What I Wish to Teach Our Sons

Growing up as a child, I had one sister. My experience with brotherhood didn’t exist. Little did I know I would have three sons!

The truth is, mothers of multiple sons almost instantly connect. There is so much to learn from each other about raising boys, and it’s fun to meet and chat with other parents.

Here are tips I consider most important to teach sons:

Health and Safety for Life 

As boys grow older, more freedom comes their way. But we have always tried to highlight the importance of good health and staying safe. We are definitely protective parents, and our families were the same way.

Although eating habits may sometimes be lax, and rules may sometimes be broken, we try to teach our sons that what you put in your body affects everything. Without good health we honestly are lost.

As far as staying safe, we want our boys to be risk-takers, but we also want them to  be “smart” about choices they make in life. Our oldest drives, and our younger two ride an electric bike to many places. As they grow, every choice they make will not be wise, but the more proactive they can be about health and safety, the better off they will be in life.

Kindness Above All 

Kindness is one of the most important virtues in this world, especially amidst our digital world of commenting, texting, Snap-chatting. Being considerate of others isn’t always easy (especially when one is upset), but it’s important to encourage kind habits at an early age.

We try to instill how important the value of being kind to others is in life through our actions and words.

Hand-in-hand, we try to ensure our kids show empathy when it comes to perspectives other than their own. They have to see examples demonstrated by parents. It can be challenging at times with our teenagers who sometimes argue and feel they are always right.

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Remind About Respect 

Both my husband and I grew up in Indian households where the value of respect fell high on what I call, “our cultural scale.” We try to emphasize the importance of treating others as we want to be treated.

Our boys can sometimes be impulsive (especially to one another), so we need to remind them about respect.

Since I am the only female in the house (besides our puppy), I find it important to differentiate respect towards females, and exactly what that means. For instance, my husband will sometimes tell our oldest, “You can’t speak to Mom like you do to your friends.” It sounds like basic knowledge, but it sometimes does need to be emphasized with teens especially.

Faith

We were raised Hindus and continue to raise our children as Hindus. Living in Texas, we emphasize that we support all religions, and they do as well.

That being, said whichever religion or faith they each pursue, we want them to continue to stay positive in life and believe in the good. Practicing good faith doesn’t only come to play in religion, but also with attitude and thinking.

We talk to our sons about the power of prayer. For instance, the reality is that our world can be scary sometimes. We have a history of school shootings now. This is scary for kids. We teach our boys that it is natural to have fears and communicating, working on, and praying about our fears helps our mental strength.

Family First 

We hope the boys always keep in mind that family comes first in life. For instance, the boys can get really competitive with each other. We try to encourage them to build up each other. That’s what family does! They protect each other, and we’ve seen many examples of this as they work on school work, play sports, and socialize with friends.

We have moved several times with my husband’s company. One advantage has been that the boys make friends pretty easily. Some of those friends become very close, so we like to use the term, “framily.”

>> RELATED READ :: The Wisdom of Children and What Adults Can Learn from Them <<

Communication

We try to stay close in communication with our boys. We reinforce how important in-person conversations are, and if that’s not possible, to pick up the phone and talk instead of text.

It is challenging to get the boys off their devices at times —especially the older two — to hear about what’s happening in the middle-school and high-school lives. We never want the boys to hold in what is happening and what they are feeling socially. Sometimes the boys share things with me, things they will not share with their Dad. When that happens, it reminds me really how much boys really do need their mothers.

Parenting isn’t easy — believe me I’ve made my share of mistakes — but with it we learn more and more each day about raising our boys through different stages in life.