Raising a son. Don Elium

Part 1 Boys and men. Mysteries of the floor
Chapter 1 Problems of Raising Boys
My mother had a lot of trouble with me, but I think she liked it.
Mark Twain
Perhaps the title of this book, Raising a Son, caught your eye because you are expecting the birth of a boy, or because you have now fully experienced what it means to raise a son, and you already want to climb to the very top. high bell tower in the city, with all the strength of their lungs to shout: "Help!" The main problem of raising boys is that no one knows how to educate them today. They are left to themselves in search of what it means to be a man in our culture.

“Boys want to know three things,” says Lew Powers, 72, a veteran Boy Scout school principal who has been the school's principal for 20 years. “First, who's in charge? Second, what are the rules and regulations? And thirdly, are you going to enforce these norms? In order to build a strong relationship with a boy, you must be the boss and, moreover, very kind. Set only such rules as you can enforce, and enforce those rules steadily. Then you will have a foundation to build relationships. From this arises respect and, more importantly, trust. After that, you can be kind, he will listen to you, because he knows that you are on his side.

Raising sons today is much more difficult than ever before. The world has changed a lot: families have abandoned authoritarian methods of education, when parents were responsible for everything, decisions were not discussed, and children followed the established rules, almost without resisting them. Louise J. Chestnut, Ph.D., a child psychologist and author of many books, describes the typical family of the past in her book Exceptional and Special: From Child to Personality:. They adopted from their parents clear and unshakable ideals, which subsequently allowed them to act, albeit inflexibly, but confidently and authoritatively in relation to their own children.

In today's child-centric family, parents are trying to take over the leadership, but they are not entirely clear how to do it. Rules, even if they exist, are inevitably violated, and chaos begins to rule. Since the primacy of the family in American life paves the way for the rights of the individual, parents relinquished their power over their sons for fear of infringing on their rights. These changes in the social structure have led to doubt and confusion of both children and parents. We force our children to make choices too early, set too vague and obscure boundaries of the possible and the limits of what is permissible, and, moreover, we ourselves are inconsistent in observing the rules we have invented.

Both Scoutmaster Powers and Dr. Kaplan believe that our sons need a firm but kind and authoritative hand to guide them. And we as parents know this too, but good intentions alone cannot overcome the challenges we face today in raising boys. Single mothers cry out for the men they think are worthy to enter their sons' lives. Fathers are frustrated by being cut off from the family due to work commitments, financial pressures, and lack of experience in raising children. Mothers know that in the absence of a father, excessive female care negatively affects the character of their sons. But how can a mother let the boy go if there is no one to whom she could entrust him?

I would like to send my boy to the army. It would help him shape up! The boy does not respect me, his things and his mother. He won't get to work if I don't push him every minute. There is a dump in his room, and he does not even think about cleaning. After the army, at least he will come changed!
Bob, Maysock's father, a 15-year-old teenager
And although Bob was probably joking about wanting to send his son to the army, he nevertheless touched on an issue that really worries him. He believed that the masculine energy of his fifteen-year-old son was to blame. The parents of their sons are very familiar with this energy. She is efficient, self-willed and determined. Sometimes we call her lazy, wild, crazy. In our hurried, time-bound lives, we view the birth of a man as something of an inconvenience. Usually the worst times come for parents, when sons, succumbing to their male thirst for exploration, rush forward, tear themselves away from their parents and go aside. No matter how old the son is, parents run to counselors with agonizing questions: “Is my child normal? What did I do wrong? Could he have been raised to be more caring? How can I reach him? How to tame him? Why does he do what he does?

Why We Wrote This Book

We are often asked why we wrote a book specifically about raising sons. Each of us has our own answer to this question.

J: I, Zhanna, have never understood men. My father, who was a loving, insightful, caring man, remained a mystery to me. My brother is charming, witty, intelligent, sincere and mysterious. My husband is a comrade in many areas of our joint activity, but some part of him remains inaccessible, alien and not like me myself. And now I also have a son, and I often think about who he is. And what should I be - his mother, to guide him on the path of healthy masculinity.

My relationships with men have been both terrible and delightful, and yet a little more terrible than delightful. The women's movement, as it were, allowed me to scold men and resent "patriarchy." Later, with the support of other women, I learned to see myself as a woman, to be proud of my feminine nature and, of course, got rid of my hatred of men. Working in the environmental movement has helped me realize that blaming men for the state of the world today is only half the battle. We must all be responsible for the living conditions that our children will inherit.

It is this feeling that it is time for men and women to understand each other in order to heal our planet that led me, along with the men's movement, to this work. Across the country, men are beginning to support each other, as women did in the 60s, in order to finally understand what a man is in the modern world. I was lucky to be a witness to this brave struggle and to hear the stories of several such men. They helped me understand the uniqueness of the male path to masculinity, and I am grateful to them for this. I decided to write this book with my husband Don so that my son could grow up free and grow into the most beautiful man that naturally he is.

D: When I, Don, came of age - and that was just at the height of the women's liberation movement - I had the ideal of a man that I was supposed to be - friendly, aware own feelings and understanding the feelings of others. But I soon noticed a strange trend: I had female friends but never dated. Most of the women I've known have dated men tougher, more confident than me, and sometimes even more pushy and aggressive. What I call a "sensitive man" is essentially a passive-aggressive man who doesn't say how he feels, doesn't insist on his point, and says yes when he really wants to say no. Marriage and the birth of a son drove me into a corner. And I began to look for other ways. I did not want my son to grow up without a strong fatherly example in front of him.

Before, when trying to define masculinity, I looked at women. Now I started looking for other men. It was then that I discovered that powerful male power that is in me and in every man. Left unattended, it can become destructive; nurtured to maturity, it carries life within it. The turning point for me was when my doctor, Dr. Gary Jordan, said, "Don, that's what it means to be a man." I was shocked.

There was a man who believed that there were unique male tasks in the world - to be strong and sensitive and do as you see fit. We don't look like women at all. We are from a different test. I have discovered that as a man I have an important calling and a role to play in this life, and that it is time to understand it, live with it, and define it for the modern world. It was this task that prompted me, together with my wife Jeanne, to speak directly and sharply about the upbringing of my sons. There are significant differences in the upbringing of a boy, and these differences have their purpose - to raise a man.

Chapter 2 What are our boys made of?

From sweets and cakes,
Of all kinds of sweets -
This is what girls are made of.
From thorns, shells,
From green frogs -
That's what boys are made of.
Old nursery rhyme
When our son was small, the first "sweet" line of this children's poem was suitable for him. But somewhere from the age of four, he became completely different. He seemed to still be sweet, gentle and sweet (most of the time), but some kind of severity was already growing in him, the awareness of his importance, the right to be reckoned with, was growing stronger. In moments when his ideas did not coincide with ours (for example, when we thought it was time to