Wisdom is a curious thing. It is not knowledge or judgment, intelligence, insight, or the willingness to do what is right. Nor is it simply spiritual, given supernaturally by God. It is all of these combined. Wisdom is crucial to good parenting because every parent aspires to be wise and then pass that wisdom on to their children. As mothers, we can give our kids clothing, an education, love, and all sorts of comforts, but when we teach them wisdom, we prepare them to handle anything that life throws at them. Having wisdom helps them draw on many character qualities, such as perseverance, patience, and assertiveness, and use those qualities to overcome challenging moments in their lives. Passing motherly wisdom along to our sons can feel like an elusive, frightening task. What is the best way to do that, we wonder? We might even question our level of wisdom, and whether we possess enough to pass it along. But I have listened to thousands of mothers over the years, and one thing I know for sure is that when it comes to your kids, you instinctively know what is right and good for them.
Some of a mother’s wisdom is a hardwired, intuitive sense of awareness when it comes to her children. We can either choose to grow that wisdom—feed and water it—or ignore it and let it turn stale; it all depends upon our willingness to learn, listen, and pay attention to our maternal instincts. For most mothers, fear is the greatest enemy of wisdom. Fear can inhibit great parenting, especially when we become afraid to do what our hearts tell us to do and we follow the pack instead. When we succumb to the pack mentality, we constantly compare ourselves to other moms. We work harder to buy our sons nicer stuff, get them into better schools, and cook them more elaborate or healthier foods. We create a list in our minds of the things that all “good” moms do, and we work ourselves to the bone getting that list taken care of. The list for a mother with a second-grade boy might look something like this: make sure he gets to school on time, make sure he is in the “fast” reading group (and if he isn’t, find him a tutor), get him to at least two sports per semester in order to find out which sport he excels at and to make sure his talent is adequately developed, do his homework with him, pay attention to how well he concentrates while doing it (you must be the first to discover ADHD if he has it), cook him great meals (preferably with organic ingredients), train him to keep his room neat, and if he doesn’t, hire a cleaning person (who, by the way, wants you to clean before she comes), and get him to bed on time to ensure that he gets a healthy amount of sleep. When you are done with this list, finish the work that you couldn’t finish at the office (if you have a job outside the home—which, by the way, you constantly feel guilty about) and then spend quality time with your husband.
This is what life on the crazy train is like. Every mother has a picture in her mind of herself as the perfect mom and every day she tries to live up to that image. The problem is, perfection is unattainable. All that image does is cause us to go to bed feeling frustrated and angry with ourselves because we fell short of being the mother we were “supposed” to be. This is not wise living and it is not healthy. It is fear-based living. So why do we do it? Because we live in a culture that has perpetuated this unattainable image of the perfect mother. We’ve seen it presented in parenting books and in articles about good parenting; this is the image our friends and family hold us up to even if they can’t attain it themselves; just like for us, perfection is their goal and they perpetuate the myth even as they fail, like us. Review the above list and if it sounds only too familiar, ask yourself why. Why are you on the crazy train? Is it true that you do most of what you do for your son because you are afraid that if you don’t, he will turn out badly and you will be perceived as a terrible mother?
I challenge you today to take a hard look at how well your version of the list is working for you and your son. If it is helpful rather than harmful and you can keep up and enjoy life, great. But if you can’t—and most of us can’t—then listen to that little voice that says there must be a better way, the voice that is prompting you to make some changes. Living on the crazy train is bad for mothers, but it’s also bad for their sons. It is the opposite of living wisely. I will tell you a secret about boys: They hate it when they feel their moms are performing for them. They want less of the stuff you do for them and more of you. It really is that simple.
In order to give your son more of you, abandon your fears about what you feel you should be doing. Begin listening to your heart and your instincts, because that is where you will find your great wisdom as a mother. Every mother has an innate sense about her children that can guide her, but I can tell you that if you feel anxious, depressed, and exhausted, you will not be able to hear it. On the other hand, if you slow down enough to listen, you will find that the combination of your life experiences as a mother and woman, the intuition you have as a mother and woman, your moral foundation, your judgment and your heart, will lead you to the right parenting path.
It is possible for a woman to be highly intelligent but not wise. A mother can be very well educated, have an excellent job, and not be wise. Conversely, a wise mother needn’t have a job, a higher education, an above-average IQ, or much “worldly” experience under her belt; a wise mother is one who is able to utilize her beliefs, her faith, her instincts, and her feelings about her son in order to foster and maintain a nurturing and supportive home environment. The interesting thing about wisdom is that in order to be wise, a mother must have moral clarity, a deep concern for her children, an ability to see herself and the world around her in a critical, honest light, and a willingness to act on her beliefs. And being wise also means be willing to open ourselves to ask God for help, because there are many times that we mothers come to the end of our ropes. We might not know what to do or what to say. We may not be in charge of the decisions that our sons make and we need to recruit help from beyond ourselves—from God.
When my son was in high school, I leaned on God regularly for help. Every time he got in the car and drove somewhere, I prayed for his safety. When he went out with friends at night, I asked God to help him make smart decisions and cover him even if he didn’t. Faith to me was an enormous component in trying to be a wise mom.
A wise mother isn’t a wimp. She doesn’t follow what others are doing just for the sake of conformity. She knows who she is and goes after what she needs to keep herself and her family healthy and happy. A wise mother knows that the best way to care for her family is to ensure that she is emotionally and mentally stable, that she is happy.
Utilizing our wisdom and teaching our sons to be wise is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) gifts that we can give our boys. But what if we don’t feel wise in a given situation? How do we draw on our intuition and use wisdom when we are in the middle of an argument where tempers are flaring? The trick is to act wise; wisdom will follow. If you are having a disagreement with a friend or family member, is it better to yell and call names, or to process what the other person has said and then respond in a calm and well-tempered manner? If you follow the second course, your son will see this behavior and learn from it; if you behave the same way when dealing with him, then he in turn will be given an opportunity to reflect, rather than just fight you and rebel.
