What is the opposite of a teenage boy?
A 42 year old old woman!
That is about as opposite as it gets.
Yet I am tasked with teaching them and helping them grown into responsible human beings without killing them first. ;)
Over the last year, I have struggled connecting and even understanding the teenage boy mind. Everything they do drives me crazy and convinces me I am failing as a mother.
A woman wants order and structure and everything has it’s place. She wants to raise a dependable man who is responsible and becomes a good member of society, yet everything the boy does shows the exact opposite of what she’s strived for years to teach her son. Leaving clothes all over the place, leaving food everywhere and watching their whole lives revolve around gaming systems, girls, and topping the next ticktock video they made that seems destructive, dangerous or rude to people around them. It’s very hard to picture these 14 year old boys as men one day and I constantly battle the thought that I’m not effective in their lives and my only purpose is to clean up their messes.
Yet, I am told this is a regular part of childhood and that boys in today’s society are continually emasculated and their innate warrior selves are being suppressed. In a society where we want order and structure, am I emasculating my boys and preventing them from becoming the men God wants them to be because I want them to have female characteristics? Be clean, sensitive to other’s feelings, show kindness.
I have come to the stark realization that I am making my boys weak men and that I have to stop trying to get them to act like a 42 year old woman.
So my struggle as a mother wanting to raise good humans is how can I see the best in them and assume the best in them, when all I see is their worst behavior?
I have learned over the last year the areas I’ve failed in as a parent.
How I’ve failed:
1. protected my children from consuming too much sugar by watering down their apple juice or never letting them have soda. As a result they are now addicted to these things and will sneak it and seem to have no idea of moderation.
2. I have come to their rescue too many times in their own battles with each other to take a side and hold another one back when I felt one of them was wrong. I should have let them fight it out on their own.
3. I have used my own childhood trauma of being bullied to enable a son who constantly says he’s bullied but he’s just dealing with regular peer to peer conflicts, thus enabling him and teaching him to run to “mommy” to solve his problems with his friends. How will he ever be a man if he runs to mommy?
4. I let my children argue with me. Instead of letting my yes be yes and my no be no, I invite and entertain the argument until we are in a screaming match and I’m so frustrated and just want peace and quiet that I give in to the request just to get some peace. That is bad, bad parenting. I need to stand firm, not argue, be calm and not let the child get to me. I need to remove my emotions from it all and almost be militant in my response to them.
It’s hard to look back and see your parenting fails, but I need to make some changes or I’m not going to be raising men. I’m going to be raising boys who will remain boys in adulthood. This is what God has tasked me with and I’m not doing a great job…mainly because I just don’t know what is required inside me to be a man and how to bring that out in a boy. In this instance I am glad I have Mike to help with that.