From Strong Mothers, Strong Sons

I imagine that you, like me, might have fallen into one of the following familiar traps, the most common ways we fail at getting our sons to talk about their feelings. We do all of these things with our daughters, too, but in my experience, we do them more frequently with our sons, because boys are so much harder to engage in conversation than girls.

1.We become impatient

Many well-meaning mothers try to draw sons out by talking to them. We ask questions and follow them around the house. When this doesn’t work, we ask more questions and begin using a more insistent tone. We get demanding because we want to let them know that we are serious and really want to hear what they have to say. But the more we talk and the more serious our tone becomes, the more our sons clam up. It may take months of conversation to learn what is going on in your son’s mind or heart. Don’t demand his attention. The only way to get it is to be extraordinarily patient.

2.We interrupt when we mean to teach

In my experience, daughters handle being interrupted better than sons do. Daughters, like us, are communicators and they like using lots of words. If we interrupt while they are speaking, many of them simply interrupt back. Not so with sons. If they are interrupted, their feelings get hurt because they think we don’t value what they have to say, and they stop talking.

Usually, we interrupt because we have something to say back to them about what they just told us, and that “something” is a lesson. How many times have you asked your son a question and started formulating a response even as he’s giving you his answer? We all do this. As mothers, we may feel that we need to constantly correct or teach a lesson to our boys while we have their ear. But oftentimes boys aren’t ready to hear what we have to “teach,” so they just shut down. Many times as we try to tell them something that we feel is very important, they tune us out because all they hear is that we want to tell them something, not that we want to hear what they have to say.

3.We can’t put the cellphone down

Maybe your primary distraction isn’t your phone—maybe it’s your computer, your work, your other kids, exercising, or even knitting. We all have our private lists of obsessions that occupy far too much space in our heads. The things that we just can’t let go of.

It’s important that you identify your obsession. Perhaps you don’t want to call it an obsession; maybe it’s just your “very important, pressing work” that needs to be done. If you aren’t quite sure what yours is, ask your son. He knows exactly what takes your attention away from him. And the problem is, he feels that whatever repeatedly takes your attention from him is more important to you than he is.

Once you have recognized it, then it’s time to work toward disciplining yourself to break from it. If it’s your phone, turn it off from 6 to 8 p.m. If it’s the computer, same thing. Cancel meetings, keep your work contained, do whatever you need to do to make time for your son. We think that we are great at multitasking, and while this may be true, one thing that you cannot do while multitasking is listen.

When it comes to changing our relationships with our sons, it is the small moments during the day that matter. One conversation can change your son’s mood; fifteen minutes of your ear may prompt him to see a problem in a new light. The scheduled vacations or special one-on-one times that we carve out to be with our sons are very important, but they don’t always influence who he becomes as a man as much as we’d like to believe. Rather, it’s a few words of encouragement during the day, exercising patience with him when he really needs it, or giving him a smile of affirmation when he feels like a failure that can change how he feels about himself and his life.

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