I have written earlier about identity development in boys and how it evolves. They watch their mothers. They scrutinize our every move, down to the inflections in our voice and our body language, in order to learn how to be. If we have a secure relationship with them, they mimic our behaviors. They try them on and then, if they like them, they begin to internalize those behaviors. In other words, what they see in us often becomes part of them. Kids are drawn to wisdom because they understand that while intelligence may be a respected attribute, it is somehow not as important as being wise. If our sons see us act out of fear, they will learn that life requires them to be afraid. Sons mimic us from the time they are very young until they are grown men because mimicking is instinctive when they spend so much time with us. If they see us act using calm reflection and demonstrate openness to others, they will learn those attributes and apply them in their own lives.
Aside from acquiring wisdom from us, our boys also need to learn about personal responsibility.
Those two attributes combined can make for a very healthy, happy, and successful life. Responsibility is mainly taught at home; at school, our sons learn how to compete: get the best grades, beat the other team on the playing field, and so on. In fact, school sometimes emphasizes self-improvement at the expense of other people. So as mothers, as the stabilizing force in our families, it is up to us to provide a good lesson to our sons in responsibility. It is, in most cases, the mother who makes sure the safety belt is buckled, insists on a bike helmet, keeps track of various schedules, provides the transportation to school events, and makes sure homework gets done; in other words, we become our son’s model on how to shoulder responsibility in everyday life.
Too often today, the culture we live in doesn’t support a sense of personal responsibility. I have had grade school teachers tell me that when a child has acted up and they call the parents, the parents often make excuses for the child or get mad at the teacher. The lesson? The child isn’t to blame. And children quickly pick up on this message. They learn that it’s fine to step on others’ toes to get ahead or to have someone else take the heat for their mistakes. Common themes on television and movies these days seem to be learning how to manipulate—people, a company, you name it—in order to get ahead. Many of my teen patients have told me that they can’t help themselves when they scream at their parents. Just yesterday I consulted on a thirteen-year-old boy who “rages,” according to his mother. When she takes his iPhone away, he kicks doors, screams names at her, and destroys his bedroom. She wondered if there was any type of medication because, she told me, he just can’t seem to help himself. But he can help himself, and she must show him how.
It is a lack of personal responsibility as well as the anonymity of the Internet that has led to an increase in bullying today (as I touched upon in chapter 6). Now mean kids have easier access to their victims and know that an adult won’t see what they do. Kids feel that they have the right to say whatever they want to any other kid at any time of the day. Song artists don’t help, either, writing violent lyrics encouraging kids to be mean to others. The media and our celebrities teach our sons that it is easier to blame someone else’s faults than blame themselves, to get defensive rather than own up to their own errors. Sincere apologies rarely fall from their lips. This is not entirely their fault; it is endemic of the time in which we live: We have become a culture of finger pointers. So we moms must be there to teach this valuable trait of stepping up and taking ownership of our actions; we must be the ones to set an example of responsibility for our boys and then coax them toward it. We must help them understand the freedom that comes from admitting an offense committed and understanding why it was wrong. We must teach our sons how to feel and react when they mess up and how to appropriately respond to the consequent embarrassment and shame. How cruel would it be to renege on this and allow our sons to grow into men who can never admit wrongdoing (there are many out there living this way); who can never say, “I’m sorry.” These are the most freeing words in the English language and you can be the one to teach our sons to say them.
Wisdom and responsibility are a powerful duo because they work hand in hand. Wise mothers are responsible and responsible mothers are wise. You can’t be one without the other. But passing those attributes along to our children can sometimes feel as challenging as swimming upstream. That’s especially true when what we want for our sons in general contradicts what we want for them in specific situations. For example, we want to teach our sons to treat peers as they themselves would like to be treated and to stand up for the underdog, but when they do confront a bully, we don’t want them to get in trouble. We want our boys to be respectful, but also to challenge those around them when they see bad things happening. We want them to be like their friends, but to not give in to peer pressure when those friends are drinking or taking drugs. How peculiar it is to encourage our sons to dress like their classmates (we buy them the shoes that all of their friends wear), participate in the same school events, and spend ample time socializing, but then tell them not to bend to peer pressure under any circumstance. How can we tell them to be like their peers one minute but then reject or dismiss what their peers may be doing the next?
If this question seem confusing to you, know that it is doubly confusing to your kids. So what I propose as an answer is that we simply teach our sons how to act wisely. This means teaching them early on in life what is good and bad, right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy. The beautiful part of wisdom is that it forces you off the fence. A mother can’t be wise and have no clue as to what she believes at the same time. Wisdom has a wonderful way of dispersing the gray areas of our lives and bringing clarity to the very important issues. That’s why teaching our sons wisdom needs to start right from their birth.
At the risk of squeezing a complex entity into a box, I am going to outline what I have come to appreciate as the attributes of wise mothers.
If we want to raise wise sons, we need to begin from the time they are toddlers. And we can only teach our sons wisdom when we ourselves act wise. This is very important to always keep in mind. That said, what exactly does behaving wisely entail? Let’s dissect wisdom for a moment.
As I said before, wisdom emanates from many places and is generated by many forces coming together. First, wisdom comes from the blending of life experience, emotions, knowledge, intuition, and judgment. When we begin our lives as mothers, we have absolutely no parenting experience. There is no internship for mothering. When we first hold our little boy in our arms, we look at him and realize that we don’t know him. Whether we carry him in our belly for nine months or adopt him from another country makes little difference. During those first months with him, we need to find out who he is and what he needs. Should we only breastfeed or give him a bottle sometimes? And what about a pacifier—is one okay or not? We want to snuggle with him in our own bed, but is that safe? Books tell us one thing, friends tell us another, and all we long to do is ask our son what he needs, but we can’t. And when he cries, what is he trying to say? Is he frightened, mad, or just tired?
