10 Jun 30 Things I’ve Learned in 18 Years of Parenting Boys
Some very good advice from “Alexandra” who writes in the Scary Mommy blog.
I am a mom to all boys. I am thrilled to be their mother and I don’t pretend that I am happy about it while secretly coveting daughters. I would have been happy with all girls, too, or with a mix of girls and boys. I just wanted children, ever since I can remember. Period.
My children are growing up, as children do, no matter how we try to press them down and keep them small by squishing them in tiny beds (like you don’t…). I’ve now entered my 18th year as a mother of all boys, and I’ve kept mental notes along the way of what I’ve learned, the hard way — sometimes the easy way…
1. Teach your boys to respect women and how to treat women. Women on the average are physically smaller and shorter than men, but this is only the physical. Mentally, and person value wise, women are equal to men. It sounds ridiculous to have to teach this, but it’s what we as mothers need to do. I turn off commercials that show women as less than capable or inferior or needy, because actions speak louder than words. I comment on magazine covers or ads that show women feeble and manipulative. I am now the second shortest person in my house, there are three taller than I am, and only the 5th grader has to look up to me when he speaks, but my voice in this house carries weight, because I have never backed down from issues or made myself appear as anything less than physically and mentally able. Is this the first and longest and most run on paragraph in this post? Yes, it is, because this one is the most important of what boys need from their mothers.
2. Some boys will not want to talk as much as you do. Very possibly true. You may feel the need to ask and jump to the emotional right away, they may not. You know your child, his eyes will tell you if he needs some nudging to open up verbally. Otherwise, if they want to be left alone for awhile, oblige and give them that distance. But keep that one eye open, to their hearts, should they start hanging around you like they want to say something.
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