My buddy and his son came over to watch some TV with me and my daughter. There were other people in the house and it was just one of those stay-inside, watch-TV, play-video games, hang-out kind-of-day. It was a house full of bustle filed with laughing, loud screams, things dropping and the occasional, what’s that noise? Eventually everyone went home and a quiet house was returned to us. At dinner the next day, my daughter complaint that my friend’s son was a bit disrespectful. In what way? I asked, a little alarmed that I am only hearing about this the day after. My daughter told me about him messing up her room, going through her stuff, locking her out. You need to tell him to stop. “I did!” she exclaimed. Did he? “Eventually.” Then she got quiet. I got suspicious. So, what else happened? “He put his arm around me.” And? I inquired calmly. “I told him to stop and walked away.” Did he? “Yes.” Did he try again? “No.” My daughter told me that she doesn’t want him to come back anymore. Ok. Done. We chatted a bit more and it prompted me to write this article.
I don’t have a son, but for the parents out there who have boys, I am pleading with you to teach your sons to be a gentleman who will grow up to be respectful and decent men. I have a few more years left where I have a span of near control over my daughter’s physical security but beyond that, she is literally a lone cheetah in the savanna where lions roam. While my daughter is informed, capable, self-assured and street smart, those traits alone aren’t enough. The lions need to be tamed.
Teach your son that he is not entitled to everything. That’s right, we as parents typically do spoil our kids rotten and we give them everything. But the moment they leave our house, the world will treat them not much differently than anyone else. And boys will realize very quickly that he doesn’t deserve everything. If he expects people to accommodate him the way you do, he will in for a rude awakening. He will also be in for a harsh reality and may even react poorly if the people saying ‘no’ to him are the very people he was taught not to treat as equals.
My daughter’s not your son’s curiosity. She’s not a dare and definitely not a prize. Please don’t put my daughter in position where she has to end the friendship because your son doesn’t get it. His pride is not more important than her choice.
Teach your son that persistence doesn’t guarantee everything. If a girl spurns his gesture, it is not an invitation to try again. Maybe she’s just not that into him. Maybe she’s just not into that! It’s not a rejection of your son and she’s not saying that there’s something wrong with your boy. She’s simply exerting her choice and no amount of persistence will ever change that. Period. My daughter’s not your son’s curiosity. She’s not a pet project; a dare; and definitely not a prize. Please don’t put my daughter in position where she has to end the friendship because your son doesn’t get it. Please don’t put my daughter in a position where she will embarrass your son. His pride is not more important than her choice.
Teach your son to communicate. Boys need to learn how to articulate his feelings and identify his emotions. That means he needs to first acknowledge that he has them in the first place. He’d need to learn how to be aware that others have them too and interact in mutually supportive and enriching ways. For generations, boys have been taught to embrace only feelings of success while dismissing defeats. They are further disadvantage by lessons that deep-seated emotions are the subconscious domain of pedantic psychobabble. Girls in general are comparatively better developed and already fluent in psychology. If your son doesn’t learn the language of the inner self, he will never really, deeply and truly connect with another human being.
After the talk with my daughter, she felt she needed a bit of private space and asked if she could be excused from the dinner table to her room. I cleaned up and reflected on our conversation as well. The generational battle of the sexes was never won. In fact, both sexes are lost and still stranded worlds—Mars and Venus—apart. There is no battle because that’s a fallacy. Confidence isn’t measured in the number of arguments won, the number of followers amassed and definitely not the number of notches on the post. It’s about enabling what was once difficult or even impossible.
Having said that, we shouldn’t disarm the traditional roles of boys and men, but to give them better tools to forge relationships. For girls, we shouldn’t only to teach them to rise up with an antagonistic attitude to overthrow everything male, but to give them opportunities to demonstrate better outcomes. Exerting more control over another is the wrong fight. This belief doesn’t make one a feminist, just a pragmatist. For me, I’ve already taught my daughter these lessons; your son had better catch up.