As our son grows, we learn what makes him happy. We learn to read his needs, his wants, his fears, and his hurts. We try our best to meet his needs and minimize his hurts but there are times when we have done everything we can and we know that he must learn to soothe himself. This becomes an important lesson later on in life. Being a good mother can hurt at times because we know that in addition to doing things for him that feel good to us, we need to do some things for him that make us feel terrible. For example, many times infants become so tired that they can’t sleep. They will fall asleep for fifteen minutes and then awaken and cry. We pick them up and walk with them, and a little later, try to put them down for a nap. The same thing happens. Repeatedly, we try to coax them to sleep, but to no avail. Finally, we have no choice but to put them back to bed and let them cry for a while. And this feels terrible. I know this as a mother who had a child who simply couldn’t sleep. I knew what the problem was—she was overtired and unable to sleep. And I also knew the answer—let her cry. But it felt awful every time. Fortunately for me, she cried long and hard a few times and then her sleep issues disappeared, because once she caught up on her sleep, she was able to sleep better the next day (sounds ironic, but this is true).
I hated having my daughter cry but I also realized that there was nothing else I could do. Looking back, I can see that her cries were merely her expression of frustration with being so tired. They didn’t mean that I was not meeting her needs; rather, they meant that she was figuring things out (how to soothe herself) on her own. As I acted on my instincts to calm her every night and hold her for hours on end so that she wouldn’t cry, I realized that I needed more. I needed to be a smart mother and this meant doing something that was hard for me. Wisdom drove what I needed to do and it wasn’t fun. But in the end, she was better off because that was a turning point and she established much healthier sleep patterns.
Lana is a terrific mother, but she had to learn the hard way that it was important to be wise and trust her maternal intuition. When her son Pete was nine years old, he was invited to a sleepover at a friend’s home. Pete had been in his school for only a few months (they had only recently moved to town), so Lana was comforted by the invitation and glad he hadn’t been left out. She wanted him to make good friends because he had been picked on at his previous school, but she was also determined to do whatever she needed to do to ensure that he would not be bullied again. She was a mom on a mission.
Lana called the mother who was hosting the party to introduce herself and to find out what the boys would be doing. The plan was that they would go to a local baseball field to play, come home and have dinner, and then watch a movie and go to bed; the other mother said she wanted all the boys asleep by 11 P.M. All of it sounded great to Lana.
Over the next few days at school, Pete learned that the birthday boy asked his mother if they could watch a Rambo movie that was rated R. Pete knew that his mother never allowed him to watch R-rated movies, but since he really wanted to go to the party, he decided not to tell her. The day before the party, Pete cracked. He didn’t like violent movies, because they frightened him. He didn’t want anyone to know that he was scared, but he decided that he should tell his mother about the movie because he was feeling increasingly anxious about the party.
When Pete told Lana what the boys would be watching, she felt as though someone had kicked her in the stomach. Why, she wondered, would anyone let their kids watch something so violent and age-inappropriate? If I had been with her, I could have answered. It’s because every mother believes that her son is more mature than his friends and that he has a solid head on his shoulders. And there’s another reason: Every mother wants to have the home that the other kids want to come to. In order to make that happen, we feel that we need to offer things that other parents won’t. I see this all the time with parents of teens.
Lana had a hard time deciding what to do. After much deliberation, she decided to let Pete go to the sleepover anyway. She considered calling the boy’s mother and asking if she could show a less violent movie, but Pete begged her not to. He told her that she would embarrass him and all the other boys would find out and think that he was a wimp. She certainly didn’t want this to happen, so, against her better judgment, she relented and didn’t call. As planned, the boys played baseball, ate dinner, and then settled into their sleeping bags on the floor in front of Rambo. Pete was so frightened that he closed his eyes for most of the movie but—as would become apparent later—he watched enough of it. When he came home the following morning, he told Lana that he had a fun time and that he got along well with the other boys. Then the nightmares began.
For the next two months, Pete had such disturbing dreams that he couldn’t sleep. Every night he came into his mother’s room and crawled into her bed. After two months, they came to see me for help with his sleep issues. Pete was constantly tired at school; his grades were dropping because he couldn’t concentrate. And aside from his schoolwork suffering, Pete had become a bear to live with. Fatigue, it turns out, will take down even the healthiest nine-year-old boys.
Lana learned the hard way what were the consequences of ignoring her instincts—and Pete’s—because she was afraid. She had worried that if she told Pete he couldn’t go to the party, his friends would think he was a loser and Pete would get mad at her. Pete was afraid to watch the movie, but more afraid to speak up about it, in case he was seen as a sissy.
If Lana had trusted her gut and told Pete that he couldn’t go to the party, she would have helped Pete in three very important ways. First, he would have been spared the many difficult nights that followed. Her experience as his mother had already let her know that he was very sensitive and couldn’t handle violence (most nine-year-old boys can’t, but none will admit it). Her heart told her to protect him from trauma. Her intuition told her that letting him go was not smart and that she should keep him away from the party. And her intellect told her that watching any violent movie was wrong. He was too young—as a matter of fact all of the boys were too young. She had the wisdom she needed from the melding of her experience, heart, intuition, and intellect, but she failed to act on it. Why? Because she was afraid. She was afraid to be wise when other mothers were acting foolishly.
Second, she would have offered him an example of what wisdom looks like, acts like, and thinks like. Sure, he probably would have hated her choice at first. He probably would have thrown a temper tantrum, slammed his bedroom door, and called her names. She would have had to endure a few days of a mad, sulking boy, but then life would have gone on.
Finally, she would have taught Pete to follow his own instincts. He knew he didn’t want to see the movie, and by mentioning it to her, he was actually offering her the chance to save him by telling him he couldn’t go. One day, he would have looked back at the episode and said, “Thank you, Mom.” Perhaps not until he was much older, but eventually he would have. The payoff for us mothers, and even for our sons, comes when we are all older. Pete would have come to realize that his mom was wise; he in turn would have internalized her behavior and learned to go against the norm when his instincts told him to, and he would have been better for it.
