that everything was going to be okay and that he didn’t need to worry about death or his mother. The next day he told his mother that she needn’t fear for him. Because of these experiences, Kenny’s story felt very familiar to me and it was easy to believe him when he told me about his mother’s peaceful posture as his sister was dying.
At some point in our lives, each of us wonders about the afterlife. We ponder the existence of heaven and ask ourselves if God is real, because we need to know what happens when we die. We want to know if the spiritual world is real or if it’s just a figment of our imaginations. We want answers because we want a reason to hope. I highly recommend Dr. Eben Alexander’s book, Proof of Heaven (a national bestseller), because it gives us a peek into the afterlife. It is a book offering profound hope because Dr. Alexander’s testimony confirms the reality of heaven.
“That’s when I went back to God,” Kenny said. “I was in my thirties by then. My mother never told me that I should go back to church or anything, but as an adult man, when I saw the strength that she had as my sister died, I knew that the God she believed in was real. My father didn’t have that kind of faith and he couldn’t handle my sister’s death. Witnessing the difference in the responses of my father and my mother made me realize that what my mother was onto with her faith wasn’t ‘pie-in-the-sky.’ It was real and I wanted it. But I wasn’t comfortable going back to the church that I grew up in, so I started going to Catholic Mass. I’ve never stopped.”
Numerous studies over the years have revealed that a belief in God helps keep our sons on the right path. In 2001, the National Survey of Youth and Religion research project, headed by Dr. Christian Smith of the University of Notre Dame, was started. The first findings were released in 2005 in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, written by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. After the release of Soul Searching, the study continued. More of their research was released in 2008 in A Research Report of the National Survey of Youth and Religion. Below is a summary of some of their findings with regard to the influence of faith in God and religion on the behavior of teens. The studies found that faith improves a teen’s chances of staying away from all of the high-risk stuff in life: drugs, drinking, sexual activity, and truancy. And having faith improves their self-esteem and lowers the risk of depression.
Consider the following startling numbers about teens who have a faith in God, as reported in their studies:
• 54 percent of teens devoted to God say they are “very happy” while only 29 percent of disengaged say they are “very happy”
• 47 percent of religious teens think about the meaning of life often while 26 percent nonreligious teens think about it
• 1 percent of religious teens got drunk every few weeks during the past year while 10 percent of nonreligious kids got drunk during the same period • 3 percent of devoted teens get C’s, D’s, and F’s while 14 percent of nonreligious kids get the same
• Of kids who occasionally smoke marijuana, 1 percent are devoted teens, 13 percent are nonreligious
• Parents who report teens are rebellious: 3 percent are devoted, 17 percent nonreligious
• 95 percent of devoted teens feel it is important to wait until marriage for sex; 24 percent nonreligious believe the same
• 3 percent of devoted teens believe that it is okay to have sex if one is emotionally ready; 56 percent of nonreligious believe the same
When it comes to a mother’s relationship with her son, faith helps there, too.
• 88 percent of devoted teens feel extremely or very close to their mothers while 66 percent of nonreligious feel the same
• 80 percent of devoted teens say they get along extremely well or very well with their mothers; 51 percent of nonreligious feel the same
• 93 percent of devoted teens feel that parents love and accept them a lot for who they are; 74 percent of nonreligious feel the same
In addition, an excellent study reported in the prestigious Journal of Adolescence in April of 2007 found similar results. “Adolescent Risk Behaviors and Religion: Findings from a National Study” concluded that their “findings demonstrate that religiosity, measured as perceived importance of religion, attendance in worship services, and participation in religious youth group, significantly contributed to explaining variation in six youth risk behaviors (smoking, alcohol use, truancy, sexual activity, marijuana use, and depression). Increased religious perception and increased religious behaviors are generally good predictors of decreased youth risk behaviors. Of course, like all youth, religious youth do engage in risk behavior, but the likelihood of their involvement in risk behaviors is less than those of less religiously active youth.”
