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- Bringing Up Boys
A few days ago I tweeted:
The context of this line was that my oldest son successfully sold his first vehicle, a 1997 GMC pickup truck. He had found it, bought it, drove it, marketed it and sold it making a small profit. What impressed me was that he:
found the truck himself
looked after the maintenance
decided to sell it and upgrade
detailed the truck, took pictures, wrote the ad copy and set a price
dealt with tire-kickers, low-ballers, and no-shows.
negotiated with a buyer and completed a sale with proper transfer of bill of sale.
He didn’t do all of this without help from his mother and me. But he did take the bulk of responsibility. The result was that he enjoyed the bulk of the satisfaction of selling the truck.
He also had to wrestle with seller’s regret, and learn to be content with the price that he was paid. Of course, getting paid can be difficult in business, so it’s a valuable lesson to learn.
Through all of this, I was reminded that teenage boys (as with teenage girls in their own way) must develop maturity in their character, control of their emotions, and wisdom in their speech and actions.
But they also need to develop capacity.
Are they capable of doing things now that they couldn’t do last year? What things can they become capable of now that will benefit them later on?
The crisis of teen boys is that parents are not developing their capacities. So the boys are left to do two or three things only: play one all-consuming sport and play lots of video games.
Sports are great. They can teach many skills, especially about social dynamics, coping with failure, discipline needed for achievement, etc. But if boys are focused too narrowly, they limit their capacities to those sports only.
Then when the end of their competitive sporting career comes (usually in their twenties at the latest), they are left with little capacity to be a man, even though they have had high achievement in one narrow, but essentially irrelevant pursuit.
As for video games, they don’t build any physical capacity at all. Some of the history-based strategy games can be excellent tools for helping boys learn history, tactics, diplomacy and decision-making. [As a side-note, do you notice that young men are becoming attuned to historical precedents and they are using history to combat modernist and Marxist ideologies they are being taught? Is this due to their historical strategy video games and history on Youtube?) Still, video games remain in an ethereal context so even those benefits are limited.
Will an employer be impressed that you played upper level puck-ball or cracked a video game years ago? Likely not. The only takeaways from those achievements will be the capacities and skills that they might have given you along the way.
What bosses, employees, investors, congregants, advisors and customers are all looking for is a man’s capacity and capability. That is what we need to focus on with our sons.
So How Do We Develop Boys’ Capacity?
Here are some suggestions about how to bring up boys to develop their capacity:
Let them be inspired and educated about real men and how they live. They don’t need to hear about escapists showing off their cash and cars. Instead show them what different admirable men do for a living and what their lifestyle looks like:
The CEO has lots of head-aches, works in an office, makes a lot of money and hangs with his family on evenings and weekends.
The plumber has headaches too, but only has to be responsible for his own problems, he can work hard support his family well, set his own hours and decide his work schedule to fit his family routine as he wants.
The farmer is always on call, asset rich and cash poor but can incorporate his family life into the work life and set a pace of work that fits his family’s needs.
The engineer works set hours, working for other people, and he can scale the corporate ladder or stay content in one role depending on his family needs.
All of these men can be templates for your sons to look at and consider what they would like to do and what fits them best. Of course they should be shown what their father does and what it takes for them to do the same job. Some sons don’t follow in their father’s footsteps because they’ve never been shown the rewarding aspects of the work, only the fatigue from the work at the end of the day. They need inspiration to see godly Christian men glorifying their Lord in different kinds of work.
Start listing skills to stack. Boys should be learning big things and little things in order to stack them together to do other more complex things.
Learning to drive, getting a driver’s license. Basic car detailing, car maintenance, and car book-keeping (insurance and registration; resale value).
Physical fitness. How to work out, gain muscle, develop stamina, eat healthy, etc.
Learn to use basic physical tools, to hammer, loosen, lift, pry and fasten.
Learn to use basic social tools like a handshake, eye contact, making small talk, asking good questions, etc.
Learn to use digital tools like how to craft an email, research a topic, stay away from danger online, make a simple website, use social media in a professional way.
Develop applied math for calculating distances, quantities, money and time.
Develop biblical literacy, both in the content of the bible, but also its major themes, and go-to sources for important topics (systematic theology). Added to this is the cultivation of personal spiritual disciplines such as personal prayer, personal hymnody, and personal witnessing.
Learn to talk to women. Talking to women in the various roles they occupy in a man’s life is an important skill. Speaking to women as competent peers; being wary of some women who would entrap them, pursuing a woman to take an interest in her with a view to possibly being a wife, and taking the risk and marrying her. All of these require that men talk to women. Men don’t have to be talkative with women. But they need to act like men as they speak to women in a godly way.
Learn to serve. This is not having a subservient, spineless demeanor. Rather it is the eagerness attributed to Calvin who said of service to God, “my heart I offer to you promptly and sincerely”. As for dealing with people, prompt and sincere is a good motto for any young man who wants to be successful. Call it customer service, or ‘riding for the brand’, but prompt and sincere effort stands out to bosses and clients alike. Entitlement is an ugly attitude among young men who have not achieved anything. Prompt and sincere in heart toward God is the starting place for serving man in a godly way.
Don’t be afraid to make money, but seek to understand how the love of money could corrupt. Young men need to be encouraged to make money. They need to make more money than they think. Raising a family is expensive! But they also need to be aware of the love of money that is the root of all evil, and will drive them to chase money at the expense of their marriage, children and their faith.
There are many things to add to this list, and somethings that need to be developed more, or made to be the higher priorities (obviously faith in Jesus Christ must be the highest pursuit). What would you add to this list to improve it?
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Make a list of skills that your son has developed. Add to that list some skills that they can work on over the next 6 months. This list can include anything that an adult male has to do regularly. Think of older skills sets like Eagle Scouts and Dangerous Book for Boys. Add to these any other skills sets that you can think of that are quick wins (detail a car, calculate the tip, do the chore, etc).
Read through Thoughts for Young Men by Ryle and John Ploughman's Talk by Spurgeon. See you if you can apply these lessons to your son. Talk through it with him.
Evaluate every season what skills a special sport is building in your son. If it is merely running him through the development pipeline to nowhere, reconsider other alternatives to develop.
Challenge your son to contribute to your church with his energy and attention. Encourage him to think of ways he can serve that are age-appropriate. Help him to see all of the opportunities and needs that are required to build up the body of Christ, the local church.
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