If she had said no to her son, the truth is that Pete might have been bullied. The other boys might have taunted him in class about being a “mama’s boy” or a “wimp” for several days. Of course these words would have hurt, but Lana could have braced Pete for them, telling him to expect them and then to ignore them. This would have been hard, but would it have been harder than enduring the nightmares? I don’t think so. If Lana had put her foot down, something great might have started. The mothers of the other boys at the party would have seen her courage and perhaps have done the same thing in other, similar scenarios. Certainly there were many of them who didn’t want their sons watching Rambo, either, but they also didn’t have the backbone to speak up. Lana would have given each of them permission to act accordingly, and who knows how many other troublesome party issues would have been curtailed in the future.
With sad regularity, I hear young mothers ask me for advice when it comes to giving their kids permission to do certain things. Usually, the advice they want pertains to group activities their kids want to participate in. Many kids get invited to parties where inappropriate movies are shown, as Pete did, or where alcohol is served or sex allowed. What really disturbs me is that sometimes these activities are sponsored by other parents. When the parents of your son’s peers and friends offer them choices that go against your instincts, always respond according to your gut. Wisdom tends to align with instincts, and going with wisdom will serve your child best in the long run, even if it seems monumentally tough at the time.
The fact that you are your son’s mother is no accident. He didn’t get your best friend as his mother; he got you. So believe in that. You have a synergy and connection with your son that no one else has. You have an understanding of him that no other woman has. Your problem (if you have one as his mother) isn’t that you don’t know what to do; it is that you don’t believe in yourself; you feel too apologetic for or uncertain of the person that you are, and you need to learn to stop that. Matthew’s mother did, and she was a better and happier mom for it.
When I asked Matthew if he would tell me about his mother, he was thrilled. He grew up with seven brothers. He was fourth in line and adored his mother. He spoke about her as a wise, strong woman. As I listened to the lilt in his voice, I wanted to know what she had done to earn such respect from her son. “She was entrepreneurial in her parenting,” he told me. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant so I pressed him. “She was strong and unafraid of what others thought,” he said.
“How did you know that she didn’t care what others thought?” I asked. A reasonable question, I figured, because after all, though he was speaking with a grown man’s perspective now, at the time he had been a young boy. How could he truly have known that his mother didn’t care about the opinions of others?
“That’s easy,” he replied. “My mother was a stay-at-home mom and felt pressure from other mothers to work. She saw other women working and contributing to the family income. Many of my friends’ moms had jobs, but she felt very unapologetic for not having a career outside the home. She was proud of being a mom. She was so sure of who she was that she trusted her own instincts and decisions more than anyone else’s. She said what she thought and never backed down. I remember once when she allowed me to stay home from school because I had to study. I had a lot of work to do and found that I couldn’t concentrate on it while at school. So she let me study at home. She sent a note to school with me the next day simply stating that I had stayed home for the day. The principal called her and told her that just saying that I was home wasn’t good enough. She needed to tell him why I stayed home. Clearly, my mom disagreed because the next time I stayed home from school to study, she sent another note to the principal. It read, ‘Matthew stayed home from school today. He has an ingrown toenail.’ ” When recalling this, he laughed as though his mother had written the note just yesterday.
I asked Matthew what the greatest gift was that his mother had given him. He said, “The best gift my mother gave me was knowing who she was. Because she never wavered in who she was, she inspired me to live with a certain rigor, to know who I am and pursue what matters most to me.”
Matthew’s mother was a genuinely wise woman and her wisdom changed who her son became as a man. We mothers spend so much energy trying to do things for our sons that we forget what really shapes their character: our character. Wise mothers know that we need to do less for our sons and be more to them.
I was recently asked to give a lecture to a large group of parents in an affluent community outside a large city. This community also has one of the highest drug and alcohol use rates among teens in the country. Several months before I spoke, three teens had committed suicide, and the town was reeling. Teachers, parents, counselors, and pastors wanted help and encouragement. My job wasn’t to come and tell them what went wrong; it was simply to help them stand back and take a hard look at what forces might be operating in their kids’ lives that were pushing them to the brink. I had just finished my lecture on how parents can recognize signs that their teens might be drinking or taking drugs and how to help them stop when one mother in her midforties raised her hand. She was beautifully dressed and extremely articulate. “Dr. Meeker,” she began, “I have a fifteen-year-old daughter who is a sophomore at the local high school. On the weekends she wants to go to parties where I know there will be a lot of drinking. What should I do?”
I returned with a question, “What do you want to do?” She looked at me as though that were an irrelevant question.
“I think that drinking is bad. I mean, I don’t think she should drink, but what can I do?” she said.
“Keep her home and offer her an alternative activity. Take her to a movie, go shopping, or go out to dinner,” I replied.
“No, that would never work. She’d hate me. She’d scream at me. I don’t want her to stop communicating with me. I feel that it’s important to keep connecting with her. I also think that it’s very important to teach her how to drink responsibly before she goes to college. She needs to learn to handle alcohol and pressure from her peers. I don’t want her to drink, I guess, but every parent in our town serves alcohol to their teens on weekends because they believe, like I do, that they want their kids to learn to handle themselves in the real world.” She was clearly frustrated with her situation, and I wasn’t helping!
“I completely understand your thinking, your situation, and your fears,” I said. And I did. After all, I had raised four kids. “But here’s the real dilemma. First, because she is fifteen and not twenty, it is impossible to train her to drink responsibly. She can’t. Her brain isn’t ready because she doesn’t have the necessary level of cognitive development. Second, all you are doing is increasing her tolerance for alcohol. While she needs two beers to get drunk now, if she keeps drinking, by the time she gets to college, she’ll need four or five drinks to get drunk, and eventually she’ll leave beer behind and move on to hard liquor. That’s what many kids do. Third, you are teaching her that laws don’t really matter. She can’t drink legally at a restaurant but the laws are different in your home. Is that what you really want her to believe?” I challenged her.
“No, but I don’t have a choice. This is the norm in our community. Kids go to parties at parents’ homes and drink. Their keys are taken away and then if they need to sleep over, they do,” she responded. I could tell that I was losing her. She wasn’t going to change her mind. Her daughter, even though she didn’t have a driver’s license, was going to the parties. Period. Mom had surrendered.
