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The Passive Wound: When a Father Is in the Room but Not in the Room
The Passive Wound is the most common of the five father-wound patterns I see in clinical practice, and it is also the easiest to miss. The reason is that it is defined by something that does not happen rather than by something that does. The father is in the house. He comes home from work.…
Read MoreThe Absent Wound: When a Father Is Gone
The Absent Wound is the most visible of the five father-wound patterns. The father isn’t there. Through death, divorce, abandonment, incarceration, deployment, or distance, the boy grows up without the male presence he was developmentally wired to need. But what makes this wound complicated isn’t the absence itself. It’s what the boy decides about himself…
Read MoreWhat Your Son Needs From His Mother
And What He Needs You to Stop Doing This is going to be uncomfortable. I’m going to ask you to do something that goes against every instinct you have as a mother: step back. Not out of his life. Not out of his heart. But out of the space between your son and his pain.…
Read MoreThe Five Boys Who Changed My Life
Before I Had a Credential, I Had a Calling Before I was Dr. Clay, I was Captain Lessor-USAF. No PhD. No license. No program. No book. A guy in his twenties proudly serving his country who knew what it felt like to grow up without a father who showed up—and who couldn’t stop noticing the…
Read MoreThe Wound Nobody Talks About
When Dad Is in the House but Not in the Room When people hear the words “father wound,” they think of the absent father. The dad who left. The dad in prison. The dad who died. And yes—that wound is devastating. Nearly one in three American boys is growing up without a resident father, and…
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 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…
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