We live in a soft porn culture. The search for images of naked or scantily clad women used to be underground. Now those images bombard us from television, billboards, retail displays, and catalog covers. If you have a son and you haven’t talked with him about the dangers of pornography, now is the time to start. Keep these factors in mind as you tackle this daunting yet critical issue.
Darren and Heather Turner never thought they would have marriage problems. After all, they were supposed to be helping other couples. Darren was a chaplain in the Army and Heather was involved with caring for other wives of soldiers who spend months away from home deployed. Darrin was deployed for fifteen months and when he came back he was a changed person. He carried the pain of friends he had lost and post-traumatic stress. There is a new movie called Indivisible (opening October 26th) which tells their story. In it, there are scenes where Heather tries to get Darren to talk about what he is feeling and why he is so distant. Yet, he can’t do it. Every time she tries to make an emotional connection he just shuts down.
When I was a child, soccer was barely on TV, let alone women’s soccer. In fact, the United States didn’t even have a women’s soccer team until the mid-1980s. At that time, women’s team sports weren’t on anyone’s radar. All of that changed in 1999 when the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup. In a tight game, the U.S. and China battled through two overtimes in front of an electric crowd of over ninety thousand.
Bart’s dad was an angry person. As a child, Bart had to endure three to four beatings a week. Sometimes a beating would even be given over something frivolous like the Dallas Cowboys losing. Eventually, the beatings stopped and were replaced with apathy, which to Bart was even more painful than the physical pain he bore in his earlier years. Gradually the two stopped talking altogether. Things didn’t change until his father got cancer. His father had a faith conversion and began to change. As his physical health deteriorated his faith and love grew stronger. He began to pursue Bart and love him in the way Bart always desired.
It’s not hard to find people talking about the challenge of finding effective motivation for kids, especially boys. It’s also not hard to find articles and opinions that decry parenting, education, social media, gaming, women’s rights, and a host of other factors. One expert in education quipped that, given current trends, 2068 will be the last year a U.S. male will graduate from college.
A Harvard study that has followed hundreds of men for 70 years found that those who had a “warm” relationship with their mothers earned $87,000 more a year, were healthier and were more effective at work. Who knew that a mother’s love could be so powerful? I’m raising a son. He’s 13 and no longer tunnels under his covers at bedtime and asks me in a sweet little voice, “Would you sit with me, lay with me, and hold me?”
One of the great benefits of having triplets is getting to see the different ways boys and girls respond to and interpret the world. All my kids need love, attention, affection, discipline, and guidance, but boys and girls do differ. Sometimes it even seems they speak different languages. Words that land one way with my girls will elicit a completely different response from my son.
My son was Mr. Easygoing until he hit 13. Then almost overnight he started to like girls, avoid his homework, and become glued to social media. I thought I would be ready for his teen years since I’d been through them already with
When it comes time for your son to get the birds and the bees talk, it’s easy to let your husband take the lead if you’re married. But even if he gives the initial overview, you’ll also need to share the mom/woman version of the birds and the bees talk with your son. Yes, it can be awkward. And believe me, even if you feel totally comfortable talking about sex with your son, be prepared for him to give you a look of extreme mortification, followed by pronouncements that “you’re weird” and “why do we have to talk about this stuff?” No matter. Keep on talking.
Two summers ago, my 9-year-old son and his neighborhood friends embarked on a quest. “Can we dig a hole?” they asked me one afternoon. Sure, I thought and directed them to the far corner of our backyard. And so began what turned out to be a summer of high adventure. Armed with shovels, buckets, and wheelbarrows, these boys spent hours digging each day. They’d show up early in the morning eager to work, taking breaks for lunch, for water, or to jump in the pool.
As soon as the calendar turns to December, my family starts craving Christmas cookies, so we set aside one night when everyone’s home to mix, bake, and decorate dozens of sugar cookies. We use the same recipe my mom used when I was
When it comes to pointing out the lies that teenage boys believe, it’s helpful to hear it straight from a man. This post was written by one of our AllProDad.com writers, and the iMOM team thought it had such great advice for moms of sons that we wanted to share it with you. On September 6, 1992, a moose hunter named Butch Killian came across an abandoned bus in the middle of the Alaskan wild. Inside the bus, he found the unfortunate remains of Christopher McCandless in a sleeping bag. He had starved to death. McCandless’ story was chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild and made even more famous by Sean Penn’s 2007 movie by the same title. McCandless romanticized living off the land in the Alaskan frontier with limited resources. His death was the tragic result of being unprepared. Two months before, he had killed a moose; however, he was unable to preserve the meat. He had leaned on the expertise of hunters from South Dakota on preserving meat after a kill; however, meat in South Dakota is preserved differently than in Alaska. In Alaska, meat must be cut into thin strips while trying to preserve it in the field. The information he based his life on was wrong and it cost him. Teenagers receive a lot of information to help guide their lives. Believing the wrong information or lies has a significant cost. We need to fill them with the truth so they can make choices that are life-giving. Here are dangerous lies teenage boys believe.
