Strength. Ability. Maturity. Your son wants them all, starting from the time he is a toddler. Your job, as his ardent supporter, teacher, and number-one fan is to make sure that he embraces his strengths at different stages of his life. As he grows, your job is to draw out his natural abilities and then help him develop them so that he can feel independent and competent as he matures.
So what does it mean to “give him an ax”? This metaphor represents the times throughout his life when you bestow upon him your “blessing” to be more independent. When you do this, you will give him tools (sometimes literal ones, other times cognitive or emotional ones) to understand his own capabilities. Then you must help him exercise those capabilities in a way that reinforces his independence. This may be as simple as giving him an Erector Set when he is five or six and letting him put it together on his own. When he cries in frustration to you that he just can’t get it, you send him back to the table to try again. By doing this, he hears from you that he is capable of figuring things out.
When he is in junior high, this may mean giving him a lawn mower and telling him to ask neighbors if they need their lawn cut. You will literally put a machine in his hands that could cause him bodily harm, but you show him how to use it. You teach him to respect its power. Then you add that you have confidence in his physical strength to handle the machine carefully and in his mental maturity to be cautious.
As we challenge our sons with new tools, it is important that we continue to teach them how to use them. It would be foolish to just hand our son an ax and say, “Go cut some wood.” Our job is to give the tool and then instruct them in how to wield it. Many women may not know how to swing an ax, so they find a competent instructor and have him or her show their son what to do. If the “tool” you give your son is a less tangible one—like helping him overcome stage fright during performances—you talk him through what he may feel during the performance or what he is worried may happen during the show; then you challenge him to focus on the performance, not on the people watching him, give him tips about decreasing his anxiety, and remind him that if he does forget a line, it’s okay. Only then do you put him on the stage.
Such moments are critical for a son as he develops through boyhood and then into manhood, because they help him understand two things. He learns that he is strong and that he can have control over his life, his impulses, his feelings. Mothers must teach sons that yes, they can be in charge, even in a culture that tells them that they aren’t expected to be, a culture that in fact readily assumes they are not in control.
The trickiest part for us mothers is making sure that the challenges we give our sons are age appropriate. Often a boy’s desires to do things independently are way ahead of his abilities. When he’s a child, his brain, body, and psyche have not fully grown and he knows it, even as he wants things he’s not ready for, including independence. This can lead to feelings of frustration for him. Every boy needs a sense that he can be in charge of something, even when he is only two years old. Think of the first temper tantrum that your son had. He threw himself on the floor of the grocery store not to embarrass you (well, maybe not) but to protest your authority. He wanted something. You told him no. He couldn’t reach it himself. The frustration between wanting to take control and his body—and you—not allowing it made him want to explode. He cried, screamed, and flailed all because he wanted you to know that he needed power and independence.
It is no different when he is sixteen. He has temper tantrums at that age, too, but they are louder and fiercer. He no longer throws himself onto the floor, but maybe he grabs the car keys and storms out, slams his bedroom door, or hurls insults at you. The frustration he feels at sixteen is the same as what he felt at two, but it is more intense. It’s important for you to understand that these episodes are completely normal and have a sound psychological foundation, because then you won’t take his behavior personally. Developmentally, boys progress through stages where their minds mature before their bodies. At three, they want to pedal a two-wheeler because they know that “big kids” ride two-wheelers, but their nervous system hasn’t quite caught up to the point where riding one is possible. When he is thirteen, he wants to play M-rated video games because he knows that “mature” guys play them, but when he does, he has nightmares. At seventeen, he wholeheartedly believes that he can stay home alone for the weekend and ensure that no uninvited guests come over to your home. Alas, he is usually wrong and some very serious trouble can follow.
As his mother, you understand all this and, in order to be accommodating and make his life a little less frustrating, you give him choices. I hear mothers tell their eighteen-month-old that yelling is not appropriate and that he should choose to use his quiet voice. I hear them offer their six-year-old the option between playing basketball or trying the violin or the piano. As mothers, we hope the opportunity to make decisions will allow our sons to feel more in control, a bit more adultlike. Sometimes these tactics work, but often they don’t. Young boys really have a hard time knowing what they want, or what is best for them. Sometimes giving them a choice only frustrates them more. So what is a good mom to do?
Giving sons a sense of power and control is very important, so we need to be thoughtful and deliberate in doing so. We don’t want to frustrate our sons more (that makes life harder for both of us) but we want to give them an increasing sense of independence as they grow. Sometimes there are choices we make as mothers, made out of love certainly, that can unintentionally cripple our sons emotionally.
As our sons pass through the early elementary years into the middle school years, they live with a strong internal tension. They depend on us and want our comfort, but they don’t want anyone to know it. At some point in their development, they even try to convince themselves that they don’t need us. During those early years, boys get the external message that leaning on mom is a sign of weakness and in order to be a man, they need to break away from us. Regardless of what we think, or what we try to tell them, this feeling is pervasive among their peers. Some young boys don’t like their moms to drive them to school; they want to ride the bus, proving to their friends that they don’t need Mother hovering in the background. When it comes to sports, they want us to be their number-one fan, but they don’t want us to be Team Mom or like us to always be talking to the coach about their games. That kind of involvement from mom can be enormously humiliating for sons. Our intentions in involving ourselves in our son’s activities may be purely affirmative, but this doesn’t mean that our sons will perceive them as such.
I have seen numerous mothers at their son’s soccer or baseball games yelling at the opposing team or scolding coaches for not playing their son enough. I have seen mothers finish their son’s school projects or lie to the principal that their son was not at a party drinking and therefore should be able to play on a football team, when he clearly had been, in spite of knowing that drinking was against the team rules. When we do these things for our sons, we might feel as though we’re helping them, but really, we are doing the opposite. When we cover for them, we communicate that they need us to fight their battles, that they cannot depend on themselves. If we aren’t careful, these feelings can persist into manhood.
As hard as it is for us to swallow, as our sons mature they will depend more easily on their fathers than they will us. The bottom line is, a son will perceive his father as stronger than his mother. He wants—and needs—to see his father as stronger because that’s his role model for his own impending adulthood. He doesn’t want to think of his mother as stronger, because this threatens his masculinity. He wants to be stronger than his mother in many ways—either physically, emotionally, or intellectually—and he needs this for healthy ego development. This doesn’t mean that he is chauvinistic; rather, it means that he needs to identify with his male father more than with his female mother in order to figure out his own masculinity. Mom’s love and protection were all well and good when he was a baby, but the minute he perceives himself as “different” from mom—that is, male, not female—when his mother bails him out, it makes him feel enormously weak. (Having his father bail him out is tough for him, too, but he feels much worse when his mother does.)
