All the feels: 3 tips for raising emotionally healthy boys
As a mom raising all fellas, I often reflect on what it means to raise a boy to become a man. I think of men who have impacted my life and the example our sons have in my hubby. Men who are strong, intelligent, aware, empathetic, compassionate, giving, kind, and loving. Above all, men who love God and love people. So, it’s no surprise I think of how we are raising emotionally healthy boys.
From the moment our sons are younger, we nurture and physically care for them making sure they meet developmental milestones. We do all we can to ensure their brains are developing properly. We focus on their word usage, their motor skills, and other physical markers.
But learning what we can do to meet the emotional needs of our sons and giving them the tools to respond to their emotions in a healthy way doesn’t happen so naturally for many of us.
Focusing on how to help our sons process intense emotions in healthy ways is a vital skill that starts at home. Our sons, especially as they grow older, are getting mixed messages on who they should be, how they should act, and how they should feel. Now, more than ever, our sons need us to help guide them.
Every day our sons are caught in a world of distractions, self-gratification, and instant results. They live in a society that thrives off offense. The world wants to define and influence the emotional health of our sons.
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Our sons’ emotional health is influenced by something or someone—whether that’s their friends, television, teachers, or you.
Choose to make their primary influence for developing healthy ways to respond to emotions to come from you (and your spouse)—the people God specifically placed in your son’s life to love, guide, protect, and develop him physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Our sons need our voices and our direction.
Whether you are a momma of a young fella or if your fella is a teen, we can start today to shift the narrative and help our sons to deal with their emotions in a healthy way.
Be open about your feelings
As an emotionally healthy adult, we can show our sons that it’s normal to feel both positive and negative emotions by being vulnerable and transparent. If we choose to be open about WHAT we feel and HOW we deal with those emotions, we are allowing them to learn from our example.
Make no doubt about it; they are indeed learning from us.
Our sons are quite observant. They pay attention to how we respond to stress, disappointment, frustrations, and failure.
What are you teaching?
Now, I will be the first to say I had to take a hard look at myself. I was not doing the best job showing our sons how to deal with frustrations and stress. If I wanted to teach them how to develop their emotions in a healthy way, then I needed to make changes in how I was handling my emotional responses.
This friend is the hard work.
I had to make changes in the example I was setting for our sons. Maybe you feel the same way too.
Choosing to pause when you start become sarcastic, taking a deep breathe when you are about to yell, or refraining from making a snide comment take intentional effort. If we want our children to develop emotionally healthy responses, start with how we handle our responses.
Think about how emotions are expressed in your home, especially feelings of sadness, frustration, stress, and disappointment. Think about how you handle mistakes.
If we choose to directly reveal and process how we handle our emotions with our sons, we are giving them the tools to process their feelings. Let them see you vulnerable, allow them to see you work through the pain, and allow them to walk with you in your faith.
Taking the time to include them in your process helps them to see what is to call on God, to surrender to His will, and to seek direction in His word. They get to see you feel deep emotions and handle them with self-control.
Our example sets the tone for their emotional health. Lead well.
Get playing
Play is a powerful tool to build your son’s emotional and social skills to interact in the world in a healthy way. When our son’s play, they practice empathy, learn self-regulation, and can increase their self-esteem.
Spending time each week playing board games, getting outside to play a sport, or even playing an instrument encourages our sons to interact with others in a healthy way. They learn listening skills, encourage curiosity, and showing compassion to others. Knowing how to respond in an emotionally healthy way helps them to build relationships and show positive showmanship.
Play is a simple way to help lower your son’s defenses to talk about complex emotions and process their feelings in a healthy way. Even something as simple as going for a walk can have a positive impact on our son’s emotional wellbeing.
Play provides a safe place where our sons naturally start to open up about their days, their relationships, and their emotions. When we choose to use play as an ongoing part of our relationship with our sons, they get to encounter and learn how to problem solve in the safety of home.
Home is the best place to teach our children healthy ways to process winning and how to process losing. When our sons begin to play sports competitively, learning how to deal with loss can result in some negative emotions and emotional responses. Using play in the home helps us to educate and equip our sons with the resilience necessary to respond to loss and how to win without being a jerk.
Although telling your fellas to get outside and play with others is good, getting up to go outside and play with your son is better. Play the sport, play the video game, play the music they like.
Empower them to set healthy boundaries
Raising emotionally healthy sons requires teaching them how to make and maintain their boundaries.
