Let’s get one thing clear from the get go: moms are generally better parents than dads. And that goes double for me. I’ve had three kids across two marriages and I am undoubtedly the weak link. My 17-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son trust their step-mom more than they trust me, which proves that I married well but am still getting the hang of being a dad. Most of us are.
That said, there are a few subtle nuances that I have picked up along the way as a dad that might come in handy for moms raising boys.
Ladies, here are some things to think about with your boys:
- Think caveman. Adult women have thousands of emotional states, as do girls like my daughter. Boys, on the other hand, tend to feel one of three: mad, sad, happy. Don’t project your complex emotional life on your son. His issue of the moment might not be that complicated. He wants to eat, poop, or run. On a really bad day he wants his toy back after some other kid took it from him. He doesn’t want to stare out the window and have lengthy discussions about the meaning of life, as my eight-year-old daughter often did.
- Watch his body not his mouth. Again, like adult men, the clues to how your son is doing will show up first in his body language. Jumping up and down with six-inch vertical leaps is the natural state of being and is good. Slumped shoulders are bad. Yelling is good. Quiet needs attention.
- When in doubt, hug. Boys will often have a much harder time than girls verbalizing their problems. My 5-year-old son will sometimes burst out into tears after seemingly trivial events. I know there is something deeper going on, but I am not going to get it out of him, at least not at that moment (whereas my daughter would not only tell me what went wrong but in no uncertain terms why it was my fault, which was generally true enough). So the solution is physical not verbal. I spend a lot of time just hugging my boys. I usually have no idea why. But as a default cure-all, it seems to work wonders. A minute later they are all patched up and ready to rumble again. This even works pretty well with my 14-year-old, who is a 6-foot-tall linebacker at Boston College High School.
- Yes, it really is all about poop. Girls potty train 6 to 9 months before boys, but once boys make it onto the throne, there is no stopping them. Moving their bowels is pretty much the highlight of their day (true confession: it still is for me, too), and they are going to want to talk about it. Bathroom time is a participatory sport. My five-year-old likes to head to the bathroom just as the family is sitting down to dinner, sometimesduring dinner. It’s the first time he has been still long enough to realize he has to go. And he wants me to come with him, not just to assist in the wipe but to have a leisurely conversation about the status of his poop. As much as I found this inconvenient at first, now I just go with it. Quality time is quality time.
- Batman lives forever. Boys, even at a young age, realize the importance of super powers. They want to be good and believe in the existence of ultimate good in the world. Boys sort out their identities in relation to the mythical characters they hear about. My son is obsessed with Batman. He wears a full costume, even through the airport and down Madison Avenue. What amazes me even more than his dedication to the superhero is how the guard at LaGuardia or the guy hanging off the back of a garbage truck sees him and shouts, “Batman!” My boy nods his head just slightly, acknowledging his public before moving onto the important work at hand, like going to kindergarten.
- Pointless physical activity is perfect. My brother and I once convinced his two sons and my older boy, when they were all around the age of 10, that they really needed to build a structure out of rocks. The rocks were on one side of a beach, but the perfect spot where the structure had to be built, according to our sage advice, was on the other side of the beach. Each stone weighed between ten and thirty pounds. The boys started moving the boulders one by one, working together to lift the heaviest ones. My brother and I set up our beach chairs midway from the rock pile to building site. We read the paper most of the morning while the boys tired themselves out moving rocks and then assembling a tremendous cathedral. By lunch they were tired and happy, and my brother and I had enjoyed a peaceful morning.
- Winning does matter, but less than you think. Boys — perhaps even more than girls — put themselves under extreme pressure to perform in school, in sports, and in social situations. They talk about it less, so the sting of failure can run even more deeply than with girls. With boys it’s important to emphasize the lessons to be gained from failure, instead of trying to win at all costs, and to emphasize the development of the whole boy. Too often in our culture, boys are pushed to become one-dimensional robots. Goodness isn’t about winning at youth soccer or having the most friends or being the smartest kid in class; it’s also about being kind. That’s something as a mom that you can particularly help your son understand.
- Clothes matter. I know there are way more options for dressing little girls than little boys, so the tendency might be to just throw jeans and a t-shirt on your son and forget about it. But you better make sure they are the right jeans and the right t-shirt. The only consistent battle I have had with my sons is over what they wear. It matters way more to them than I ever would have imagined. They want to look cool; they want to be comfortable (pants that are tight but not too tight, warm and yet breathable). I do draw the line with clothes that have already been worn two days in a row, but I don’t discount the importance of fashion to my kindergartener.
- Crowds, not so much. I have noticed that my daughter lights up when she enters a crowd, whether family or strangers. Mass humanity is something that gives her energy. With my boys, and, frankly, for me too, it’s the opposite. They get shy and tend to hide behind my legs. I try to protect them from these situations and not push them beyond their limitations.