When Tim was a senior in high school, he played varsity soccer. His mother, Brenda, worked part-time as an accountant, but when she wasn’t working, she was supporting the team. She drove to all the events, brought food for the team, and cheered loudly at every game. She prided herself on knowing all the players. She also spoke frequently of the great relationship she enjoyed with Tim, saying that the two were very close.
Tim went out one Saturday night and partied with his friends. A few of his team members were at the party and they all had some drinks. Tim got drunk and called his folks at midnight asking for a ride home because he didn’t want to drive. The next morning, Brenda told him how proud she was of him that he called for a ride. When Tim got to school Monday morning, his soccer coach approached Tim and told him that he and the other team members who had been drinking at the party were suspended from the team for two weeks. That evening, when Tim got home and told Brenda what the coach had done, she hit the roof. She phoned the coach and insisted that Tim play. He had simply been acting like a normal teen, she said, and after all, no one got in trouble and no one got hurt. He was a good kid. What was the big deal?
The coach felt so bullied by Brenda that he gave in and let Tim and the other partying team members play. I spoke with Tim shortly after the incident and I could feel his embarrassment over what his mother had done. He was seventeen years old and he watched his mother manipulate the coach and disregard the rules (rules to which Tim had agreed when he joined the team). He also received two dangerous messages that Brenda had never intended: You can’t handle consequences, so you need Mom to get rid of them. And the coach’s rule doesn’t apply to you, even though you understood it and agreed to it. These kinds of lessons are the last ones we should be imparting on our sons’ impressionable teenage minds.
Let’s examine what this scenario would have looked like if Brenda had responded in a healthy way. What if, instead of coddling her almost grown son, she had given him an ax to use on his own behalf? She could have said, “Tim, you’re a man and this is life. You can deal with the consequences of your choices.” He would have had a fit, probably yelled about how stupid his coach was, but when it was over, you can bet that he would have learned a powerful lesson: I need to start acting like a grown-up. And I can. You can bet that lesson would have helped Tim mature into a better student in college, a better worker at his future job—and a better husband and father.
Lana also made the mistake of protecting her son, Richard, from experiencing the consequences of his behavior. With the best of intentions, she, like Brenda, wanted to preserve her son’s good reputation. But she did this one too many times.
Richard was shy and introverted. He had a few guy friends but mostly hovered on the periphery of many circles of friendship. When he was sixteen he started dating a girl and Lana was thrilled. Richard fell hard for this girl. He spent every evening texting or calling her. On weekends, the two were inseparable. Being close to her son, and excited about the fact that he was dating, Lana spoke frequently to Richard about his relationship. She asked how he felt and encouraged him to be a gentleman to his girlfriend. Soon she started to cross boundaries without realizing it. She was so excited to see her son happy that she inadvertently projected her own hopes onto him. In her mind, she had the two of them getting married, and began pushing them to commit to a more serious relationship than either was ready to have. She encouraged them to spend more time together and coached Richard on how to express his feelings. Unfortunately for Richard, she made the mistake that many enthusiastic mothers make, perceiving her son to be far more mature than he actually was. He related to his girlfriend as a sixteen-year-old, but Lana encouraged him to act as though he were a grown man.
One day, Richard’s girlfriend called it quits. Richard was crushed and Lana was furious. How dare this girl dump her son? While Richard holed up in his room, needing some alone time, Lana fumed downstairs. What could she do to remedy this? How could she restore her son’s dignity, she wondered? She had an idea. She opened up Facebook and wrote on Richard’s girlfriend’s wall. She didn’t ask Richard’s permission before doing this (mistake number one), and she wrote publicly that Richard was too good to deserve to be dumped. She called the girl a few names and signed off.
You can imagine what happened. Richard’s friends read the post; some of his guy friends chided him and some girls laughed at him, too, though some felt sorry for him. Not only did Richard undergo the pain of the breakup, but now he was humiliated in front of his friends. His mother’s actions made him look, and feel, weak.
If we look back at Richard’s relationship with his girlfriend, we can see where Lana made mistakes. First, she was emotionally overinvested in the outcome. She worried about him because he was shy and when he began dating, she was so excited that she projected her own enthusiasm onto her son. She should have sat back and allowed Richard to figure out how he felt rather than constantly convey to him how she felt and how she thought he should feel about the relationship.
Second, she really overstepped her boundaries. She jumped into the middle of his relationship and coached her son on what to do and when to do it. Certainly, mothers should give advice, but Richard didn’t ask Lana for hers. It is best for us mothers to watch and wait and then give our opinion when it’s needed, rather than take over right from the beginning. Her intentions were good but she was far too aggressive.
Third, Lana spoke for her son; she didn’t let him speak. She had no business writing on his Facebook wall and she had no business saying mean things about his girlfriend. This was supremely embarrassing for Richard. We must always remember to act like parents, not friends to our kids. By writing on his girlfriend’s Facebook wall, she spoke for him just like one of his friends might have done. Every mother is tempted to act as her son’s friend in order to stay emotionally close. We fear that if we act like adults then our sons will feel distant from us and they might feel that we don’t understand them. But acting like their peers always backfires.
Lana emasculated her son at an intensely low point in his life because she felt protective of him (this is normal) and she wanted revenge (this is a normal feeling, too). Her mistake came when she acted on her impulses. Her behavior taught Richard two very harmful life lessons: 1) You can’t speak up for yourself and 2) you need Mom around to help you with your relationship issues. Moms, many times, we simply need to back off. Be there for your son if he wants to talk. Look at his Facebook account, but never write on his wall or those of his friends.
When we prevent them from experiencing consequences or negative situations, run interference for them, or rationalize to ourselves why they need us to intervene, advise, and protect, we create an unhealthy dependency that will affect them for a long time. Sometimes they need to endure punishment or get through a difficult time in order to grow and understand themselves better. By backing off, we hand them their own power. And the great news is, backing off isn’t terribly hard, if you know a couple of secrets.