As their momma, it’s easy for me to want to tell my fellas what boundaries they should have and how they should respond with other people. Although that may fix the current situation in my presence, our sons don’t learn how to develop emotionally healthy boundaries on their own.
Spend time talking with your son about behaviors that make him feel heard, appreciated, valued, and loved. Then discuss what makes your son feel frustrated, unseen, unappreciated, and disrespected. When our sons are unable to identify these differences, they are not able to create boundaries that will help them develop emotionally healthy relationships with family and friends.
Teaching our sons how to create boundaries and maintain boundaries will aid them in being able to communicate when those boundaries have been violated. We want to teach our children the importance of being aware and honoring the boundaries of others while also not becoming a pushover or seeking validation in others.
Boundaries help our sons to self-advocate without reacting with harsh words or violence.
Teaching boundaries starts right in our homes. Whether it’s teaching them the importance of knocking to enter someone’s room or acknowledging another person’s emotion, we get to use our regular family interactions as learning moments to helping our sons learn healthy boundaries.
One resource I recommend for teaching boundaries is Dr. Henry Cloud’s Boundaries with Kids: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Children.
Raising sons who can communicate and process their emotions in a healthy way grow up to become fathers who can do the same for their children. We can help shift the narrative.
Cheering you on momma,
Kristi
Those boys will be tomorrow’s husbands, fathers, leaders, and more. And the emotions they choose make such a huge impact. I’m glad you focused on it because many of us mamas need the encouragement. Good post for helping mamas raise emotionally healthy boys.
Heather Gillis
Great topic and much needed! I’m working on this right now with my son. So important to have a relationship with them where they feel safe to share emotions and feelings. Love Dr. Cloud!
Sherry Lee
Great post! I also believe modeling a healthy work-life balance is incredibly important. Regular play time and teaching them to make and maintain healthy boundaries is part of this as well.
desireesavarese
Great read! I am also a momma of a boy so I sometimes struggle with this. Thank you!
literallysimple
So true! Healthy boundaries are good for anyone, but especially a developing child. 🙂
Julie Smith
Having two girls, I appreciate that mamas like you are raising their boys with emotional intelligence.
favoureddaughter
This is a very practical and insightful post. God bless you for being intentional in raising your boys well.
Mamie L. Pack
favoureddaughterOh thank you!
Jade
This is such an important topic! Being open with your feelings and setting healthy boundaries are essential. Thank you for sharing!
Mamie L. Pack
JadeAbsolutely Jade!
Sandra tanner
Great article. I have boys and I can definitely used these tips to help them as they get older.
Mamie L. Pack
Sandra tannerYay!! Mom of sons 👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼
Stephanie
This is such good advice! I have one of each gender and try to lead by example. Being open and honest and being present is huge for us. Thanks for sharing!
Mamie L. Pack
StephanieOh, I complete agree Stephanie. Creating an atmosphere that is open and honest is important.
steakkale
Amen! Men that love God first! Thanks so much for sharing! 🙂
Mamie L. Pack
steakkaleYes, ma’am! Gotta teach them young.
Erin
As a mom of 3 boys and a therapist this is a topic I wish more people openly spoke about!
Mamie L. Pack
ErinIt is so important to normalize feeling emotions and developing emotional intelligence.
Kimberlie
As a first time mom, I’m already anxious, but being a boy mom, with all the toxicity they face is even more scary. These are excellent tips to keep lines of communication open and to give our boys positive outlets to seek and receive help, so the cycle can be broken.
Joy
This is so good. Raising 3 boys over here. Just getting started so I am soaking this stuff up. Want to raise emotionally healthy God-fearing and respectful young men.
Jarid
It’s so true that kids observe our reactions, emotions, actions, and everything! Such a good read!
Lydia Knox
I have two boys and they are still really young, but this is such important advice. I want them to grow up knowing they are allowed to have feelings, be open, and communicate with me.
Jessica
I love my son so much. I pray that he will always love God above all things!
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simplysweetlyblessed1
This is a great read. I have a 10 year old son. And the most important thing is to teach him to grow up to be a good man, husband, and father.
Abby
This is a much more important topic than people realize. Thank you for sharing.
Life With Sonia
I’ll be coming back to this when i have son. I n the main time, i’ll share it with my friends as the they are struggling with this on their boys.
Dr Surabhi
Great tips. I’m going to start implementing this with my growing toddler boy
Dara
Agree! This is so important!
Hannah Forbes-Smith
Such a rich post. There is much to consider when helping our children to develop in healthy ways. Thank you for addressing this!