- Bedtime is sacred. Because boys are so active, it’s hard to get them to sit still. The best time of day is the ten minutes before they go to sleep. Crawl into bed with them, read books, and hold them while they fall off to sleep. If you don’t believe in God, you will once you have lain next to your overactive son while his body goes limp next to you, and he ever so faintly begins to snore.
If you enjoyed this, you might also like Tom’s new piece: Raising Teenagers For Dummies (Like Me)
About Tom Matlack
I read w interest. I have 3 daughters, now all grown. When the youngest was still in grade school she got a teacher who, I thought from her 2 sisters having had this same teacher, was pretty much a hippy-dippy feel good, write poems,express your feelings type- you get the picture. I was at a back to school night and standing in line to say hello and ask if she could focus more on math then poetry. She was talking w the parent ahead of me when she said “Boys are different then girls. Girls develop their smaller muscles first whereas boys develop their bigger muscles. Those big muscles need exercising so when recess comes around those boys are ready to go! They can’t sit still in their chairs like little Suzy can, they are physically unable to.” This was in 3rd Grade when kids are starting to learn to write. She went on:” because little girls develop their fine muscle skills sooner, their handwriting is much better on whole. When you say to a little boy: “Why can’t you write pretty like Suzy?” all that does is frustrate them because they are doing the very best they can. You have just told them it isn’t good enough and Suzy is better then you.” I didn’t say a word about math, just said I was happy our last daughter had her as a teacher. math can be taught, tearing down any child can’t be “un-taught” without years of therapy.
This is a truly worthwhile post and I will be printing it out and saving it to remind me of your suggestions, I know I have been guilty of ascribing too many emotions to my sons! I would love to repost this on my blog sometime if that is ok with you…really great advice – Thanks!
Thank you so much for this!
Somehow I’m not as terrified with the idea of having sons as before.
<3
I have 2 little boys and they are wonderful!! Little boys love their mamas!
Saying boys have limited emotional states and can’t think about things as deeply as girls is not a humorous observation, it is a cruel stereotype. I would have been interested in things like discussing the meaning of life at age eight, and no one taking me seriously about certain philosophical issues I was passionate about caused me a lot of pain and frustration. I can’t believe a site with the mission statement this one claims to have would tell parents specifically not to consider that their sons could think as deeply as their daughters could.
I have to say I had this thought as well, as I read this, because I have met boys who want to discuss the meaning of life. I’ve also met boys who like to be in a crowd.
I found this article to be worthwhile reading, but I felt that I had to take it with a grain of salt due to the overgeneralizing from the author’s own kids.
I am sorry, SNES, for your experience as a child of people not taking you seriously. I believe very much in taking kids seriously, and I think many adults do not realize how much it hurts when they don’t.
As an example, I am a girl and I HATE crowds. I always have. So does my sister. My brother, on the other hand, loves them. Just because his kids are like this doesn’t mean all kids are.
So, so perfectly put, and so perfectly accurate. Thank you for this article!!
This is one person’s experience. This is certainly not true off all boys nor would I even think of most boys. He feels his second wife is a better parent than he is, and by the sound of it, he is probably right. I’m a single father raising a boy and he is very outgoing and does well I groups and crowds. He is complex and has many more than three emotions!
i know what u mean ..i think the 3 emotions was a bit of oversimplification and cuteness perhaps ..maybe even hyperbole .. a pretty good article i thought; obviously everyone is different and stereotypes are possible everywhere
Great tips that I will share, with wonderful insights. The only one I would quibble with is the second to last, the one to do with crowds. It sounds like you and your boys are introverts, while your daughter is an extrovert. Many girls feel the same way as you do about crowds. I recommend reading Quiet by Susan Cain for more insight on this one in general.
Speak for yourself, I was a much better parent than my boys mother.
Great Article. Especially stressing that boys need to work those large muscle groups.