First, regardless of his age, give your son physical challenges. Boys respond very well to demands of this kind because anything they can master physically makes them feel tough and strong. One of the best and easiest ways to do this is to give your son chores. Have him do yard work on a regular basis or help you out around the house by doing dishes or taking out the trash. Tell him that you need his help. He may whine or grumble, but don’t pay attention. Make him help you in the garden, ask him to go the grocery store for you, or you can opt to do what I did with my own son: Ask him to start supper. By doing this, my son quickly grew into a terrific cook. When he was old enough, he would buy the groceries (with my credit card), bring them home, and start dinner, because sometimes I’d have to work late. This was not only fun for me; it will make him a terrific husband one day. So be creative with your son when you look for work for him to do. Don’t limit him to traditional male jobs. You would be surprised how many ways there are for your son to use his physical abilities. And remember, asking him to do physical work isn’t punishment; approach him with it as if you are asking him to do a favor, because you know how strong and capable he is.
Second, as your son matures, you need to communicate to him that he can do many things without your help, because—and I know that this hurts—in an older son’s eyes, needing your help means that he’s a wimp. When he is three, having you help him cut with scissors is acceptable, but when he is thirteen, having you jump in and do his homework for him at his first sign of confusion makes him feel inadequate. I know that many schools are so demanding that many kids need a parent’s help. I don’t agree with this. Having mom or dad routinely help causes a young man to feel that he can’t accomplish things on his own. Needing mom and dad’s help every night does not make for healthy independence and it certainly hurts a boy’s self-confidence. So if your son routinely needs help, talk to his teachers. And if you do help, make sure that he has worked hard at it before he asks for help, because when a mother rushes in to do for a son what he can do on his own, he feels weak and emasculated. Unfortunately, with the best of intentions, we do this all the time. As mothers, we become so used to aiding and nurturing our sons that it can be very difficult to know when to withhold our help. That’s why we must be very cautious. We must watch our sons and challenge them in age-appropriate ways.
In the same manner, we must be attentive enough to recognize when our sons do actually need help. For instance, if a son is struggling with schoolwork, experiencing depression or anxiety, or having trouble in his relationships with friends, although it is good to teach him to first try to handle the issues on his own, if he finds that he can’t, we must ensure he feels comfortable asking an adult for help.
Tom’s mother knew how difficult it could be to withhold help. When Tom was only eight years old, he got into an argument with a classmate because the other boy criticized Tom’s younger brother. Tom didn’t like the insult and told the boy to come over to his house after school to duke it out. Late in the afternoon the doorbell rang, and Tom’s mother answered. On the front stoop stood the boy who had called her younger son names at school. She greeted him and asked if she could help him.
“Yup. I’m here to fight Tom,” said the youngster. She was surprised and paused for a few moments.
Then, she calmly spoke to the boy. “Oh, I see. Well, Tom’s in the backyard. You can go around the side of the house.” She closed the door and, sure enough, the other eight-year-old walked to the backyard and found Tom. As the two met, his mother watched from the kitchen window. She saw them exchange a few words and then they startled to wrestle. No punches were thrown, but after they rolled around on the ground for a bit, Tom’s mother came out and declared that the “fight” was over. She told the classmate that it was time to go home.
I have to confess, as a mother, when Tom told me this story, I gasped inside. If a little boy came to my door wanting to fight my son, I can’t say that I would have allowed it. I probably would have brought the two boys into the kitchen, offered them something to drink and maybe some cookies to put them both in a good mood, and discussed the situation with them. I would have tried to convince them that settling an argument without fighting was a much healthier way to handle conflict, or I would have acted on plan B: Leave the boys out of it entirely and give an angry call to the visitor’s mother.
Fortunately for Tom, I wasn’t his mother. When he told me this story, many years after it happened, he said, “My mother was my hero. I looked up to her even as a young child and when that boy came to my door, my life changed. Instead of telling the boy to go home, my mother sent him out back because she knew that I needed to defend my brother. She knew that my pride was at stake and she wouldn’t take that from me. After that fight was over (and it really wasn’t a fight after all) I felt on top of the world. Not only could I handle myself, but I saw that my mother believed it, too. Her actions told me, ‘Tom, you can handle anything. I believe in you.’ ”
Clearly excited to tell the story, he continued about his mother. “As I got older, I felt so grateful that she did that. When I was in college, I remember sometimes feeling insecure about my studies. Whenever I did, I’d call my mom and she would tell me that I could get through. She was my inspiration. When I left for college, my mother went back as well and then went on to law school. She was brilliant and is currently a judge. Seeing what she did and understanding how much she believed in my abilities to accomplish the goals that I’d set for myself inspired me to go to law school. Those ten minutes of my life changed me and they changed my relationship with my mother. I am so grateful for what she did that day.”
We mothers parent from our instincts and this usually works quite well. However, when it comes to parenting our sons, we need to understand the difference between what they need and what we want to give them. That’s the key to raising fabulous sons. We have to understand that as women, we see things differently than men do and that our sons need us to act in a way that emboldens them, not weakens them.
In many ways, sons can be delightfully easy to parent. They’re often physically restless and need to move a lot, so you can just send them outside to work off their energy. When they are upset, they usually get over it quickly and move forward as if nothing happened. Most boys don’t hold grudges, because they simply can’t be bothered to. They go on about their business. If there is a problem, they like to find solutions and get the issue resolved. We need to remember this and not interfere by trying to get them to approach problems the same way we do.
When it comes to empowering our sons, we have a lot of options. Like Tom’s mother, we can make the decision to let them act on their own impulses and not jump into every argument they have. We can let them struggle on the field (without yelling at their coaches), and we can ask them to do chores that require them to use their physical strength like taking out the trash or raking leaves. We can make them ride their bikes to school instead of expecting us to drive them or have them help their grandparents run errands. Everyone benefits!
But there are other wonderful ways we can hand our sons the ax they need to navigate their way through life. We can teach them to intellectually challenge themselves. Rather than indulging them by giving in to their desires to watch television or play video games, we can hand them age-appropriate books to read and then ask them what they thought of the story. Or better yet, read the book along with your son and discuss questions or thoughts either of you may have about the story as it progresses. Think for a moment what life is like in your house at five o’clock in the afternoon. You have just gotten back from picking one child up from play practice and you’re taking a few minutes to rummage through the refrigerator to figure out what in the world to have for dinner. You groan because you have half a pack of lettuce, a few carrots, and only enough hamburger for two. The inevitable hits you: You need to get back in the car. Your son watches you do all this. You tell him that you’re going to the store and he groans because he’s starving. Then you feel guilty because you really should have been more organized and gotten food the day before (we’re always feeling guilty about something).
Your son is also anxious because he has two tests tomorrow and he’s nervous. He needs your help to study because he just doesn’t understand his algebra. He climbs up onto the sofa and begins to play with his PSP to pass the time while you’re at the store. You know he needs to get his homework started, but you don’t want him to get frustrated with it, so you let him play the video game.