Seeing this data may cause different reactions. It can make some of us feel guilty; if only we took our kids to church more, knew more of the Bible, we’d be better moms. Or the reverse could be true. Some might say that such studies are contrived by religious people with an agenda to push. But I have seen the studies and looked at the figures and am convinced that allowing our sons to express their spiritual nature and explore a relationship with God is good for them. We all know the bad stuff out there, just waiting to influence our boys in the wrong way: violent video games, music with lewd and demeaning lyrics, movies that send the wrong message about sex and violence, peer pressure from the wrong crowd, drugs and alcohol. From the time he is ten until he’s twenty-five, we live with a simmering fear that our sons will fall into one of these destructive habits. (I use the age of twenty-five as the mark of true adulthood because we know that areas of a boy’s brain aren’t fully developed until his early twenties.) But I believe that good parenting can’t come from fear; it comes from acting out of strength. For instance, we can see all of the dangers our sons face, but we also know that if we enable them to have a strong faith in God, we can help keep them on the right path. This is one way we can turn our fear into actionable strength.
Interestingly, if you look deeper into this data, you will find that the roots of spiritual development are strongest if they come from home. If it is our role to be the teachers, the nurturers of our sons’ faith, the next reasonable question is: How do we do that? First, we have to realize that we set the model for our sons; if we don’t have a spiritual life, chances are neither will he. If we declare a lack of faith, he will feel the same way. I believe it is our responsibility to leave the door open to our children to make their own choices. It is especially important in the realm of religion and spirituality. If you are religious, you can skip the lectures and live your faith in front of him because he already knows what you believe. He’s now watching you to see your faith in action. You tell him it is important to be patient because God tells us to be? Terrific. Your son knows whether that’s working for you or not. If it isn’t, he’s not so sure about God (or what He’s teaching you). And if you tell him to pray for a friend in need, he’s grateful for the thought, but whether he actually prays or not might depend upon how he sees the ways in which you use, and believe in, prayer.
The bottom line is, your little boy (or grown son) starts looking for God in you. He might be interested in learning about the God who is “out there,” but as a small child, that’s too abstract. He wants to know if God makes his mom a nicer person. Then, maybe, he’ll try Him out. My best advice to moms who want to teach their sons about the character of God is to say less and do more. Here’s the good news: Being God to your little boy or your teen son can change his life. It can literally keep him from going over the edge. That’s what Jackson told me about his mother.
I met Jackson at the Austin, Texas, airport. I jumped in his cab, barked out the address to my destination, and settled in to text some colleagues from the backseat. But when he started chatting, it was clear that he wasn’t going to let me get my work done. He wanted to know how my day was going, if I’d been to Austin before, and where I was from. For some reason I buried my New Englander instincts to keep my eye on work and ignore his question. Instead, I decided to engage back. When I inquired about his day so far, he responded that he was glad to be alive. I am embarrassed to say that when I studied his ripped driver’s seat and heard the axles clanking beneath me, I wondered why this man, steering what I guessed was his life’s savings down the freeway, was so happy. So I asked him.
“Oh, missus,” Jackson said, “I got a great life.” He detailed the successful lives of his grown daughters, and his wife’s rheumatic illness, which was improving, and did so with a tone of profound appreciation. My writer’s curiosity took over and I asked him where he grew up and how he had come to have such an upbeat outlook on life. I really wanted to know what made this kind man tick.
“Oh,” he began, clearly enjoying the opportunity to talk about himself, “I don’t know if you want to know about that. It’s pretty rough stuff.” Now I had to know.
“I grew up in a really tough neighborhood up there in New York City. There was gangs, crack houses, and almost ev’ry night I heard guns shootin’ when I went to sleep. I liked goin’ to school cuz I got decent meals and saw some of my friends. I liked some of my teachers, but they couldn’t do much teachin’ cuz some of them kids were outa control, if ya know what I mean. They were troublemakers.” Jackson drove slower down the freeway. I didn’t mind, even though I might be late for my meeting. He told me about his sister getting sick and going to the hospital when she was ten and about his three brothers who slept in the double bed with him. Then I started to ask him some more specific questions, and I struck gold.
“So,” I tentatively asked, “how did you survive so well? I mean, any boy in that situation could have completely gone over the edge—ended up addicted to drugs, killed in a gang—you know what I mean.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he answered. “My mama. She’s my hero.”
“Jackson” I said, “I’m researching mothers and sons. Would you mind telling me more about your mother and your relationship with her?” I thought that he was going to drive off the road, he responded so enthusiastically.