I am a big fan of The Good Men Project, but I have to say this article is filled with gender stereotypes and does a huge disservice to boys. Raising boys with emotional intelligence is so important. I have a 15 yr old son, 13 yr daughter and a 10 yr daughter. My son has verbalized his emotions since he could speak. The first time a girl broke up with my son when he was 13, he stated ” Mom, I have a sick feeling in my stomach and I don’t know what to do, if I lay down it doesn’t help”. After discussing the feelings, he realized it was heartbreak. Once, he could put a name to it he could do something about it. If we look at our culture we haven’t allowed boys to “feel” we close the door and let them cave. Caving has it’s purpose, but let’s not forget that we need to be educating our boys about other emotions besides the socially acceptable anger. We need to let our boys have a safe environment that any and all emotions can be experienced safely and without judgment. Boys and girls are inherently different, development is unique to the individual child, not so much the gender. I remember when I was a kid, they just said girls were bad at math. It’s not true. How many girls believed that and just gave up. Boys have the capacity for emotional intelligence and if we just stopped telling them to grunt, we would be doing the world a favor. Jen Fox
I have 2 grown boys. When the oldest was in early elementary, I knew something was up but I couldn’t get him to talk about it to save my life. This was very odd for him, as he was a talker and still is! Maybe 30 minutes later, we were sitiing in the floor playing with something, maybe legos. And he began talking about the issue as we played. I was stunned but a light bulb went off in my head. Any time thereafter, I ran across the same issue I made sure we did some activity together. He always spilled with no effort from me at all. Many years later I heard an expert on tv describe the very same technique. If you want a boy to talk, do something with him. It really could be anything, from coloring to legos to shooting hoops. Don’t feel like you need eye to eye contact. Just do something and be conversational, keep the emotions out of it.
Hah I just realized that often when I do heart to hearts with male friends it’s when were fixing a car or something, rarely just sitting n chatting. Although most of the time we’re fixing stuff or doing stuff and rarely just sit n chat. I guess activities help grease the vocal skills.
Pretty much. When I have talks with my male friends its over video games, shopping, cards, or just out riding around. It is very rarely that we’ll just be sitting around doing nothing during these talks.
thank you for this advice! first time mom and it will come in handy whil raising my son!
I disagree with the first bit of advice about boys and discussing their emotions, etc. I’m a single mother, my son is 4… and has been taught to be vocal about his emotions and he does very well with it. I think that needs to be taught at an early age because it will help them be better men when they’re older.
That being said, everything else… SPOT ON! I was laughing SO hard at the poop section. My son sits on the pot and tries to get me to come in all the time. He’ll tell me he hasn’t gone potty yet and he just wants me to come and talk (my ex used to do the same thing). He loves to check on it to see how it’s coming out and what’s going on with it. Makes me laugh so hard. Gross, yet very amusing. It’s definitely in the male DNA!
And the superhero stuff, my favorite. My son is also recently very much into superheros (though we know real everyday heroes are our servicemembers). He’s into Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern. We recently went to a community event and we had his face painted with the Green Lantern mask (he was wearing green shorts and a Green Lantern shirt) – grown men commenting him as Green Lantern was priceless… especially this big biker guy.
What a great article and great advice. Thanks for being a dad who cares about your kids, and others!
absolutely loved this!!
I’ve been slowly figuring some of this stuff out for myself as I’m raising my 2 boys. Luckily, my husband is very helpful and fills me in on a ‘boy’ way to approach things at times. Learning to relate well to my boys, has also really helped me to relate to my husband!
Very cool post! I like the advice.
However, I’m a girl and I totally relate to this:
“Crowds, not so much. I have noticed that my daughter lights up when she enters a crowd, whether family or strangers. Mass humanity is something that gives her energy. With my boys, and, frankly, for me too, it’s the opposite. They get shy and tend to hide behind my legs. I try to protect them from these situations and not push them beyond their limitations.”
I think that’s more an introvert/extrovert thing than a gender thing.
Some of this is introvert vs. My brother loves a crowd; I hate them. And I also wonder about the feelings thing – my boys (one of whom is 15) can talk about their feelings…because, as high needs, very emotional boys, they HAD to, so we (their father and i) worked on that a lot.
Bedtime is sacred. Because boys are so active, it’s hard to get them to sit still. The best time of day is the ten minutes before they go to sleep. Crawl into bed with them, read books, and hold them while they fall off to sleep. If you don’t believe in God, you will once you have lain next to your overactive son while his body goes limp next to you, and he ever so faintly begins to snore.
YES YES YES thank you
Single mom here of two boys and a girl. This post touched my heart. I really really like your message here. Simple and to the point. Thank you.
Thanks Noel.
Unfortunately I do agree with you on your point about moms being better parents than dads. The key word in your comment is generally. I am a single dad divorced twice and Iam better than 1 and not as good as the other. It is what it is.
The only things moms can’t do is be a man. We have the monopoly on that one. You make a lot of great points about what we dads know naturally about being a boy. I love taking a good “poop”. The girls in the house. I don’t think I ever knew when my daughter or her mom ever took a poop. Oops. I said the word. You know what I mean.
Great post! Love it and will be coming back for more.
This article is awesome! I have a five year old son and this is really good advice! I love the part about at nighttime laying in bed with them until they go to sleep! I do this every night with my son and he tells me so many funny/sweet/wonderful things! He makes my heart melt! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Kellie!
My 2.8 YO son is being raised by two moms, so I can use all the advice I can get. I love most of things you’ve written in your post about “Raising Boys”. Thanks so much!