Truth be told, the closest to any fatherly advice I ever received was from some old pervert that was trying to get into my mum’s knickers. I’ve never spoken about this, but my mum had a lot of “clingers”; men that were attracted to her but didn’t get anywhere. She was attracted to men that had six packs and muscles in places that I didn’t know had muscles, and because she was an attractive woman, she was able to get these men. As you might guess, muscle-bound meathead does not automatically translate to “fatherly”. I’m not saying muscle men can’t be fatherly, it’s just the men she attracted weren’t going to be nominated for father of the year anytime soon.
This has brought me to a slight conundrum. I can’t just ignore my son’s puberty when it happens. I won’t be pretending that what he’s going through is just a figment of my imagination; knowing that I got there in the end and I’m sure he will too.
But I have a big vacant gap when it comes to solid advice during those years when I was changing from a boy into a man. A black hole of nothingness as I struggled to make sense of what the “f” was happening to me. I winged it. I remember the first black hair I found on my testicles and I thought I was getting cancer. It wasn’t until all the other boys were waving their schlongs in the changing rooms that I realized everything was just fine.
No, I’m going to take him through every step of the way because I don’t want the incessant worry that I experienced to be his fate. I had no-one I could bounce these ideas or fears off, and telling mum was just too icky. I remember telling her once that I liked a girl when I was still in Primary School and it’s all I heard for the next two days; I was the brunt of teasing and jokes from mum and her girlfriends.
Of course, to me, it wasn’t funny. I already know Alex likes a girl at school, and whilst it is just a harmless crush, I’ve had to make zero issue over it as if it didn’t exist at all. Mum’s constant laughing over the girls I liked blew my fear of dating through the roof. I just thought everyone was going to laugh at me.
One thing I’m HUGE on is accountability. I know I’ve said I had it really harsh as a kid but one thing I did have was safety. Mum AND Dad had my best interests at heart. I was moved down to England to live with my Dad promptly when I was going off the rails. I had got myself into a gang, I was taking drugs and drinking excessively, so my father grabbed me and took me to live with him. That’s not all obviously; there were other instances where I’ve been held accountable for my bad decisions and I am grateful.
Still, I’ll be doing it differently with Alex. Of course, getting himself in with a bad crowd would be difficult but I like Alex to make mistakes. Right now, I’m beginning to watch from afar as he screws up whatever he’s doing and then I swoop in when he needs advice and guidance.
I learned this in my last job. I remember crumbling speaking to a crowd of over one thousand people and my manager allowing me to make the mistakes I made. Her answer? “Well, you’ll learn from it and next time you won’t make the same mess.”
I learned to trust my own decision making and I would like to pass that onto my son. One thing that was never given to me as a kid was the control over my actions. There were times in my childhood when dad or mum would just be too smothering, and because of that (amongst other things) I stopped opening up to them.
So, as a child I would make mistakes but have no fall-back whatsoever, no-one I could trust. I couldn’t ask for advice or help and that led me on quite a confused little journey. For me and Alex I’ll be here for lots of hugs, advice, and guidance, and most importantly, I won’t judge.
We’re already watching a lovely progression in him. He already knows that people make mistakes and that’s just fine because no-one is perfect. He knows he gets angry from time to time and that’s just part of life (as does his dad). I’m currently working with him on people thinking differently. He struggles with people that view the world from a different perspective than him as his world is still very black and white; good and bad, wrong and right. It’ll come though, I’m sure of it. If I managed to understand the grey area, and he will too.
I’m also going to help him with women when he’s older. Of course, I won’t have a say with who he likes, dislikes or chooses for a partner, but I’ll definitely teach him the type of relationships to avoid. It’s true that we can’t choose who we fall for, but we need to have some form of discussion on acceptable behaviors and boundaries; on how to treat women, but also how women should treat him.
How do we teach our sons the acceptable behaviors of women in relationships and the boundaries they should have for themselves? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments. It seems all we do these days is talk about how men should behave around women but I can’t find anything relating to how women should behave around men. Maybe that’s just my search bias? I’m unsure.
Alex treats his mum and I like Google, and I’m sort of pleased he does. There’s nothing I like more than being a source of information for people, especially my own son. I hope that continues forever.
There will be a point in time though, that I will encourage him to go out and look for himself. One of the most important behaviors I’m trying to instill in him is the eagerness to find information out. In the grand scheme of things, I know very little about anything. My favourite quote is from Socrates and it goes something like this:
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Last but not least, I’ll be teaching him that anything is possible. We’re a society that’s fixed on blame right now. I don’t want my son to be fixed on blaming his outcomes on other things; that’s not productive to a successful life.
With the right amount of accountability, and the right amount of encouragement I think we can embolden Alex to think that anything is possible with hard effort and responsibility. He’s into making his own board games right now and a couple of days ago he wondered if he could sell them on the internet.
I must admit, I didn’t know the answer to that, but you know what? Tomorrow we’ll be on google looking at the resources we need and how much it will cost. As I say, anything is possible. I want him to grow up with a mindset that views the world as abundant and a place where he can thrive.
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