Raising Boys & Girls

Raising Boys and Girls- 11/14

Written By: Joanna Metheny

Last week our speakers consisted of two different videos, the first by David Thomas, author of Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys, and the second by Lori Lara, a 3^rd degree black belt who has designed a year-long program to raise Strong Girls. Each video gave some great insight into how boys and girls differ, and specific things we can do to help them thrive.

In the first video with Thomas, he discussed how the best gift we can give our sons is to understand their hardwiring. He said the two main ways we can connect with our boys is by engaging their brains, and engaging their hearts.

Thomas talked about how biologically, girls develop earlier and faster than boys in the area of impulse control. He said girls tend to think first and act second, while boys are the complete opposite, and tend to just go through their day, doing their activities, and then thinking about things afterwards, and how that is a very important distinction.

Thomas also talked about how boys tend to be more singularly focused that girls, who tend to be better at multi-tasking. He said this explains why if you give your son and daughter a list of things to do (change your clothes, put them in the hamper, brush your teeth, and get in bed) why 20 minutes later you’ll find the girl all done and the boy will likely maybe have one shoe off and be in the middle of his room playing with Legos. I had to laugh because this exact thing has happened in my family, on more days than not. He suggested the best way to get through to their “little boy brains” is by appealing to all their senses. This would entail something like getting down to their eye level, looking them in the eye, touching their shoulder, and then making your request, but including just one of the tasks you need them to complete. Make your request, and then say, come back to me when you’ve done that. Once he has, praise him a bunch, and then repeat the actions with the next step of what he needs to do.

In the next section, Thomas discussed how we can engage our sons’ hearts. He said that as mothers, we are their first encounter with the opposite sex, and help form their understanding of how gender roles work. We have the unique opportunity to teach our sons about God’s mercy and kindness, and this is both a blessing and a weighty responsibility. We provide our sons an anchor of security as they begin to separate from us and venture out into the world, and we should be a safe place for him, his home base. He mentioned how we’d get both the best and the worst of our boys, and we should be a sounding board and available to him, but not allow him the freedom to be disrespectful, nor to treat us like a punching bag.

In our second video about raising Strong Girls, Lori Lara talked about how strong girls are those who have a deep sense of self-worth, can answer the questions “who am I?” and “what are my gifts and talents”. Strong girls have a sense of who they are in the world, and are fine making mistakes and learning from them. Lara said we only protect the things we value, so we need to help our girls learn to value themselves, so they see themselves as something precious and worth protecting.

How do we do this? By helping our daughters develop their intuition. Lara said intuition isn’t them something so esoteric, but rather a God-given superpower to help us take care of ourselves. We can help our girls develop intuition by constantly asking them questions, without passing judgement on the answers. We should ask them questions like “what do you think about this person?” or “what do you think about this situation?” Doing this will help them understand what THEY think, it will increase their awareness, and help them verbalize how they feel. This in turn will lead them to feel more comfortable talking with you and speaking up with their peers, coaches, and anyone else they encounter. Learning what she thinks and how she fits into the world will help empower her, as well as build trust between the parent and the child. Lara suggested allowing conversation with space for disagreement, where there is room for both your opinions, and our daughters learn it is okay to not always think like we do.

She also stressed the importance of normalizing mistakes, as well as how we should be transparent and share with our kids mistakes we have made, so they understand it is okay to mess up and talk about it. She said the worst fear a girl can have is “I can’t tell my parents” because that leaves her vulnerable to predators or negative influences. Lastly, she suggested making sure your kids can always use you as an excuse to get out of uncomfortable situations.

We also kicked off the holiday season by working together as tables to fill shoe boxes for Operation Christmas child! Our MOPS group gave 39 boxes! Wow...what a blessing those boxes will be to those children!