What did you just do? Your decision told him, “You really can’t understand math without me, so wait. You need me. I don’t want you to get impatient and since I’m a good mom, I’m going to help you avoid that. Play the game.”
This may appear trivial, but from a young boy’s perspective, it is a big deal. You are creating a thought pattern regarding what he believes about himself. Sitting on the couch, he feels that he can’t deal with frustration and he can’t do intellectually challenging tasks without you. You, on the other hand, are tired and you don’t want an argument. You just want to get dinner on the table. But with a few tough rules (you battle for them at first, but the battle passes once your son accepts the rules, which he will, if you stick to them), you can ensure that your boy feels more capable, not less so.
The coddling begins early. Talk to any good high school teacher and he or she will tell you that one of the biggest obstacles young men face is being disabled by a loving mother. When our sons are in first or second grade we see them struggle with new ideas and we want to help them out. At first, we coach them in how to do their math problems, and before you know it, we’re starting and finishing dioramas, art projects, and history reports. We feel we have to “help out” because the world is competitive and we don’t want our sons to fall behind. But when we do this, we communicate to our sons that their work simply isn’t good enough without our assistance. By the time they hit fourth grade, many of us have fostered an unhealthy dependency in our sons.
Many mothers feel stuck between trying to teach their sons how to do things on their own and not wanting them to be at an academic disadvantage because other parents of his classmates are doing too much work for their kids. I feel that in situations like this, mothers must go to the teacher and address the problem. The truth is, kids may get better grades if their parents are doing their work, but in the end, everyone loses. The boys who do their own work may get lower grades, and the boys whose parents do their work get higher ones, but the latter never learn what their true capabilities are.
One of the main reasons moms step in and do too much for their sons is that they see him struggling in a certain area and think that picking up the slack for him is the solution. Maybe our son is strong academically, but he seems physically different from the other boys in his class; a bit chubby or athletically clumsy. We desperately want our son to be respected and accepted by his peers, but too often we try to force him to be something he’s not, encouraging him to play ball when he’d rather read or suggesting he try out for a team sport when he doesn’t want to. Feeling sorry for our sons because they don’t fit into the “norm” is different from feeling empathy, and they soon get the message that they are deserving of pity.
Empathizing with a son who lacks athletic prowess, academic strengths, or social skills means that we understand his difficulties and recognize that they will make life more challenging for him. Empathy allows us to be sensitive to his issues, but not take on responsibility for them. It brings us to the point where we can understand the struggles our son faces, but ensures that we keep up healthy and appropriate boundaries when dealing with these struggles, boundaries that are critical to the healthy development of his identity as a man.
Let’s say that your son is athletically challenged. He really wants to play football but is rejected time after time by coaches who say that he isn’t good enough for their team. In this situation, an empathetic mother would help her son understand that she knows he wants to play football but since that isn’t an option, she wants to help him find a better place for him to use his energies (don’t say talents because that might not be accurate). By handling the situation in a matter-of-fact way and helping our son see that he has many other ways to enjoy himself, we teach him that not being talented in football isn’t a big deal. Empathy allows us to understand his situation but not handicap him by overreacting or making him feel like a failure.
If, however, we respond to this situation by feeling sorry for our son and becoming defensive, we communicate to him that he is at fault somehow. Why else would we feel sorry for him, he wonders. Sympathy can cause us to try to prove to our son that he really isn’t a failure. The problem is, our boys see right through this. Even their young minds can reason that if being good at football isn’t a big deal, why does Mom get so upset about it?
When we move from empathizing to sympathizing with our sons, we get into trouble. Where empathy keeps us from taking on the responsibility for their problems, sympathy does not. Sympathy woos us into feeling sorry for our boys. And the moment that pang of feeling sorry for our sons takes hold, we put them in a bad position because now we perceive them as the underdog, the boy with the broken wing. Once we cross over to seeing them as disadvantaged, we begin to treat them as such. A boy will pick up on that feeling and then there’s trouble. No boy wants to feel that his own mother believes he is weak. At first, the sympathy may feel good to him; he will recognize that his mother loves him and cares for him. But over time, the sympathy can be crippling. Most good moms don’t see this coming. We simply watch our sons, pick up on the difficulties they are having, and want to make their lives better. If they are vulnerable to being bullied, we want to make sure that no one hurts them. If they aren’t very popular with other kids in their class, if they have a learning disorder, if life just seems to be unfair to them, our instincts are to step in and make things work out for them. But we must be careful. If you find yourself constantly making excuses for your son’s behavior or defending him to others, ask yourself whether you are feeling empathy or pity. Then remind yourself that feeling sorry for him never leads to anywhere good. It only hurts him.
If your son lives with a perceived (or real) disadvantage, challenge him to live as normally as possible with his difference, or even use it to make himself stronger. You will probably feel that you are acting against your maternal instinct by doing this, but that’s okay. It’s still the right thing to do.
When Quinton was a freshman in college, he began experiencing intense anxiety, often waking up at night with panic attacks. At first, he didn’t call home to tell his mother, Andrea, but soon the attacks became so severe that he was unable to leave his dormitory. When he finally told her, Andrea immediately drove three hours to his school to meet with him and help him figure out what to do. Quinton wanted to drop out. He was embarrassed to let his roommates or friends know what was happening. When Andrea arrived, she found him anxious, thin, and pale. Over the next several days, they talked about his anxiety and they made a plan for him to see a good counselor and a local doctor. Andrea told me that at first she felt so sorry for Quinton that she wanted to pack up his things and bring him home. She said that she hurt so much for him she became nauseated and couldn’t sleep.
While she was with him at college, he admitted to her that he had been smoking a lot of marijuana just to get through the day. He had even been caught in town with the drug and was put in jail for several days. He said that he had been too ashamed to call her. But he just couldn’t stop smoking because he felt so terrible and the pot helped. She understood, she said, because he was in such turmoil. But she told him that taking drugs was in the past.
When Andrea got home, she called me because she wasn’t sure that she had done the right thing. “At first, all I really wanted was to bring him home. I didn’t even really condemn his smoking. I knew it helped him and he was having such a hard time of it. Then something happened to me as we spent those days together. I so desperately wanted to tell him that he could quit school, but I didn’t. Instead I told him that yes, he was having bad anxiety but he was going to be okay. We found a doctor and a counselor and I told him that he needed to finish the last six weeks of school. I said that life is hard but that what he had was treatable and that I would do everything I could to help him recover.”