Here was a bright fifteen-year-old girl attending one of the finest schools in America, probably gunning for an Ivy League college, drinking on weekends at her friends’ homes with the consent of their parents and hers. Remember, I was asked to come to the community because they had one of the highest rates of drug and alcohol abuse among teens in the country. And the parents were the ones serving them the alcohol! Can you see the twistedness of the situation? Parents knew there was a terrible problem but were so confused about what they believed was right for kids and wrong for kids that they were acting completely against their intuition. Interestingly, as I spoke with this mother, I watched the other parents. They listened intently. It was clear they felt exactly as she did. They were all on the crazy train and every parent wanted off, but they also didn’t want to be the one to get off first. Well, that was tough luck, because someone needed to be gutsy enough to stop acting out of the fear. Someone needed to be clear about what they believed was right and then do something about it. The problem was, they weren’t clear on what they believed was right. They had their instincts, which told them they shouldn’t allow their kids to drink, but they listened to their fears, which told them that if they said no to their children, they’d lose them. The kicker was that they were losing them anyway.
I went to bed that night with the sick feeling that I had wasted my time, and worse, that nothing that was wrong in the community would ever change. The kids were going to drink and the parents would continue to facilitate it because they were too afraid to stop them. They weren’t sure of what they believed and therefore couldn’t do what was right for their kids. I felt very sad.
The following day, I spoke at a session for mothers only. A few hundred women had gathered for the breakfast, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I could say that I hadn’t said the night before. Feeling a bit downcast, I began to speak about the differences between parenting from fear and from strength. I could see that many of the mothers were listening closely. One woman raised her hand to speak. “I completely agree,” she began. “I feel intense pressure to let my sons do things which I don’t believe are right. So this is what I’ve done. I collected four other mothers, whose sons are friends with mine, who feel the same. They don’t want their boys drinking on weekends, either, so we formed a kind of ‘mom squad,’ if you will. We decided to take the heat for each other. When one of our sons complains he can’t go to drinking parties, we point out that his friends (whose moms have joined with us) can’t, either. The boys don’t feel alone then.”
My heart jumped. I was thrilled to hear what this mother was doing. I asked her to keep talking. “The other thing we do is offer to take the boys to professional soccer or football games on weekends. Or we ask one of the dads to take them fishing or to the movies. Anything, really—we just want them to have good alternatives so they don’t feel like the geeks in the class, for not going out and getting drunk every weekend. The great thing is, it’s working. Other mothers are doing the same thing. I know that there’s always going to be drinking on the weekends, but at least our boys know that it won’t be on our watch. And I think that’s a good thing.”
Yes, indeed that was a good thing. I can tell you that this mother was one tough bird. She realized that she could easily cave and be part of the problem, but she listened to her instincts instead. How could she participate in something that she knew wasn’t right, something that was really bad for her son, and still be happy with herself? She couldn’t, so she did what wise mothers do—she found support. She figured that all she needed was a few other mothers—maybe five altogether—to stick to their guns, and then perhaps they could tip the balance of the drinking in her town. I left there happy that I had found a new hero, and hopeful that the other mothers would follow her example. I am still watching from afar to see if the drinking among the students in this town changes because of this handful of tough moms.
John Milton discussed wisdom in Paradise Lost, and this particular mother’s behavior reminded me of what he wrote. She knew that acting from wisdom was a gritty and intensely practical business:
But apt the Mind or Fancie is to roave
Uncheckt, and of her roaving is no end;
Till warn’d, or by experience taught, she learn
That not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and suttle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom; what is more is fume.…
Sisters often blame their brothers for spilling food and brothers often blame their sisters for breaking windows; a child’s nature prompts him or her to point the finger and find a fall guy before they get into trouble themselves. The challenge for us mothers is to figure out who is telling the truth! We are so used to one child blaming another that many of us go to the default position of punishing both parties, because finding the guilty party is too tricky. But this is a mistake.
From the time they are very young, our sons need to learn to accept responsibility. Again, this is a hard task for mothers because it goes against what society at large tells us. We may want our sons to learn responsibility, but it’s really hard in a world where our sons’ friends aren’t being taught the same thing. Not only do we take our sons in a direction opposite to their nature, but we take them in a direction which differs from that of their friends.
I believe boys and girls are born different, and that some boys are born with an innate feistiness. They tend to demand their own way more often than girls. They may appear to be more selfish than our daughters. They are more physical and enjoy violent sports and activities more than our daughters. Sometimes, they resort to fabricating when they’re guilty: Getting caught pulling a sister’s hair lends itself to making up a wild tale of how she asked for a new hairdo, but because his fingers were covered with jam, they got entangled. He will insist he was simply trying to untangle his fingers and she decided to yell. If this type of storytelling comes naturally to many boys, what is a good mother to do? How do we break a son’s habit of weaseling out of taking responsibility for his mistakes, without breaking his spirit? It’s not that hard if you know a few tricks.
Some years ago, I stopped at an in-store ATM to withdraw some cash. My son was about eight years old at the time and he went up to the machine with me. I typed into the machine that I wanted to withdraw sixty dollars from my account. He was learning addition and asked if he could retrieve the money and count it. A good lesson, I thought, because the bills come out in twenties and counting would be easy. I felt like a pretty good mom wanting to help him enjoy a teaching moment.
When the cash was dispensed, eighty dollars came out, not sixty. With a thrilled look on his face, he yelled, “Look, Mom, you hit the jackpot! You asked the machine for sixty and it gave you eighty! Can I have the extra twenty?”
