Being a mom is hard. Being a boy mom is HARD. I will say there were days when my girls gave me a run for my money, but as a fellow female, it wasn’t the same kind of struggle as raising boys is. You relate to your daughters, you remember what it was like to go through the things your daughters go through. Sons though….mothering sons is a whole different world.
Boy moms know that our sons are future husbands and fathers and we know what we expect from them as men. We work hard to instill those values and beliefs from the time they are small and we teach them to hold doors for ladies, say please and thank you, and how to be nurturing because gone are the days of boys don’t cry. And it is hard work in a world of more and more Trump and Kanye, and less Will Smith.
Raising my two youngest sons is very different from just 10 years ago raising my oldest son. Societal expectations have changed, along with the value systems of the world, social influences and influencers, and just life. The things I worried about with my oldest son were very different from the things I have to worry about now. Based on my conversations with other boy moms recently, it seems I am not the only one.
The top three stresses of teen aged boy moms
- Sports and the great shut down. My boys have had their great moments, and their not great moments on the field and on the mat, and like a lot of boys that I have seen, they have their shut down moments. My youngest will lose a wrestling match before he even steps foot on the mat if he sizes up his opponent and decides the opponent is ‘better’ than him. I have also seen him size up the wrong guy, decide he was going to win, discover his opponent is 6 inches taller and ripped and win the match because he walked out confident. I have seen boys on the football field make a mistake in the first quarter, and not recover. No amount of coaching, prodding, encouraging or talking gets them out of their own head in that moment. As a mom this is hard to watch.
- Girls. 12 is the new 20. I will preface this to say that not all girls are acting older than their years, but Holy cow…the ones that are…watch out. I call these girls the ‘affirmation gap’ girls. They are looking for affirmation and validation from their peers because they are not getting it from their significant adults. I had to start monitoring my son’s phone during 7th grade when the girls were texting and calling at all hours. (where were their significant adults?!)We had to have a conversation about child pornography that I NEVER had to have with my older son (who barely had a flip phone his junior year) because the sad fact is an underage girl sending nudes, (which they do) is indeed child porn (and where are their significant adults?!). How about the evil rumor spreading and manipulation tactics that some girls resort to…(once again…where are their significant adults?!) We had to have the conversation about girls needing so much attention from boys because they are missing something really important, like an emotional connection to their parents, and using boys to fill the affirmation gap. I have had to tell my boys they are NOT GAP FILLERS. I have told them to stay away from girls who are demonstrating this type of neediness.
- Societal expectations, social media and self awareness. The world we live in today is full of unreasonable images of what life should be like for both boys and girls. I’m talking unrealistic expectations of beauty and looks, social status, and even lifestyle. The materialistic messages kids get from music, the media, and the rich and famous are unrealistic, especially when people are rich and famous for basically….nothing. It has become about expensive shoes, watches, and name brand clothes. It has become about living up to other peoples perceptions of success which are skewed as opposed to measuring success by what is personally valued. For a young man who is looking to be respected and accepted this is hard.
Mama bear’s fine line…
In helping my boys to navigate hard things, I have to walk a fine line…a line between advocacy and independence, a line between coping and moping, and a line between self worth and losing yourself. My goals in mothering my teen-aged boys:
- Promote positive self talk. I don’t want my sons to be their own worst enemy. So often I hear my younger son get down on himself. I can see my older son, who never utters a word, letting his inner monologue get down on him. I try to frame my questions in a growth oriented way, like ‘What did you learn from…’ , “what was the best part of the game/match?’, and I always affirm that no matter what the outcome of a situation- a football game, wrestling match, test, relationship- as long as they worked hard, did their best and learned from the experience, I am proud of them. Being the best doesn’t matter, being the best version of yourself does.
- Honest conversations- I always try to keep it real. And I always tell my boys that no matter what they can talk to me about anything! And they have. And it isn’t always fun. We have talked about sex, condoms, rumor spreading, ‘fast’ girls, nice girls, personal concerns…I always try to be level headed and not over the top…because I have been known to be. The thing is, I want them to trust me, and that means that I have to keep my cool even when I feel like blowing my top. That means that sometimes I have to give them more grace than I feel, because if I come down hard, then I am not living up to the ‘you can trust me with your secrets’ mantra and they stop telling me their concerns and worries. I would rather have them come tell me things I may not want to hear, knowing they can count on me to help them solve the problem, than for them to suffer in silence.
- Encourage them to be real- I always make it a point to tell my kids ‘The thing I love most about you is______’…and it is usually something goofy like ‘You hold my purse while we are shopping and don’t care what other people think’. I make sure they know that I value their little things that make them real, that make them human, that make them different. These are the things that they might not value about themselves because it ins’t ‘cool’. I love that my son will wear a hoodie to school that his dad picked up from an HVAC distributor, instead of the Addidas one in his closet.. I love that my teenage boys will have a mud fight at the brook by our house. I love that my kid picks up road kill to process the bones. They are unique, and they are themselves, and they are learning to measure themselves by the yardstick of their own values, not what society tells them to value.
As parents, we don’t really know if we passed the test until our children are grown. There are a million things I wish I could go back and do differently with my older kids (they all turned out to be amazing people in spite of my parenting mistakes), but the difference between parenting now and parenting ten years ago is vastly different. No matter what changes with the passing of time though, the goal is still the same- raise amazing people.