As a mother, I understood her impulse to excuse his use of marijuana and even feel sorry that he got caught and spent time in jail. And I can say that I, too, would have been tempted to plunk his nineteen-year-old body in the car and drive him home. But as a physician, I can tell you that she made exactly the right decision for Quinton at that juncture in his life. Yes, he had bad anxiety, but when she approached it in a matter-of-fact manner and helped him devise a plan to treat it, he was relieved. If she had gone to him and told him how terrible she felt for him and how awful it was that he had to suffer panic attacks, and how he should just come home, he would have sensed her pity for him and this would have made his problems much worse.
When she told her son that he most surely had the emotional stamina to finish the year, she communicated to him that in spite of his anxiety problem, he was strong. She also told him that while she understood it, smoking pot was not acceptable even when he was feeling anxious. In other words, she communicated high expectations for his future without condemning him. Although she felt tough and coldhearted, she did her son an enormous favor. She gave him an ax when he needed it most.
Because men usually aren’t the primary caregivers in the home, they feel safe allowing their identity to be bound in their work, which is the lens through which most adult men see themselves. Even when boys are young, they see their father’s identity as strongly tied to his profession. They learn that working is part of being a man. Work builds strength of character in boys because it allows them to feel accomplished and proud of themselves. As they mature through their teen years, healthy psychological development depends on transitioning from being dependent on mom to being independent, and having the responsibility of some kind of work allows this process to happen.
Boys as young as six or seven years old will feel better about themselves knowing that they are relied on to do certain things. But for many of us, handing our young son a list of chores makes us feel guilty. We are the caregivers, the ones who run our households and provide a nice home environment for our families. Asking our sons to work can feel counterintuitive. What we need to realize, however, is that while boys may complain and grumble, they need chores to do, tasks of their own, in order to have a sense of belonging. Even young boys need to feel that they are an integral part of a unit and that they are needed. When boys aren’t asked to do anything at home (whether they are paid or not), they feel that they are not needed. A boy who has no responsibilities may behave like a spoiled brat, but really, he is acting out because he is a frustrated, sometimes lonely, boy yearning to belong in an important way to his family.
I encourage mothers to begin finding small chores for boys to do as soon as they are big enough to handle them. As boys mature, the work should become more difficult, more frequent, and thus more meaningful. The work can be divided up between chores at home and a paid job outside the home. This is particularly important for single mothers for several reasons.
First, single mothers usually feel more guilt because the father isn’t around and many try to compensate by making life easier for their sons. Their guilt causes them to work harder and ask less from their sons. But in that situation, both mother and son lose out. The son loses the very important realization that he is needed and that he has an important role in the family. And mom loses out because she is constantly overworked and exhausted. So for those of you who are single mothers or mothers who receive very little support from your spouses, please don’t deprive your sons of all the benefits they receive through the years by working. Before they leave home, it is imperative that they have a strong sense of accomplishment and contribution, because as they mature, they begin to bind their identity up with their ability to produce good work. Boys who work hard feel better about themselves. Strong mothers teach them that, yes, they are always loved unconditionally, but also that working hard is vital for them.
Many mothers “protect” their sons from doing chores, reasoning that boys need to spend their free time on sports and other extracurricular activities so that they can get into a good college, or simply to just have fun. While I understand the desire to help position sons to achieve long-term goals, we mothers must remember that uncovering a passion or skill does our sons no good if they don’t know how to cultivate a work ethic. Yes, they can learn discipline on a football field, in a classroom, or in a concert hall, but in those environments they are learning how to get better at something through discipline and practice and thus to see a clear improvement in their performance. Work that is separate from sports or other self-centered activities teaches sons how to persevere simply because it’s the right thing to do. If they spend the afternoon raking leaves, they won’t receive accolades or a clear sense of some improvement in a skill, but they will get a feeling of accomplishment and the pride that comes from helping others and being responsible.
Many mothers have come to believe that our lives are about giving, providing, and handing things to our sons. We do this because we have seen our friends do it and because we feel some peer pressure to do the same. And some of us do it because, well, it’s just easier than fighting with our boys. Our sons will at times argue about helping out around the house and sometimes it’s easier to just do the chores ourselves and skip the hassle of trying to force our reluctant boys to do them. In my experience, energy is the primary limiting factor to great parenting and I completely understand this. But what we need to remember is that getting boys started on this path is the tough part, the part that requires the most energy. Once they are used to working, life gets easier. We won’t have to prod and fight for years to come; all we need to do is invest the initial energy to launch them down that path. Boys will argue forever about not doing chores if they know arguing is going to get them out of it. Once we let them know that we refuse to relent, and communicate that work is just a part of life, they give up and their responsibilities simply become part of the rhythm of their lives.
I am often asked by moms how much work boys should do at different ages. If you are unsure what you should ask of your son, here are a few guidelines for chores and tasks around the home that I recommend for boys.
For preschoolers: Give them one chore in the house that they must do a couple of times per week. Maybe it’s to help move a wet load of clothes from the washer to the dryer, to help pick up toys, or to help you sweep the kitchen floor. The important thing is to pick a chore that he can do over and over. This helps him get into a routine and builds the foundation of work being a part of life.
For the elementary school years: Give them a chore that must be done at least three times per week either before or after school. It doesn’t have to take long. He can sort through the recyclable materials in the house, clear dinner dishes, set the table, etc. Ideally, the chore should be something that not only helps him, but also benefits everyone else in the family. This makes him feel that he is an integral part of the family unit.
For junior high and high schoolers: Boys should have daily chores and can begin to pick up work outside their homes. If your son is too young to work at a store, then he can ask neighbors if they have yard work, painting, or other household chores that need to be done. Perhaps there is an elderly couple that needs their driveway shoveled in winter or their lawn mowed in the summer. I’m not advocating that boys spend their entire summers working and never having fun, but it is certainly possible to combine the two. The important thing is that during these crucial years when sons are developing independence, they have some work which gives them a sense of capability and autonomy. These are both extremely important qualities for adolescent boys to obtain. And a job can keep them out of trouble. In my twenty-five years of working with boys, I have found that those who work or who have something that they feel invested in drink less, have better self-esteem, have lower rates of depression, and have a happier outlook toward life in general. With that as a basis, they are then much better prepared for their future years when they no longer live with you.
One of the great disservices that we nice mothers do for our sons is that we try so hard to keep them from being bored we end up over-scheduling them. When my own son was a teenager, I wanted him to figure out if he’d rather be a professional soccer player, go to the Olympics to compete in tae kwon do, become a neurosurgeon, learn how to lead a group of students in the wilderness (like his father had done at his age; here’s a tip: Never make him do what his father did), or become a chemical engineer. He needed to try out all of these things in order to pick one, I reasoned, so how in the world did he have time to work? In my mind it was my job, as his very good mother, to make sure that he got his future figured out before his sophomore year in college.
