Parenting

What a Son Needs Most from His Mom

After raising five boys, I have become passionate about sending the message to as many women as I can, that while boys need many things – affection, tenderness, and respect – there is one thing a son needs most from his mom.

We live in a world that has lost all sense of boundaries and the sheltering of children. From many parts of our culture our sons’ innocence is being stolen – entertainment and the internet, education, societal values, language, clothing, and even the toys our sons play with.

They are slowly and methodically taking away the innocence of our sons – that which is the beauty of their souls.

And when innocence is gone, children move further away from God.

As mothers we need to help our young sons protect their innocence.

Although this article is about what we, as women should do, it is imperative that we work together with our husbands to help our sons grow to be good men who respect and treat women and themselves with dignity. (More on this in a future blog post.) I hope you’ll share this post with your husband as a first step in addressing the environment in which you are raising your son(s).

When we made the decision twenty-five years ago to take our children out of the local parish school to homeschool, not surprisingly, we received a lot of negative comments and criticisms. The biggest criticism was, “You just want to protect and shelter your children from the real world.” I’ll be honest, twenty-five years ago I was a little apprehensive to confirm that statement. Somehow, there seems to be a peer pressure that we have an obligation to expose our children and buy into the world’s standards, morals, and values. Otherwise, the ‘experts’ tell us, our children won’t know how to actually act like normal people in the world.

God Entrusts Us With His Children – We Are Obliged to Protect Them

Deep down my husband and I were, in fact, determined to protect and shelter our children for as long as we could from all the messages, images, values, and morals of a world that was not oriented toward God.

Yes, guilty as charged. When my son came home in 1^st grade happy to educate his younger brother on what ‘the finger’ meant, I cried. Of course, my son didn’t know exactly what it meant, but I felt the world creep in, like body snatcher slime on the floor, and take the innocence of my son and his now ‘educated’ brother.

As a degreed teacher I was brainwashed into thinking that children could only be educated in a real school, so I came to homeschooling later than I wished. We had several reasons for homeschooling, but the biggest reason we homeschooled our seven children was to nurture and nourish them in human virtues, morals, and faith.

And to protect their innocence.

As women, we have an acute sensitivity to immodesty and lack of virtue, if we haven’t lost it yet because of the constant assault from our culture. As mothers we must teach our sons to also be sensitive to the immodest and to protect their eyes.

One way our sons learn how to treat women is by watching us and how we approach situations where women feature prominently. For instance, if we watch a show that has half-naked women dancing around a stage, our implicit opinion is that we approve of women portraying themselves like that.

If, however, we make a quick comment like, “This is not appropriate. We’re turning this off,” we tell our sons that we don’t accept that behavior and neither should they.

Zero-Tolerance Environment

Our homes should be a shelter for our sons where they can play and learn without the stress of the inappropriate. Half-naked women make boys (and men for that matter) stressed and uncomfortable. Their bodies are designed to react to the female body. We should not be naïve to think that “our sons” won’t be affected by a movie or video game featuring sexualized women. It also isn’t an overstatement to say that the exposure of our young sons to sexualized toys, games, and entertainment can be the beginning of a pornography addiction later in life. Any research on pornography will show that it is usually an inclined plane – beginning with images that are suggestive and moving towards more graphic images.

You Can’t Unsee Something

Once a child’s innocence is lost, it is very difficult to get back – not impossible, but difficult. I used to tell all my children, “You can’t unsee something.” When they were young, we controlled the input of images and visuals. As they got a little older, we helped them learn to control what they exposed themselves to. Nowadays, the vigilance must begin much earlier.

Here are some ways you can help your son retain his innocence. He may not be happy or appreciate your intervening in what he wants or what everybody else is doing, but don’t forget, YOU ARE THE PARENT! You know what’s best for him! A friend of mine had a son who drew amazing superheroes at 8-10 yrs. old. But my friend thought they were dark and too sexualized. Her son was not happy that she took away the drawing book, explained that the images did not bring him towards God, and encouraged him to draw other things. Many years later, as an adult, the son thanked his mom for doing that! He knew it was not “good and beautiful”, yet he was imitating and expanding on what he saw. He was grateful he had a mother to intervene.

Protect Your Sons

No TV shows that display disrespect towards parents, suggestive language, or suggestive scenes
- If something inappropriate comes on, teach them to turn their eyes or shut it off.
ONLY age appropriate movies that you have previewed
- Our children did not watch PG-13 movies until they were 13, and even then, we censored many.
NO superhero cartoons, comic books, or movies with scantily clad and/or sexualized women.
No female or male superhero action figures with enhanced breasts or genitalia.
- Have you looked at the breasts on these characters? You may not think they’re a big deal, but the boys notice them, and fixates. And some of the male figurines are equally exaggerated. Both corrupt the beauty of God’s creation.
- We did not allow female superheroes in our home, and once we realized the impact of Barbie’s figure on boys, we eliminated all Barbies from the home.
Children don’t need to be on the internet.
- We live in a culture where everyone – including babies – are on the internet. It is completely unnecessary and has a massive negative effect on their brain development.
- Bring in good books, make believe costumes, art supplies, games to play, Legos, and most importantly, send them outside to play!
Be vigilant in monitoring the internet.
- When your children are old enough to need to be on the internet, make sure you have Covenant Eyes, or Net Nanny or some other filter program. However, I would strongly suggest that you don’t let your guard down. Images and text through You tube and education searches (have you searched ancient Egypt lately?) has a lot of content that gets through the filters. Keep the computer in the open family room where there’s lots of traffic. Help your children make the right choices by not giving them more freedom than their abilities in discerning can handle.
Check video games for avatar and/or character image content.
- Remember, we’re trying to protect them from visuals that assault their sensibilities.

Overprotective?

While to some, it may sound like we were overprotective and prudish, not so. We had a happy, innocent environment in our home. They played outside a lot, embraced imaginative play, and spent their time with Lego creations. We taught all the children to navigate objectionable material as they got older and we helped them manage their curiosity on the internet with filters.

Did our children have a childhood free of damaging images? Unfortunately, no. Even as proactive as we were about keeping the filth out, it managed to creep in here and there. We dealt with it and found ways to navigate the future a little better.

What a Son Needs Most from His Mom

Protect your sons, Mama! Keep them as innocent for as long as possible. They’ll grow up respecting women, respecting themselves, and have a healthy sexuality to bring into their own adulthood.

With Prayers & Affection-

Janet

For other posts on nurturing family life, you can visit THIS POST ON EMPATHY AND ORDER, THIS POST ON THE SPIRITUAL ENVIRONMENT, or THIS POST ON TEACHING RESPECT.