At first, I was excited to see the extra twenty dollars. Who wouldn’t be? I felt like I was at a slot machine and had just won. I reasoned that the money could belong to me because it was coming from the ATM—not someone else’s account. It wasn’t hurting anyone to keep it, really. So I gave my son the extra twenty and then we walked around the store looking for snacks for the car ride. And at that moment I felt a deep pang of guilt. I tried to tell myself that the bill was “lost” and therefore I could keep it. Another pang. I decided to give the money to the store clerk so that he could figure out whom it belonged to. That meant that I had to take it away from my son, who had already decided what he was going to spend it on. I bit the bullet. He cried, “But Mooooohhhhhm, you said I could have it!” I felt guilty again. I had made my cute little trusting boy cry. What kind of mom was I?
He tried to run out of the store to the car where my husband was waiting, but I grabbed his arm. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I wanted to keep the money and give it to you but that was wrong. The money doesn’t belong to me or you and we need to give it to the clerk.” He wailed. People in the store turned around. They might have thought I was hurting his arm, he yelped so loudly.
What made matters worse was giving the bill to the store clerk. When I explained to him what happened, he smiled. He didn’t know who owned the machine, either, but he thanked me for “returning” the money. My son watched the man smile. As we walked away, I turned my head and noticed that the clerk was putting the bill in his pocket. My son saw, too. “Mom—you’re just not fair,” he said as we left the store.
Though the clerk took the money, I believe that what I did was the right thing to do. The important point here is that we mothers need to stay on our toes when it comes to doing what is right and taking responsibility for our actions. Just as we need to offer seven compliments to counter every criticism our child receives (as the adage goes), we need to act seven times more responsibly for every mistake in judgment we make. The peculiar thing about boys is that they remember the times we were wrong more easily than when we were right (just ask your son and he’ll tell you about every mistake you have made in detail!). If we want our sons to grow into men who live with integrity and honesty, it must start with us. It is important to take inventory not simply of what we are saying or doing in front of our sons, but also of how much time our sons actually spend with us, so that they have the chance to see us in action. Remember, it is our character that shapes who they become as men, and if they never see us interact with the world, they can’t imitate our behavior.
In a culture where being successful trumps being wise, and improving one’s status matters more than being responsible, we mothers know that we have our work cut out for us. First we must acknowledge that teaching our sons to live wisely and imparting on them the importance of being responsible can feel as though we are parenting completely against the grain. I can’t deny this. The truth is, most parenting books tell us that we must teach our sons to have high self-esteem, and that the best way to do this is to encourage them to beat the other guy. We hear that it is most important to raise sons who are successful—regardless of how their success affects those around him. I disagree. I have learned from watching hundreds of boys grow up that the happiest men are those who learn to watch, think, listen, and consider the needs of others before making decisions. I have seen that those who own their behavior—whether that behavior is good or bad—are the ones who live with a strong and healthy sense of self. Wisdom and responsibility are the hallmarks of good men and women.
Aside from modeling these characteristics for our sons (as if these weren’t hard enough), we must challenge them to follow us. Sometimes we must tell our sons that the decisions they want to make are wrong. We must tell them that we are with them as allies, not enemies, and that therefore we will speak our minds and coach them in the right direction, because we always have their backs, even if it doesn’t seem that way. When boys understand that we are tough because we are on their side, they will respect a lot more of our rules. Many mothers don’t want to implement strong boundaries and speak up, because they believe that it’s the rules boys don’t like. This isn’t true. Boys will tolerate almost any challenging rule as long as they understand that our primary motive in enforcing it is to take care of them and raise them to be strong. If they believe that we are giving them strict guidelines because we love them, they’ll follow. But when a boy feels that his mother suspects that he’s up to no good, or that he really is no good and therefore she needs to oppose him and bring the hammer down on him, he’ll rebel. Boys follow mothers who believe in them enough to challenge them as men because setting high standards communicates to boys that we believe they are capable of meeting or surpassing those standards.
We mothers often make the mistake of believing that if we are nice and accommodating and don’t challenge our sons, then they will stay close to us and keep the lines of communication open. In fact, the opposite is often true; unless our sons respect our authority, they will never trust us. When we say yes all the time, fail to challenge them to act wisely, and comply with their demands too readily, they lose respect for us and disconnect. It may be that their own instincts are telling them that the behavior we tolerate from them is dangerous or wrong. How, then, can they trust us to raise them to be strong men?
We must show them that our job as a mother is to teach them to be wise. If your son hates sports and his friends all play soccer, applaud him for knowing his mind and then ask what else he would like to do. Encourage him. Part of him wants to be different—so let him be that way. Boys need to learn boldness in order to forge their own, independent lives, and mothers are usually the first to accept when their sons are different and don’t follow the herd.
The best way to teach our sons to be responsible is to show them that we trust them (but the trust must be age-appropriate). Find a chore for your son to do and make sure he does it. We have seen that boys feel better about themselves when they have work to do. But in addition to feeling good about themselves, regular chores teach a boy that he is capable of shouldering responsibility, and is capable in general. They teach him that he is reliable and others can depend upon him. This makes him feel valuable and mature, and so he continues to work in order to continue to feel good about himself. It’s a cycle of positivity. One mistake we mothers can make is falling into the trap of doing for our boys what they can do for themselves. This is part of what we are taught to do as loving, doting, and conscientious mothers, but you can see how doing too much for our sons robs them of the opportunity to experience the exhilaration of being responsible.
One of the greatest rewards of responsibility is that it makes a boy feel powerful. And boys like power—especially when it comes from within. As boys mature through the teen years, the great theme of transitioning from adolescence into adulthood is exemplified by their accepting ownership for their feelings and actions. Learning to be responsible facilitates this. Boys who have a task or a challenge to complete, and who are told that they can be successful at it entirely on their own, develop feelings of control. Feeling in control is particularly important through puberty, when everything else seems so out of control. And when they feel more in control, they learn to rely more heavily on themselves and less on the help of others. They learn their strengths and weaknesses and so understand how to impose boundaries on themselves instead of waiting for mom to do it. So you see, responsibility is central to the process by which boys become men.