My intentions, as his doting, overzealous mom, were good, I guess. I wanted the best for my son. But what my instincts (and friends) told me was best for my son, wasn’t. He needed a job and he needed to learn how to cope with boredom more than he needed to figure out whether or not he was good enough to be a professional soccer player. A good mother would make him figure out how to manage the daily stresses of life (like what to do when he’s bored) before pushing him to find out what he wanted to be when he grew up. But, ugh. I didn’t want to. I wanted him to be super-active because I believed that’s what great moms did for their sons: give them opportunities, good times, adventures and activities, leaving no room for boredom.
Fortunately (for me) I figured out a way to combine responsibility with fun when his aunt needed help in her coffee shop one summer. Making coffee is kind of boring when you’re a senior in high school, but I can tell you that overall, it was a wonderful experience for him. I saw his demeanor change. He continued to play soccer, but something about helping his aunt, getting up and going to a job that was albeit a bit dull, working hard, and being committed to a schedule made him happy. He often came home from soccer or from summer school (yup—I threw that in there to get him amped up for college) in a sour mood. But when he came home from work, his mood was upbeat. He expected work to be boring, so he made it fun. Soccer practice, on the other hand, was supposed to make him stronger, a better player, and it cost money. When it failed to deliver (which it frequently did), he felt disappointed. Working in a coffee shop never failed to deliver because he made it what he wanted it to be.
Anyone who has spent any time around a male, regardless of his age, knows that every now and then boys just need a fight to win. Sometimes the fight is physical; often it is mental. Either way, boys are wired to want to control situations and people and, in particular, to defend what they believe is right. This is tough for many moms because we aren’t all wired this way. Sure, some of us can be very assertive, going to battle when someone we love is threatened, but in my experience, boys are generally more prone to waging wars than are their sisters.
Watch any five-year-old boy who goes outside to play. Within minutes, he will find a branch or a stone to fight a bear with. He will build things and destroy them moments later only to rebuild them again. Boys are gross-motor people and many times this manifests itself in a desire to fight off enemies. We need to be ready to embrace this instinct and channel it in a healthy direction. This is important not only to help a son get rid of energy, but also to build self-confidence. Contrary to what you might believe or read, playing video games with war themes in no way satisfies your son’s need to have a battle to fight. Violent video games, violent movies, or songs with violent themes cause boys to become desensitized to others and act more aggressively as they get older. It does not teach them compassion or give them a sense of their own, masculine power. We have numerous studies documenting the damaging effects of violent media on boys.1 We know that watching violence repeatedly over time causes boys to act out more and be more aggressive.2 Engaging in violent media does not assuage his desire for fighting; it only desensitizes him.
Many mothers ask me if I think it’s okay for their young boys to play war games with plastic figurines. Some are concerned when they see their sons and the other boys in the neighborhood playing games where one group represents the villains and the other the heroes. Often boys will pick up sticks and fashion make-believe guns, causing their mothers to worry that they have the next Unabomber on their hands. To these mothers, I say, relax! There is an enormous difference in the effect that engaging in make-believe has as compared to playing violent video games. The former utilizes a boy’s imagination. It allows him to release some of his fears and apprehensions. Bruno Bettelheim wrote extensively about a boy’s need to read fairy tales that deal with good-guy, bad-guy themes, because hearing a story that deals with right and wrong, a story with a hero and a villain, allows a boy the opportunity to resolve internal conflicts about good and bad or right and wrong on his own. With fantasy, he can imagine himself as the knight who saves the girl in distress. If he has read about a cruel king who is mean to his subjects, he can recognize that perhaps he, too, behaves badly when he has angry feelings toward people in his own life. Because he can actively recruit his imagination, he is able to process deeper thoughts and feelings that are perhaps conflicting. He may imagine himself as the king riding through the woods with a sword at his side and a horse beneath him. He may feel how powerful he would be as king. He would be nice, he thinks but he understands why the king is mean. Then he wonders if being mean is fine, because the king was mean, or should he be nice like his mother has told him? The conflict over his wanting to be mean like the king or nice, like his mother says to be, grows. He ultimately decides to let the king stay mean and that he will be nice, because life works better that way. This is just one example of how fantasy allows a young boy to resolve conflict in a healthy way.
This doesn’t happen when boys use video games and act reflexively; they absorb messages and imitate behaviors but they never process issues on a deeper level.
Teaching sons to be assertive and to fight for what they believe in takes on many forms. An important part of a boy’s self-esteem is built by learning how to defend himself and stick up for what he believes is right. Does this mean that we are to teach our son to knock kids down on the playground if they take a swing at him? No. But it does mean that we teach our son what to do if he feels he is being taken advantage of, demeaned, or bullied.
We have become so afraid of insulting others that we have made our sons feel that they can’t defend themselves and worse—that they don’t need to defend those around them who are being victimized. I have listened to recordings of boys bullying others. Often, what is as disturbing as hearing the voices of those who are taunting is the lack of defense coming from the boys who are standing by watching. Being mean is easy. Intervening and defending those who are wronged is hard. And I can tell you that if you want to raise a boy who grows into a man who feels good about himself and about life, teach him how to fight for those who need his help. If your son is tall and bigger than most of the other boys in his class, teach him to watch out for the smaller boys or those who are considered nerdy. As he grows older, encourage him to be chivalrous. When he’s in high school, teach him to keep an eye out for girls who may be pushed around by others. And when he is in college, encourage him to offer to walk his coed colleagues across campus if it’s late at night. By helping others, he will feel better about himself and learn to be more selfless.
Fortunately, we can teach our sons to be mentally savvy. The best place to start is to alert our boys that many of the messages coming at them on a daily basis about being popular, sexy, aggressive, or disrespectful to girls can affect the way they see themselves. So we must first try to uncover what these messages are and then help our sons fight them off. This is a wonderful way for boys to engage in “battle,” if you will. Here are some of the most common toxic messages that boys receive, which you can help them fight. I have collected all of these from the young men I have seen over the past twenty-five years. Your son may struggle with some or all of them. You’ll easily be able to tell which ones hit home with him.
