Why Your Son’s Anger Isn’t the Problem
The Emotion Everyone Treats and Nobody Understands He punched a hole in his bedroom wall last Tuesday. He’s been suspended twice this semester. He screams at his mother, slams doors, and when you try to talk to him, he looks at you with eyes so full of rage that you barely recognize your son. Everyone…
Read MoreWhat Mothers Get Right That Nobody Gives Them Credit For
You’re Not Failing. You’re Fighting. I need to say something that the parenting world doesn’t say often enough: mothers of struggling boys are doing more right than they think. I’ve been doing this work for thirty years. I’ve sat with over two thousand boys and their families. And in almost every case, the person who…
Read MoreThe Father He Watches
Why Your Son Is Studying Every Man in the Room There’s a boy in every classroom, every dugout, every youth group who is doing something the adults around him don’t realize. He’s watching. Not the way kids watch TV or watch a game. He’s watching the way a student watches a master. He’s studying. Every…
Read MoreWhen Your Son Won’t Talk to You
What to Do Monday Morning When He Shuts Down She was sitting in my office, hands wrapped around a coffee cup she hadn’t touched, and she said the thing I’ve heard a thousand mothers say: “He used to tell me everything. Now I can’t get a single word out of him.” Her son was thirteen.…
Read MoreWhat Thirty Years of Working with Angry Boys Has Taught Me
When Everything Changed The first boy who changed everything was fourteen. Big for his age. Referred for “behavioral problems”—which is clinical shorthand for “nobody knows what to do with him.” He’d been expelled from two schools. His mother was exhausted. His stepfather didn’t want him in the house. Every adult in his life had the…
Read MoreForgiveness Without Reconciliation
It’s the question that stops every man in his tracks. I’ve heard it hundreds of times—in therapy sessions, in men’s groups, in quiet conversations after workshops. The words change, but the question doesn’t: Does healing mean I have to let my father back in and forgive him? The answer is no. And that…
Read MoreThe Five Father Wounds—Which One Is Your Son Carrying?
Something is wrong with your son, and you can’t name it. He’s angry all the time-or he’s disappeared into his room and won’t come out. His grades have collapsed. He’s in trouble at school. Maybe he’s said something that scared you. You’ve tried everything-talking, consequences, therapy, backing off, pushing harder. Nothing sticks.
Read MoreParents: Meet the “New Nanny”
Are you busy raising your kids? If so, you have responsibilities that include entertaining, educating, and guiding! Likely you’ve provided your kids a phone (all the other kids have one) and allowed this phone, who I refer to as “the nanny,” to replace many of the roles a parent is responsible for. The phone has…
Read MoreHelping Boys Navigate Adolescence
When the counseling department at Wydown Middle School reached out and invited me to participate in their “Speaker Series;” focused on boys navigating adolescence, you know my answer was yes!
Read MoreParents Beware-New Nanny!
We’re all busy raising our kids; responsibilities include entertaining, educating, and guiding. Likely they have a phone and you’ve allowed the phone (who I refer to as the new nanny) to replace many of the roles a parent is responsible for. It’s a new reliable, relatively inexpensive nanny. Am I right?
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