“Of course, missus, you ask me anything you want. My mama—she kept us alive. She still keeps us all goin’. My daughters, me, my brothers. She’s eighty-two and she still spits nails.”
I wanted to ask what she said to him, what opportunities she gave him, what was his dad like. I never got to because once Jackson started talking about his mother, he lit up like a Christmas tree. He oozed affection for her.
“My mama was one tough bird, let me tell you. As far back as I can remember, she made us go to church ev’ry Sunday and sometimes in the middle of the week, too. She didn’t give us no choice—we just went. And we never crossed my mama, that’s for sure. If we didn’t do what she wanted us to do, we would get a beatin’.”
“What do you mean she would give you a beating? Would she really hit you hard?” I held my breath and waited for his answer.
“Naw, my mama loved us kids. She never hit us; she just told us that she would give us a whuppin’ if we didn’t mind her. She just liked to talk, but we knew she didn’t want us to cross her. No, sir.”
Jackson veered back toward his churchgoing days. “My mama worked two, sometimes three jobs. I could see age taking over on her face. By the time she was thirty, she looked fifty. She worked hard for us kids. We didn’t have a father, at least one that was around, but we knew that she wasn’t going to let any of us go down the dark way. She told us that God had a plan for us. She told us that He was our daddy.
“When I was a little kid, that kinda talk confused me, but when I got older, I knew what she meant. God was her strength and she wanted us kids to know that, too. She made us learn our Bible lessons and asked us questions about Elijah, Abednego, and Meshach at the dinner table. I liked it cuz none of our friends got quizzed by their mamas. I felt that she knew we were smart and that God did, too. All my life my mama kept telling me, ‘Don’t you go do stupid stuff now. God’s watchin’ and he’s got better plans for your mind, your skills. Don’t you go disappointing me and God.’ ”
Jackson put his turn signal on and exited the freeway. I didn’t want to go to my meeting. I asked if we could keep driving and talk just a little longer. “I got all the time in the world, miss, when it comes to talking about my mama.”
“Didn’t you resent your mother pushing you when you became a teenager?” He looked at me as though I were speaking Latvian.
“Resent my mama? Are you crazy, miss? My mama loved us. She loved Jesus and her church family. If she hadn’t taught us that God is real and good, we might not be alive! We would have all ended up like many of our friends. Dead. In prison. Dealing drugs. My mama fought hard for us kids cuz she loved us so much. When she told us about Jesus, we believed her cuz he gave her jobs, he gave us money, he gave my mama the spirit to keep going.”
I was dying to meet Jackson’s mother. She had something that I wanted. She was a survivor, a woman of a faith so deep it had saved her kids, according to Jackson. He told me that he went into the military and rose up through the ranks over twenty-three years. His brother found his way to college and none of his siblings had ended up in gangs or gone “the dark way.”
My final question: So, what is your relationship with your mother like now?
“My mama, she’s the queen of the family. She teaches my kids about Jesus and I tell you that if God wore lipstick, He’d wear the shade my mama does, she’s that close to him. My girls are crazy ’bout her. I got three daughters and they’re very smart. One’s in med school, one’s got two kids and a nice husband, and one’s working for a big company up in the North. Yep, they’re good girls. Every time they come home to Austin, they always go to see their grandmother cuz they love her. They know she’s tough and that she loves them. And you know what, missus? They all go to church, too, cuz of her.”
I thanked Jackson for the privilege of entering into his life for a brief time. Though I will never meet his mother, she changed me. She challenged me to be wiser and to understand that every time our sons look at us, they just might be making some decisions about God.
Growing up in America in the twenty-first century looks glamorous on the outside, but the truth is, it can be tough for our boys—particularly those who are lucky enough to come from a family with comfortable means. As much as we mothers struggle to have a solid, healthy sense of our value and worth, our sons do so tenfold. Having a lovely home, giving our son a car, making sure that he has the best hockey coach, paying for private school or a college education—all of it can be a blessing, but it can also be a curse for our boys.
Young boys think pragmatically. If they are unhappy, they feel that all they need to do is buy something, eat something, or go somewhere and their happiness will return. In the short term, this can work. But as adults, we know this: Those beautiful homes and that money in our bank account brings only very limited happiness. Every one of us struggles at some point wondering what life is really about and what it is that gives us our deepest joy. Many turn to faith to find these answers. And in an increasingly material world, we owe it to our sons to give them a guided tour through their spiritual dimension.
