Cultivating the Heart of Boys

The greatest gift parents can give their sons is an understanding of the "heart."  Parents need to help their sons understand the importance of emotions.  They should be models of a healthy expression of our God given emotions.

Seven steps for Raising Emotionally Healthy Sons:

  1.  Cultivate his identity as an image-bearer.
  2. Understand the relationship of healthy emotional to spiritual intellectual and relationship growth.
  3. Be aware of his emotions.
  4. Be aware of his emotional responses and identify their unique emotional patterns.
  5. Acknowledge emotional events as a powerful opportunity for instruction and building intimacy.
  6. Listen emphatically, validate their feelings, and help them verbally label the emotion.
  7. 7. Set appropriate limits while helping them discover healthy ways to express and deal with the emotion.

FROM DAD:

  1. Be passionate.
  2. Be present.
  3. Be playful.
  4. Be a promise keeper.
  5. The sexual identity, which comes from the father, is laid during the ages of 1-2 years old.
  6. Movement toward the father rather than the mother.
  7. The father teaches how to handle anger.  A healthy father can help a child learn how to contain anger.

FROM MOM:

  1. Accept and embrace the uniqueness of boys.
  2. Cultivate honoring and respectable boundaries.
  3. Learn how to communicate with your sons.
  4. Realize that how you view men will influence how your sons view themselves.

RAISING GIRLS

  1. Set realistic expectations.
  2. Listen more and ask questions.
  3. Allow for mistakes.
  4. Understand puberty.
  5. Help them understand their self-image and body changes.
  6. The father must be involved at an early stage.
  7. Understand that girls multi-task.

Parenting Children and Teens with ADHD

Please visit our Resources page for materials on parenting children and teens with ADHD.