Parents and Boys

If you read my bio, you know I am a teacher. This last week my school had parent conferencing. Once again, my heart went out to parents of boys. I see and hear about how these parents are angry, sometimes cry at the conferences. Teachers who have had these parents at the conference table speak about feeling so badly for the family and also feel at a loss to help. They want advice and we would love to give it if the answers were simple to give.

It is a shame really. These boys will some day want to be head of their own households and they will work to make their dreams come true. But some will permanently be a burden to their parents. And their parents will most likely feel guilty for the rest of their lives for what they will feel is their fault. When you think of the joy once felt by the family unit at the birth of these boys and now the sadness and frustration they are causing each other, it is sad....mournful. It just shouldn't have to be.

A spiral seems to start early. I am not sure when. Sometimes in elementary school, when the paretns realize their progeny will not meet their standards or their expectations. It may be because their son is not smart as they would like or may have a learning disability that rears its head and not caught in time to cause a delay in his learning.

It also may start at the middle school level when peers, girls and hormones become distractions and the discipline that was established is rebelled against or the discipline that wasn't needed now becomes necessary.

It is hard to forget the little boy who hugged his mommy, wrapping his chubby arms and legs around her at every turn. It is hard to not to yearn for those times when this new baggy-pant or smelly or strange haired or quiet, sullen boy was little.

It is hard for the dad who wanted his son to be the football (baseball, basketball,etc)
hero, the success he never was. it is hard for a dad to give up the idea that his son will not make the same mistakes he did.

It is hard to put all that aside and let this boy earn his own embarrassment of his adolescent years, wonder why he screwed up, and burn his teenage pictures.

It is hard to do the right things for this boy, to figure out the right combination of choices to help this boy be pulled through to his version of successful manhood. But I do know that you need to hang in there and use the strength of your love that you felt on that first day of his life to do whatever it takes to pull him through.