Every mother makes laborious decisions when it comes to raising our son. We think hard about the school our son should attend, what sports he should play, and which friends are good for him to be around and which are not. We can be consumed by every detail, every dollar spent. That’s how we are wired: We love deeply and we worry passionately. But it’s important to step back from the details of our days and take a look at the grand scheme of our sons’ lives. Before they grow old enough to leave home, we must ask ourselves what character qualities we want to nurture and what we want to teach them about faith and God.
To figure out what we believe, we can start by asking ourselves the big questions. First, do I believe that God exists? If I do believe so, on what grounds do I believe? Do I have evidence? Once you establish this fundamental premise, push yourself further for answers (because your son will ask questions). If you believe God exists, then you must ask, what difference does that fact make in your life? Should it make a difference? Then find out what you believe God’s character to be like. Young boys are wonderfully curious and adventurous in their thinking, so you need to be able to discuss deep matters with your son.
If you live in a religious home, be sure to be crystal clear with your son about the fundamental tenets of your faith. Teach him who the prophets were and tell him stories of the great forefathers. Many mothers are squeamish about telling some of the more gruesome stories in the Old Testament. When I was teaching our son about the underdog David slaying the giant Goliath, I was upset because he didn’t want to know about David—all he wanted to hear about was how long it took to get Goliath’s head chopped off. I wanted, of course, to drill home the moral of the story—that God helped the righteous, the underdog—and my son wanted to hear all about the gory details. So I indulged him and he paid attention, and we talked about the stories in their entirety.
We need to remember that young boys process information differently than we do and that’s fine. There are points that they will initially miss, but we need to plant those seeds anyway. As they mature, the stories will retell themselves in their developing minds and take on different meaning.
If you follow the Christian faith, be ready to help him understand who the disciples were, why Christ came to earth, how he was born, and most important, why he was born. Yes, you can leave your son’s religious education to pastors, priests, or rabbis, but this is important material. So you be his teacher, too.
The truth is, there are a lot of questions that we can’t answer, but that’s okay. The great mystery of faith for any of us is that we can only know things incompletely. We should teach our sons from a position of strength and boldness, not from the fear that we don’t know everything. I encourage you to dig for your own answers rather than settling for others’ answers. I consider C. S. Lewis the perfect example of this: He was someone who refused to accept others’ beliefs about God, faith, and religion. When he was an atheist, he learned everything that he could about God in order to prove that He wasn’t real. That’s how this brilliant man ultimately became a devout Christian and scholar: He pushed himself to find answers and found some completely unexpected ones. We need to search for our own answers, and then pass them along to our sons. We can’t make them believe, but when we present our case, passing along the answers we’ve found in our own lives, we encourage them in two ways. First, we show them the importance of challenging ideas and beliefs and searching for answers on our own terms. Second, we give them a belief system to either choose or reject.
The remarkable thing about sons is that, when it comes to very important topics like God and faith, they want to hear what their mothers have to say. Some information they internalize and incorporate into their own belief system and some they hold at a distance to decide upon later. Since your son is scouring you for clues as to what you think—and don’t think—about God, be clear about what you teach him. Asking questions and finding answers is not only intellectually stimulating; it is fun. Talking about your faith, and your reasons for having it (or not having it), will lead to some of the greatest conversations you will ever have with your boy.
I have witnessed a trend evolving in young mothers that disturbs me: Many of them refuse to trust their instincts. A couple of decades ago, mothers could be overly bossy and controlling. Some of us grew up with mothers like this and we determined that we would never be so overbearing. This is a good thing, but in trying to avoid being too repressive, many of us have gone to the opposite extreme. We are so afraid to make mistakes that we don’t listen to our gut when it tells us to act. For instance, I have had mothers tell me that they don’t want their son to go to a friends’ house and watch a movie but then immediately ask me if I thought they should let him go. I ask these mothers, “Why are you asking me? You just told me what you want. You don’t want him to see the movie. So, say no.”
Others have told me that they want to take their sons to church but that their husband doesn’t approve. It’s an issue they feel strongly about, but when I ask if they have challenged their husbands on it, they say no. When I ask why, they respond that they don’t want to make waves in the family.