Most boys mature more slowly than girls, particularly in the early elementary school years. Boys often catch on to reading later than girls, have more difficulty paying attention in school, or have trouble with the sciences and math. If they are in a coed class, they will quickly pick out the girls who are faster learners. Since they don’t understand their own cognitive developmental process, they conclude that they are stupid. Significantly more boys than girls are marked as “learning challenged” or as having ADHD by the time they are in the first or second grade.3 The feelings of inferiority and the lack of self-esteem such a designation can cause can stick for years. I have had boys tell me that a teacher once told them they were poor readers in an early grade and that the humiliation they felt at this stayed with them all the way through high school.
I am extremely cautious when it comes to labeling boys in the early elementary years as having any learning issues, because in many cases, they simply need more time to mature. I encourage you to be the advocate for your son and make sure he gets the growing time he needs. If a teacher or doctor wants to label him as having difficulties, that person should be able to prove it. Because once a boy is diagnosed, there may be no going back.
The best thing to do with any boy is to avoid using words like smart or intelligent. You simply don’t know, in those early years, what his intellectual capacity will be. It is just as harmful to tell a child he is gifted before you know enough about it as it is to label a child as having learning difficulties.
If your son does worry that he can’t keep up at school, especially compared to the girls his age, you can help him challenge his feelings about not being smart. Teach him that when those thoughts come into his mind—that he can’t do something or isn’t smart enough to solve a problem—they are just thoughts, not reality. Teach him that he can ignore those negative ideas or fight back at them and make them go away.
If your son feels this way his self-esteem will be poor, regardless of his age. Therefore, you must do two things to help him combat this idea. First, if his father is willing, ask him to increase the amount of time that he is spending with your son. Boys (particularly teen boys) get an enormous boost to their self-confidence when they see their father paying attention to them. Second, see if you can tease the idea that he is unlikable out of him and then help him reverse it. This is important because boys need to begin to separate how they feel about themselves from what’s really true about themselves. Boys may feel unlikable when they are in fact very likable. Point out to him what is genuinely wonderful about him. Is he courageous, patient, empathetic, or a good brother? Try to highlight character qualities in him that you are proud of rather than things that he does well. He doesn’t want to be likable because of the things he does, but because of who he is.
Then teach him that even if there are kids in his class who don’t like him and have been mean to him, that doesn’t mean that he is unlikable; it may simply mean that they aren’t the nicest kids. As you help him identify ugly thoughts, also help him replace them with positive ones. Again, this requires a lot of patience, but over time, it really works.
Many fathers have commented to me that being bullied is simply a part of life for a young boy. It’s part of the establishment of the pecking order, they reason. While this may sit all right with some fathers, it certainly doesn’t sit well with mothers. We are the protectors of our sons from a very early age, and we feel that it is not only our right to protect our sons; it is our duty.
Stories about bullying have become far more prevalent in the news these days, either because bullying has become more common or because we are only now reporting on it. I think it is a combination of the two. The last decade has also seen the creation and rise of Internet bullying. Boys can now bully another child in front of a huge audience of friends through Facebook posts, tweets, or YouTube videos. No longer is the victim humiliated before a few familiar peers—now he or she is embarrassed in front of hundreds of other kids. This makes the emotional pain of the bullying that much greater.
Shame and humiliation are two of the hardest emotions for boys to deal with, because they are so complex. They impact his self-esteem, his beliefs about himself, and his beliefs about those around him. Every good mother wants to protect her son from these emotions, but doing so can be tricky. If we aren’t careful, we can intensify a boy’s humiliation by trying to fight his battles for him long after he’s old enough and mature enough to handle it himself.
There are several important things that we can do to help prevent our sons from being bullied and to help them recover if this does occur. First, we must teach our sons to be politely assertive. Some boys are naturally bossy; others are more sensitive and quiet. Without changing the personality of a boy (which we can’t do anyway) we can influence how he interacts with his peers. We can train him to speak up for himself without being overly aggressive. The best way to do this is to ask him from an early age about his feelings and wishes. For example, after visiting with extended family, we can ask our son what he liked most about the visit and what he didn’t like. By asking his opinion about important matters, we communicate that his words and thoughts have value. This doesn’t mean that we ask our boys what they want all the time and then give it to them; it simply means that we care about what they think and feel. A boy learns that he, too, should value his own thoughts and feelings. By asking him to verbalize both positive and negative feelings, we are helping him practice saying things that he might not otherwise articulate.
Teaching your son not to be afraid of bullies is also very important. Bullies prey on kids who are quiet, compliant, nice, and, sometimes, a little different from the rest of the class. They may pick on the smartest boy, the one who wins all the awards. And sometimes they just pick on the one who lets them get away with it. Bullies tend to stay away from kids who will challenge them. If a boy stares a bully down, the bully will most likely move on to an easier target.
You should always be on the lookout for signs of bullying, particularly because boys often don’t tell their mothers when it happens to them. The older the boy, the less likely he is to tell his mom. You must be diligent in your detective work. Watch for signs of withdrawal, or of suddenly not wanting to go to school. If your son rides the bus, he may refuse, seemingly out of the blue, to get on it. If he is bullied on the playground, he may ask to stay indoors all the time. Remember, bullying makes boys feel humiliated and weak, and when these feelings settle inside, they make boys feel miserable. But since boys don’t easily come out and state that they feel humiliated and embarrassed, the pent-up emotions come out “sideways.” For instance, a boy may become sullen, his grades may drop, his interest in doing activities that he previously enjoyed may vanish, or he may suddenly have angry outbursts for no reasons at all. All of these are signs that he could be feeling some humiliation, and when you notice them, you should prod a bit to see if he is being bullied.
If you find out that this is indeed what’s going on, you first need to assess the situation. It’s important not to overreact, since that will make any problem worse. For instance, if one boy continually accuses your son of cheating, that may not necessarily constitute bullying, especially if your son knows the boy and doesn’t care about what that boy says. If someone calls him a name and he calls the offender a name back, that may not qualify, depending on the context and what the insults were. Defining whether your son is feeling bullied really depends on the effect that the bad behavior from the offender has on him. Often boys banter back and forth and no one gets particularly offended because they know one another well and feel that they are on equal social footing. Sometimes in our fervor to stand up for our sons we make small matters much larger than they really are.
If you have determined that your son is truly being humiliated, that is when you need to step up to the plate. Find out the details from the teacher or adult in charge. If they don’t help you resolve the issue, or if you feel that the bully hasn’t been adequately reprimanded, go to the principal. If the principal fails you, then go to the other child’s parents. I encourage both parents to be involved in this process if possible because sadly, many authority figures listen to men more than they do women. The more you can present a united front as parents, the better.
