Parenting Teenage Boys: 6 Rules for Moms

A few months ago I got to visit my family in Oregon. My youngest sister had just given birth to her fourth child, Giovanni. It was a very emotional time for me because I hadn’t seen my (now) six nephews (from my sister’s) in years. My oldest nephew, Josue, is now a young adult. There are almost 20 years difference between my oldest and youngest nephews. Seeing them together made me think about my own nearly 20 years as a mother and consider how much the world has changed.

When I was a teen, I never imagined that one day, as a mother I’d need to monitor my children’s social media accounts or teach them about internet safety. Not once did it occur to me that I’d be deciding whether or not a ten-year-old needs a cell phone. Life changes, and along the way, so do the the needs of our children, and our parenting styles. I certainly never imagined I’d spend four hours last night helping my own fourteen-year-old son download sound clips for his own You Tube channel. I was already 32 years old when the first ever You Tube video was uploaded in April 2005. Check it out!

Of course, it’s not just technology that has changed over the years. Everything has taken lightyear leaps into what sometimes feels like completely unknown territory. As our economy went through equally surreal changes, so did the family dynamic. I’m not just talking about the roles of mothers. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, thousands of single college graduate professionals must live with roommates in order to make ends meet. I’m talking about teachers, police officers, small business owners and more. For many, the only option they have to survive financially is to be in a dual or multi-income home, which means roommates for many single residents.

My point is, as parents, even getting them through college won’t guarantee they’re able to keep food on the table as young independent adults. Raising our children to be able to care for themselves physically and financially has always been our goal as parents. While it’s still the goal, the road certainly has changed. There are a lot more unpaved paths and definitely more highways! It’s harder than ever to know if we are guiding them correctly into adulthood. We can spend eighteen years teaching them about all the steps to becoming happy and productive adults, only to have everything change by the time they get there.

I bet that being a milkman was a good job back in the day. What happened to all the milkmen, anyway? That was a real career for at least forty years. It was a job people aspired to do when they grew up. Go ahead, show this little video to your kids. Even seeing, they might not believe that this was a real job. It’s interesting too, that the job title was milk man. I don’t remember one milk woman. We’ll get to this later in my tips for parenting teenage boys.

What if forty years from now, regular physician appointments are handled as virtual meetings with a computer system named Doc? Real doctors are already replacing many in-person appointments with virtual ones. What if you save money your entire life to put your child through medical school, only to be beat out in the interview process by a new nurse-practitioner APP?!

Raising kids is hard, although, I’m no parenting expert. Well, actually I am. Except, I’m not. Some years ago, I was doing a radio segment tour of various stations across the US and internationally (from the comfort of my own home) as a “parenting expert.” I didn’t give myself that title, my publicist at the time did. Let me tell you all something, right now.

THERE ARE NO PARENTING EXPERTS.

Y’all got that? I mean it! So, don’t stress if you don’t feel like an expert. Parenting experts are a myth. Today, kids have more outside influence than any other generation. I love technology and social media, but outside influence is a beast! We parent the best we can, according to our own values and beliefs, then pray, hope, wish or whatever you do, that our influence carries enough weight in comparison to outside influence and a strong-willed child, determined to learn things the hard way on their own terms. What works for one child, will not necessarily work for another, even if they are raised the same way in the same home with the same people.

Don’t worry, today’s tips are evergreen. Not much has changed since we were all kids. At least, not in it’s basic form. Outside influence is greater. We used to be worried about what behaviors kids might pick up at school, who they’d hang out with and what might go down in the locker room. Now, we face technology and social media, where kids are exposed to much more information, bullying and influence. But, like fashion, it’s all cyclic.

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