One of the easiest ways we can train our sons to be wise is to ask them questions. For instance, if your son wants to join the Cub Scouts, even though he’s already in band and plays soccer and flag football, ask him if he thinks adding another activity would be wise. Challenge him to look beyond what he feels or thinks he wants. Ask him to think for a day or two about what he would be giving up—sleep, downtime at home, dinner with the family. Never ask if he thinks a decision is smart or stupid because, that sets him up to feel like a failure; if he makes the “wrong” decision then he feels stupid. And likewise, using words that sound judgmental is counterproductive. Ask questions in such a way that there is no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to consider all the options and the effects of his decisions, and then honor the decision he makes.
As he matures, he will learn that seeking out the wise thing to do involves more than intellect and thought. You teach him that being wise means that he has to weigh what he believes is right against what is wrong and that he needs to draw on past experience (had he done the same thing before and gotten burned?). Choosing the wise move also demands that he take into account his instincts as a boy (or man), and it may even press him to seek outside help from God. When I prayed for my son in high school, as I mentioned earlier, I would often tell him because I wanted him to know that I needed help. Faith is an important component of wisdom because boys need (as we all do) to have a place to turn to when they are no longer in charge. Wisdom comes to us through a combination of many different experiences, but there is a strong component to it that is beyond us. When we encourage our sons to seek what is wise, rather than what is smart, they learn to look outward to God for help, not just inward to themselves.
It is also important to ask questions with a scope that goes beyond the direct choice in front of them. For instance, in addition to asking what the wise decision might be, ask questions about his beliefs, experiences, and feelings. If your son doesn’t make first string on his soccer team, gently ask him how he feels about it and then listen. Of course you know that he feels badly, but the point in asking is to help him talk about his feelings. Or, for another example, if a classmate breaks the law but didn’t get caught, ask your son what he believes should happen to his friend. You do this for two reasons. First, you want to help him learn to think critically, but you also want to help him clarify his own convictions, or lack thereof, in his mind. Keep your questions simple when he is young and add complexity to them as he gets older. Ask him questions about his feelings: What do you think about your coach letting kids play even though they’ve broken the rule? Ask him questions about his beliefs: Do you believe that God answers our prayers?
When asking such questions to stimulate critical thinking in your son, I highly encourage you to listen four times as long as you speak. Give him time to figure out his answers. Resist the urge to interrupt or correct him. Your question may lead him to consider an idea for the very first time and he may be using his conversation with you to put the pieces together for himself. He needs space to do that. If you ask a question and the answer your son gives really disturbs you, make yourself hear him out completely, and then, if you want to challenge him, go back one or two days later and reopen the discussion. If you correct him as he’s talking, he won’t listen. But if he sees that you heard him out and weighed his answers carefully, then considered them and came back with another question—or even a challenge—he will respect your ideas and learn to act as you do. So, ask questions, and listen to his answers four times as long as you speak.
Mothers have the responsibility of caring for our children every day. So it is good when our sons are exposed to our responsibilities. When you have work to do, ask your son to help. Fold laundry or divide your recyclables together. He might fuss at first, but I guarantee that over time, he will thank you. Boys like to contribute, and since you have to work, have him add his skills to yours. And there’s an extra benefit to this, which shouldn’t be overlooked: When we ask our sons to live life next to us, good things happen. Conversations erupt. Think about the life-changing moments or talks that you had with your mother. Chances are excellent that they didn’t happen during a special event—they happened on ordinary days during ordinary activities. So it is important to make sure that your son sees the work that you are doing and then pitches in periodically. Yes, he needs to have his own regular chores that he finishes on a daily or weekly basis, but pull him into your work, too. If he drives, have him go to the store for you. If you are cleaning, ask him to vacuum. In the end, he will feel good about helping you. And remember, since boys bond with others by doing activities together, working together might even make you closer!
Having work will not only teach your son responsible behavior; he will also learn to be more comfortable with himself. Inevitably, he will make mistakes. He won’t mow the yard right, he will spill the entire box of laundry soap, or he’ll back the car into the closed garage door when moving it to wash it. If you are there, then you can help him learn how to deal with such mistakes. If you take the situation, whatever it may be, in stride and even laugh about it, he will become more comfortable accepting his failures. If he hears you tell him, “Oops, that’s too bad you spilled the whole [brand-new] box of laundry soap,” and then you help him clean it up, he’ll realize it is easier—and better—to accept responsibility for his mistakes. Many times boys won’t admit wrongdoing because they fear their parent’s response. They are worried their parent will get mad, or worse, perceive them as a failure. This is enormously frightening for boys (and many fear their father’s response even more than their mother’s). If we treat them poorly when they do make mistakes, they will never want to accept responsibility or admit guilt.
When your son works alongside you, you can teach him not to be afraid to fail. Once he sees that you accept his errors, he will learn to accept them as well. He can admit them, make corrections, and move on.
What does prayer have to do with teaching our sons to be responsible and wise? Just about everything.
Plato wrote that wisdom is a virtue. In fact, he called it the most important virtue among the four he described: wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. And Socrates, clearly one of the smartest men of his time, taught his students that no man was wise. He said, “O men of Athens, God only is wise.” We can see through those who revere wisdom that it is a mysterious thing and is found in many places. In fact, I think it is fair to say that wisdom appears on two different levels. There is practical wisdom, which mothers acquire from a combination of sources, as previously discussed, and then there is the wisdom that, as philosophers through the ages have said, comes from God. This second type naturally has a spiritual component.
Sons need to know that they have support. Yes, mom and dad are pretty good as far as backup goes, but the truth is, our sons are going to see us make a lot of mistakes. There are times when our failures will rattle them. A son may hear his mother scream at his father or he might watch his father get fired because he made a large error at work. In the confusion of seeing parents fail, sons can temporarily lose their trust in us. So it’s good for us, and for them, that they can look to another source for support.
When we make a mistake in front of them, we need to admit fault and we need to tell them that we try hard, but that sometimes we too need help. Tell him you need to ask God for direction on how to live better and how to be a better mom. Then ask your son to pray for you, just as you pray for him.
