He Needs More Than Praise From His Mother

He needs praise from respectable men.

A boy will only accept so much praise from his mother. Praising her children is an important part of what a mother does and part of her nurturing nature.

But a boy will eventually ignore that praise or chafe under it. The latter usually means he will rebel against it in some way, but either way, he will be resistant to his mother’s teachings. Not a good outcome.

There is a third option, one just as bad but our culture treats it as normal. A boy becomes subdued by her praise, sands down all of his rough edges, and becomes effeminized and pacified. He will always be looking for the approval of other women.

How do you stop this from happening? A boy needs the praise of men he respects. Most of all, his father. Discipline is a dance of pruning and praising in the right amount, at the right time, and in the right order.

If a boy doesn’t get this from his father, he will seek it from peers or other men. Both can end in disaster, but make no mistake. It is not whether a boy will be directed by other men. It is which men he will be directed by, even if those men end up still being boys themselves.

This is a problem mostly for single mothers and why boys from fatherless homes are so at risk from so many different problems. But it can also be caused by weak and abdicating fathers. It causes problems for girls, too, of course, just of a different sort.

A mother can’t teach everything. That’s why children have a mother and a father. Always be sure your boys have respectable men to look up to and learn from. Otherwise, they will look up to dishonorable men.