Repeatedly, mothers pull away from acting according to their instincts. We should never ignore our instincts, because they help us make better decisions. Mothers are uniquely wired to love, protect, and guide our sons, and listening to our gut is one of the most important things that we can do for them as we raise them. If we, who know our sons better than anyone, refuse to do what is right and good for them, how will they learn? The short answer is, they won’t. I fear that many mothers have become so afraid of doing the wrong thing and thereby alienating their sons, that we fail to do many of the right things that will strengthen our bond with them. Our instincts are sometimes our only guide and we must listen to them.
When it comes to religion, we can become almost paralyzed by self-doubt. We not only fear teaching our sons the wrong thing; we fear having them feel as though they are odd or prudish at school because they may believe different things about God than their friends do. We desperately want them to fit in with friends and we certainly don’t want them to feel like outcasts among them. Life for kids is hard enough, we reason. So we often forgo making them attend catechism or youth groups because we don’t want them to become the “geeky” kid. To whatever extent religion can turn our sons into awkward kids, we won’t have any of it.
And of course, there are other worries. What if we teach them to have faith in God and they rebel? What if we teach them the tenets of our faith and we don’t get the facts straight? What if, as I’ve just said, we make them go to church and their friends make fun of them and then they feel isolated at school? But—we must stop worrying and start acting. The best way to get away from fretting is to begin doing something. When it comes to faith, the first thing that we must do for our sons is to be clear about what we want them to believe and what we don’t want them to believe. And to do this, we have to be clear about our own faith.
Many mothers I meet decide that they want their children to grow up with the freedom to choose their own religion. I understand this, but the truth is, your kids will choose anyway—whether you want them to or not—because faith is an intensely personal thing. Every son grows up and makes his own choices; from the type of pants he wears, to whom he will marry and where he will live. Decisions about his faith are the same. At some point, what you believe won’t be enough for him. He will need to know deep in his soul what he thinks about God. In the meantime, though, you must give him the choice to believe. Boys who grow up knowing nothing about God have nothing to choose from. If they don’t know the difference between Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, and the Muslim faith, don’t have any details at all about different religions, they end up with a giant vacuum to be filled, and no clue how to do so. It’s very much like taking a ten-year-old American boy to downtown Prague and telling him that he can go anywhere he’d like. He would look at you with a blank stare. “But Mom,” he’d say, “I’ve never been to Prague before and don’t even know the street names.” So it is for boys who grow up without any understanding of the tenets of your faith.
I speak to many parents around the country and most want to know what they can do to boost their child’s self-esteem. Mothers, in particular, want to know what they can do to make their kids feel better about themselves and have healthy self-confidence. Some of the answers are obvious: We figure out what our sons are good at—whether it’s sports, or art, or music—and then sign them up for classes to show them their own talent and help it grow. We are planners and doers and we want to make life work out well for our sons. Once we recognize their skills, we pour our money and energy into developing those talents. We drive them to the rink at 4 A.M., sit at the back of the bus on those weekend rugby matches, and then, of course, we drag them on college tours with the prospect of underwriting their choice, just to help them take what we hope is the best path possible toward their future.
But, as discussed, when we believe that our son gains self-confidence primarily through achieving certain goals, we fail him. The truth is, doing well academically, artistically, or athletically only helps boys know that they can perform; it doesn’t make them feel valuable as human beings. What does make them feel valuable? Love and affirmation from us. Physical affection, a long-suffering listening ear, a readiness to talk at 3 A.M., an ability to let them go through their own changes. Those things show our sons that we love who they are, not what they do. When we support their talents, but withhold the other things, we raise high performers and achievers, but that’s it. Many young men grow up to make a lot of money and land prestigious jobs and so look quite successful from the outside. But many of these men end up lonely and wanting, feeling that they are loved for what they’ve accomplished. How can any son—whether he is a child or an adult—have a healthy sense of self if all he knows is that his mother likes the way he “succeeds” (that is, performs)?
And don’t we mothers feel the same way? We too want to know that God loves us whether we succeed, fail, get fat, or become exhausted or depressed. And we especially need that comfort in the moments when we feel that we may be the worst mothers in the universe. We want to know deep in our souls that someone loves us just because we exist. Similarly our sons want to know—need to know—that if they did nothing else for the rest of their lives but sat in a closet, we would adore them. We must exercise the love and complete acceptance that God gave us toward our sons, so that they can understand exactly how unconditional our love for them is.
