Dr. Meg Meeker’s book, “Boys Should Be Boys” gives readers tips on raising boys. Here are the main takeaways.
The book begins with 7 secrets Dr. Meeker thinks all parents should know.
7 Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons
1) Know how to encourage your sons. You must strike the balance between not babying and not being so harsh that communication shuts down.
2) Understand that he needs more time with his parents.
3) God made boys to be outside.
4) Boys need rules.
5) Boys need virtues like integrity and self-control. According to Meeker, “boys who drink, take drugs, and have sex outside of marriage aren’t normal teenagers, they have been abnormally socialized by our unfortunately toxic culture.”
6) Teach your sons the big questions in life or someone else will. Young men need to learn from their parents good and bad behavior, right from wrong, and ideas on life.
7) The most important person in your son’s life is you.
The Big Three
No men, no religion, and toxic media are the three big problems facing boys today.
Meeker writes, “Every son is his father’s apprentice, studying not his dad’s profession but his way of living, thinking, and behaving.” She goes on, “Boys need to see fathers who behave as good men so that they can mimic that behavior. They need to see men at work. They need men who set standards – and if you don’t give them standards to live by, they’ll pick them up where they find them.” Which means social media, TV, and school.
If our society expects boys to perform better, then we must give them the tools. If there are too few dads to teach boys how to overcome challenges, then men will fail. If we continue pretending there is no God, then boys will fail. If we teach boys that girls are just sex, then they will never have health relationships.
Battling Peer Pressure
In another extremely insightful chapter, Dr. Meeker discusses peer pressure – but not from other kids. It’s the parents who are too often caught up in competing with other parents, or being pressured to let their children participate in questionable activities. Wanting our kids to “thrive” is natural, but parents are capable of neglecting the things that matter most.
She writes pointed advice. First: “Sons listen to people who they respect, like, admire…They reject words from adults who only criticize, deride, or push them. If you are a parent who compulsory criticizes and rides your son, stop.”
Dr. Meeker elaborates:
“Time, attention, affection, and approval: they are what every boy needs in abundance from his parents. I can guarantee that if the majority of parent-son interactions are focused around these four things, then correction and discipline will work when they are required. Sons try to please their parents when they know they can please their parents. Without balancing love and discipline, boys are lost.”
And then she writes this:
“Every statistic we have affirms that no one is more important in a son’s life and the decisions he makes about drinking, drugs, and sex, than his father. Don’t abdicate your authority.”
An Assortment of Wonderful advice
In her other chapters, Dr. Meeker dishes out many common sense ways to help boys. Let them run wild outside, let them take risk, don’t let them become addicted to screen time or video games, don’t buy into the myth of adolescent rebellion, boys need their dads attention, and boys need their moms love and protection.
Meeker argues the following:
“This is a national tragedy, because boys need healthy encouragement from their fathers more than they need it from anyone else. In a boy’s eyes, his fathers’ words are sacred. They hold enormous power. His words can crush a boy or piece him back together after a fall. If a father is not there at all, it is a huge void in a boy’s life – and as the depressing statistics remind us, boys who grow up without fathers are at a dramatically greater risk of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted disease, and ending up in prison.”
“And one lesson we should all learn is that while mothers want more for their sons, the truth is that sons need less. Boys need fewer toys and fewer clothes. They need more time with their mothers and fathers, less time in structured events, and more time being bored – yes, bored – so that they can use their imagination and creativity and figure out what to do. Young men need less time face-to-face with electronic life and more time face-to-face with people. Less television, video games, clothes, telephone bills, sports events, and preschool hours mean less stress for mothers and more time for boys to figure out who they are and what they want out of life.”
Amoung the most meaningful conclusions in her book is this:
“As fatherless homes have risen dramatically, life has changed dramatically for our boys and for our society…A boy living in a home with his mother and father is less likely to experience physical, emotional, or educational neglect. He is less likely to commit violent crimes. He is less likely to commit violence at school. A boy growing up with a father and a mother is at decreased risk for behavior problems, educational, problems, hyperactivity, and withdrawal. He is better able to develop deferred gratification skills, less likely to drop out of school, less likely to smoke, drink, have early or frequent sex, use drugs, commit suicide, or commit vandalism or violence of any other type of criminal act.”
Dr. Meeker shows how devastating fatherlessness is to boys – statistically fatherless boys are high risk for all the things we don’t want our boys doing. “We can blame many things for this terrible situation: the sexual revolution, feminism, the idea of a gender-neutral society, toxic media culture, and so on. What I can say as a pediatrician is that the science is clear that boys thrive in stable, two-parent families. Both mother and father are irreplaceable, but for different reasons.”
These ten tips to raising boys will help parents focus on tangible ways to parent their sons.
1) Know that you change his world.
2) Raise him from the inside out – character matters.
3) Help his masculinity explode.
4) Help him find purpose and passion.
5) Teach him to serve.
6) Insist on self-respect.
7) Preserve.
8) Be his hero.
9) Watch and then watch again.
10) Give him the best of yourself.
Big Takeaways
Depression, suicide, anxiety, obesity, violence, sexually transmitted disease, and sexual assaults are all at alarming highs – with no end in sight. How do we shield our children from these things? Raising boys can be challenging, but the answers to many problems are hiding in plan site. Three underlining themes in her book standout:
- Our culture has become increasingly unhealthy. Allowing kids to watch TV, YouTube or engage in social media, is exposing them to the most unhealthy aspects of our culture. The commercials are mostly centered on selling sex, junk food, and booze. The shows are focused on violence, promiscuity, raunchy humor, and silly caricatures of dads. Much of the music, video games, and other cultural influences are not better. Parents must intervene.
- Fatherlessness is a problem. Out of wedlock children and divorce rates have ravished family life, leaving boys lost.
- Religion is no longer a staple of many homes. Many boys lack a fundamental understanding of God. Boys want to know and understand life, but that is impossible without knowing and understanding God.
The solution – a) Reduce the cultural influence on you sons by limiting social media and entertainment, b) bring back dads, and c) welcome God back into our homes.
Purchase Boys Should Be Boys or review the Bookshelf for more reading suggestions.