That can be a life-changing moment for many sons, when a mother admits that she’s trying with all her might but isn’t doing the job that she really wants to be doing and needs help. In that moment, a son recognizes his mother’s humanity. And when he sees his mother as a person who needs help, then he may give himself permission to need help as well. More important, he will find strength in being asked to help her. He won’t have to worry about fixing his mother (he knows that he can’t) but he can learn to lean on God, who can help her.
Many mothers aren’t comfortable praying with sons and that’s all right. Simply ask your son to pray for you and if you want to be specific about your requests, go ahead. If you need help with patience, help being less irritable, or even help knowing what to do or say, ask your son to go to God on your behalf. Then watch what happens to your relationship with your son. It will deepen. He will become more compassionate. He will find comfort and become calmer when he prays. It will give him an opportunity to be quiet and to contemplate, which is hard to do in life today.
There is another wonderful side effect to this activity. By asking your son to pray for you (or with you), you teach him how to draw closer to God. You encourage a strong spiritual self in your son and a strengthening of character. Often we think of girls as being more open to faith and spirituality, but this isn’t true—a boy can develop a very deep and strong faith. And once he becomes comfortable with prayer, then you can encourage him to ask God for wisdom. Show him why the great philosophers, theologians, and thinkers believed that wisdom comes from sources outside our human selves. Imagine how empowering this idea might be for a boy of seven, thirteen, or seventeen years, one who is struggling with self-doubt, school, or personal issues. Availing him to the power of a loving and good God, a God who is wise and can help him be wise as well, is one of the most profound gifts that any mother can give her son. The book of James says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” James goes on to say what that wisdom looks like: “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” And the book of Proverbs teaches us that it is “better to get wisdom than gold.” As a jewelry fan, I particularly like that one.
These verses cut to the heart of what theologians and philosophers have argued strongly through the ages: that true wisdom can only be given to us by God. The Bible teaches that “fear of the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom. This is a term that can be easily misunderstood, but upon study, we can see that in context, “fear” means profound respect, a pious respect that causes one to turn toward God, not away from Him. Fear, as we commonly understand it, prompts us to flee, but this fear of God does exactly the opposite.
Even if you are not particularly religious, the following excerpt from Tolstoy’s brilliant War and Peace should make you think. It is a conversation that takes place between a younger gentleman named Pierre, who has admitted that he has no faith in God, and an elderly man Tolstoy calls “the Mason.” (He refers to the man as a Mason because he espouses the beliefs of those men in the order of the Masonic Temple.) Pierre becomes confused by what the Mason says as they talk about how one acquires knowledge.
Pierre: “I don’t understand … how is it that the mind of man cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak?”
Mason: “The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish to imbibe … the highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole—the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. To receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one’s self. And to attain this end we have the light called conscience that God has implanted in our souls.”
God alone, Tolstoy contends, holds the greatest wisdom. Inviting your son to have a spiritual life opens up access to that wisdom for him because as he prays, he asks God to both hear him and to speak to him. As this exchange occurs, your son develops a deeper inner self and a deeper faith. Prayer helps him to believe in God (as Tolstoy says) and connect with the conscience that God gave him. And prayer binds the two of you closer together. Asking your child to pray for you is admitting that you are not perfect. And this reassures your child because he knows he’s not perfect, either.
At the risk of beating the drum too hard, I want to reiterate how potent the peer pressure that mothers face when it comes to raising our sons can feel. We are taught that our sons should be competent, strong winners. We give them medals for running fast and trophies for kicking a ball. This is fine. But when we fail to show our sons that they won’t always be winners—that sometimes they will lose and someone else will win—we teach them to live with the illusion that they are never wrong. And if they believe that, they become monsters. Think, how would you like to be married to a man who thought he was always right and never wrong? I wouldn’t like it at all.
It’s natural that we want to keep our sons from feeling ashamed when they a make a mistake. We want them to have good self-esteem. But self-esteem comes more from being able to accept errors than from feeling “right” all the time. Our sons are going to mess up and they aren’t always going to be right, so we can either teach them how to navigate life when they make a mistake, or we can pretend they are never wrong, allowing them to be thrown to the wolves when they get into college or join the workforce. A son who has never learned how deal with being wrong will walk out of his job, leave college, or quit the team when he’s criticized. We can easily spot adults who never learned to accept responsibility for their failures—they are the ones blaming everyone else for all the bad things that happen in their lives.
So, while he is young, let him be wrong and teach him to deal with being wrong. If he misbehaves, teach him to admit it and say he’s sorry. And then accept his apology with kindness and grace. One of the best ways to show him the power of those words is to find a time to let him see you saying you’re sorry to someone else. If he isn’t there, share a story with him that shows as much; about a time when you hurt a friend’s feelings and what it felt like when you apologized to her.
Often mothers refuse to make young boys say they are sorry because they believe that if the boy isn’t sincere and the apology isn’t heartfelt, then it shouldn’t be given. I disagree. Who among us ever feels completely 100 percent sorry when we admit we are wrong? I have often said I’m sorry while I’m still fuming. We learn to apologize because it is right to do so, not because of the way it feels. Furthermore, feelings follow actions, and when we learn to act the right thing, eventually we will feel the right way. Apologizing for our failures just makes us nicer people.
Asking you for forgiveness helps your boy learn how to be forgiven and in turn helps him learn to forgive. This is an extremely important tool in being happy. If sons never learn to forgive others, they give power to those who have offended them. Those of us who have been beaten up by life know very well that those who hurt us go on with their lives, and it is we who suffer for it. Our sons will do the same; they will give power to those who have hurt them if they refuse to forgive the offenders. We teach our sons to forgive because it makes them happier and healthier men.
Wisdom and responsibility are two of the most crucial components to a balanced life. As we have discussed, neither of these attributes comes naturally to sons. They must be taught—deliberately and with strong intention. They are hard to teach and some mothers won’t do it because it is so hard. But strong women fight for their sons. No one else but you knows what is best for your children. You are wired with everything you require and more to usher your son into a disciplined life filled with wisdom and lived with great responsibility. And no worries if you forget your way; God is always there to help grant what you can’t get on your own.