Many of us mothers say that we love our sons unconditionally, but the truth is, we’re pretty poor at it. We may say that we are being loving when we push them to achieve more and more, but what we’re really communicating to them is that the only way they will meet our approval is to ante up. Of course we want our sons to be successful. But the expression of our love to our sons must never come only with their successes. Sadly, I hear many boys say that the only time they feel approval or love from their parents is when they are on the football or soccer field. We mothers may feel that we are being supportive with our sons when we show up at their athletic events or concerts—indeed, we are being supportive—but we must be very careful to make sure that we express love to our sons when they perform well, poorly, or not at all. A son needs to know that he is loved regardless of what he does.
When so much of our interaction with our sons revolves around their performance or schoolwork, I encourage mothers to intentionally find opportunities to show their love to their sons apart from these. Henry’s mother, Linda, was good at this. Henry was an awkward boy who was a mediocre soccer player and struggled academically in school. One might look at him and think that he had a poor self-esteem, but in fact, he felt very good about himself and about his life. His mother single-handedly raised Henry after his father divorced her when he was two. He never knew his father and what little he did know was positive, he said. His father played semipro baseball for a few years and Henry thought that was pretty cool. But, his mother told him, life became tough for his dad (though his mother never gave details) and he couldn’t cope with family life.
When Henry was eight, he was in a near-fatal car accident. His mother was not in the car and learned of the accident over the phone. For three weeks Henry stayed in the intensive care unit and his mother thought she had lost him many times during those weeks. Her life consisted of her and Henry. Her parents had passed away and she was an only child. If Henry died, she believed she would lose her mind.
During his stay, Linda told me that she prayed her heart out. “I never really knew if God was real or not,” she confided, “but I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. I just poured my heart out to God and asked for help.”
Over the weeks that she leaned on God, Linda said that she felt his presence. She had others pray, too, and after Henry came out of his coma, she believed that God heard her desperation and answered her prayers.
When Linda took Henry home from the hospital, he had some minor memory issues and needed help with his speech, but within a few months he was back to himself. But it was when I spoke to her a few years after the incident that her words really struck me.
“I can’t believe that after I came home, how quickly I felt pressure to get life back to normal. I wanted Henry to ski, play baseball, or go to soccer camp. Maybe that was how I could make pretend that the accident never happened. But it did. And I never wanted to forget the greatest two lessons of my life.”
I asked her what those lessons were, and how she kept from jumping back aboard the “crazy train.”
“The first lesson I learned was that God is here. Okay, he’s invisible—but until Henry was in the ICU, I never paid any attention to him. I’ll never do that again. The second lesson was that Henry is a gift to me. He’s not something I need to show off or shine. He’s my son—my son. And I always want him to know that he is the apple of my eye because he is mine. Does that make sense?” she asked.
Her words made more than good sense. They showed great wisdom that we can all learn from. Linda simply loved Henry. She took him camping when other kids went to soccer tournaments and taught him to pitch a tent and fish. If he got a bad grade in school, she took it in stride and never made him feel as though he disappointed her. Linda continues to treat Henry, now fifteen years old, as if he had fallen from heaven itself. And the fact that he landed in her home is all that matters to her. From Henry’s perspective, he knows why his mother loves him. She loves him because he is.
Putting yourself in your son’s shoes can be an enormous eye-opener when making decisions about how to parent. Not only will it help you make better decisions, but it will pull you closer to your son and, most important, genuinely build his self-confidence and sense of value.
Practicing a faith in God is not only good for our boys; it can be a lifesaver for us mothers. Being a mother can be a lonely and tough job—especially for single moms. Acknowledging this need for faith is hard for those of us who want to be strong and self-sufficient, but who are we trying to kid? We are mothers to some incredibly great boys, boys who need a whole lot of advice, love, and support. And in order to give those things to our sons, we need the same. The best way to give advice is to have received it from a wiser person. The best way to love our sons better is to have been extraordinarily loved ourselves. And the very best way to support our sons is to know what it feels like to depend on someone and receive support. God, I believe, offers all of this and more to any of us mothers willing to take a risk and ask Him for it.