Let’s turn the tables for a moment. What if you find out that your son is a bully? Universally, parents believe that their son could “never do mean things” to others. This denial is ingrained in almost every parent I see. What is it in us parents that refuses to see all sides of our children? We want them to be wonderful because they are a reflection of us, and we want to think that we are wonderful. But we must get over this. Humility helps us realize that our kids can face the same struggle we do to always be kind and nonjudgmental. As badly as we don’t want to see their faults, we must, because in order to help them grow up into happy, responsible adults, we need to help them confront and reverse bad behaviors.
If you hear accusations about your son being a bully, first verify them. Ask his teacher, or another parent you trust. Don’t ask his friends, because they may not tell you the truth. Then ask your son if he did what others have accused him of doing. This is tricky because he will be defensive (if he’s guilty) and he may lie. He doesn’t want to disappoint you and he also doesn’t want to suffer the consequences. You may need to ask several times over several days, but find out the truth.
Once you determine that he is doing cruel things to others, he must learn some lessons. Being mean always hurts him and it hurts others. If you fail to teach him how serious being mean is by letting him off the hook, you cripple his growth. So don’t let that happen. Discuss his behavior, tell him why it is absolutely unacceptable, and then come up with appropriate punishment. This will require him to humble himself and feel humiliation. He should apologize (in person is best) to the victim and to the victim’s parents. Then he must be made to work, lose something that he enjoys, or be put on probation. If his behavior is such that he is suspended from school, then make sure he puts the time off to use. He should not be allowed to just stay home and watch television or play video games. This is hard for parents and takes some tough inner fortitude, but it is one of the kindest things parents can do for a child who’s acting out.
But most important is to get to the root of the behavior. Why is he being mean? Without treating him as a victim (because this paralyzes boys, too), talk frankly about feelings. Why is he in turmoil? Why is he so angry? Does he not feel compassion or empathy? You may need a professional to help you, because most parents can’t elicit this kind of information from their kids. You are simply too close to them, so ask for help. But whatever you do, never shy away from the truth of what is happening and what your son is doing. Keeping your eyes wide open is one of the best parenting skills you can acquire. Your child will never lead a healthy, happy life if you allow him to deny what is happening.
Mothers can underestimate the loud messages that teen boys receive about being sexually active. It often seems that men who have sex with multiple women are more macho. As his mom, you know a whole lot better. There is tremendous pressure on boys to have sex before they graduate from high school. And, very important, many boys feel bad about themselves if they aren’t having sex or if they have had sex and it ended up being a bad experience. I see the latter situation quite frequently in teen boys.
We need to be ready to tackle sexual issues with our sons. It’s tough and uncomfortable but it has to be done, not just because there is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases out there, but because many teen boys feel poorly about themselves if they perceive that they aren’t as sexually active as their friends. In fact, often boys will boast about the number of sexual partners they have had (whether they are being truthful or not) to make themselves appear more macho than their friends. If a boy believes that having sex makes him more manly and he believes that his friends are more sexually active than he is, he can feel inferior. And this can color a boy’s feelings about other things as he grows up. But being too sexually active at too young an age can also harm his future personality. Quite simply, if your son seems to be struggling with this issue, find a time to sit him down and talk about the positive aspects of not being sexually active. Tell him that he probably will feel out of the loop with many of his friends. And there certainly is no harm in telling him that many boys (even his friends) lie about how many partners they have had. Show him that by holding off on sex, he has more self-control and values himself more than they do. Never talk about sex in a negative way; always be upbeat and positive. If he senses that you are a sex hater or that you feel it is disgusting, he’ll tune you out in a nanosecond.
Remember, you can give him a perspective about self-respect and sex that a man can’t give him. As you teach him to respect his own body, tell him how to respect a woman’s body. And tell him why. His friends will probably talk about girls in a condescending way, boasting that they “made it” with one girl or another. When he hears this, he may feel that it’s wrong to talk about women that way but become desensitized because so many of his friends accept this kind of talk. So tell him that it isn’t acceptable. If he has a sister, ask him how he would feel if his friends were talking about her that way. The protectiveness he feels if he imagines them talking about his sister (or other close female relative or friend) is something he should feel toward all women. So encourage him to treat women well. I can promise, when he hears it from you, it will resonate on some level and he won’t forget.
If his father is around, it is important for him to weigh in on sexual issues with your son. Boys look up to their dads when it comes to many issues—especially sex. But often fathers hesitate in talking to their sons about it; they either feel guilty because they had sexual encounters when they were young that they regret, or because they are simply shy when it comes to talking about sex. It is very important for your son to know, however, what his father thinks about him having sex. Sons don’t really care what their dads did as teens; they care what their fathers think about what they are doing now. So encourage your husband to talk with your son about putting the brakes on.
You can broach the subject of sex by asking your son if his friends are dating. If he says they are, tell him that you know that many kids his age are sexually active and then gently ask if any of his friends are. Don’t act as though you think these are “bad” kids; just ask in a matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental tone. From his response you’ll be able to pick up on what his thoughts about sex are, and you may even be able to figure out if he’s having sex himself. Either way, the most important thing is to keep the conversation going. (More on the subject of your son and sex will follow in Chapter 8.)
Your son might feel awkward, but his awkwardness should not stop you from talking, because the topic is important. You can ask questions sideways if you prefer, rather than straight on. For instance, you can say, “If I were in your shoes, I’d have a tough time figuring out what to do with girls. Some guys are having sex and some aren’t. I also know that sexual activity can make guys feel better or worse about themselves. Has that ever happened to you?”
Most likely your son will avoid the conversation, but keep talking anyway. Boys are squeamish when it comes to talking with their moms about sex, but again, even if he doesn’t respond, keep going. Tell him that many boys feel they need to have sex in order to be cool. Tell him that this isn’t true. If he does feel weird about himself or concerned because of a sexual issue, stress that those are just thoughts and he can change his thoughts. In all of these instances, it is vital that you arm him with the tools to combat negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. This is one of the most powerful lessons that you can ever impart to your son.
We need our sons to be able to fight and stick up for themselves when they have to. They need to have the confidence to trust themselves, even when we aren’t there. There’s not a lot of positive reinforcement in the messages society sends about teenage boys. Well-meaning teachers label them with learning problems too early, friends at school can turn into bullies at a moment’s notice, and fathers who bail on their sons can rip the center right out of their being. Moms who continually jump in to save their sons and fix their problems also send a message: You can’t do it without me. The great mom is one who hands her son an ax, teaches him how to use it, and then steps backs and lets him.