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This innocent question we ask boys is putting more pressure on them than we realize

When it's always the first question asked, the implication is clear.


Studies show that having daughters makes men more sympathetic to women's issues.

And while it would be nice if men did not need a genetic investment in a female person in order to gain this perspective, lately I've had sympathy for those newly woke dads. My two sons have caused something similar to happen to me. I've begun to glimpse the world through the eyes of a young male. And among the things I'm finding here in boyland are the same obnoxious gender norms that rankled when I was a girl.

Of course, one notices norms the most when they don't fit. If my tween sons were happily boy-ing away at boy things, neither they nor I would notice that they were hemmed in.

But oh boy, are they not doing that.

In fact, if I showed you a list of my sons' collective interests and you had to guess their gender, you'd waver a bit, but then choose girl.

Baking, reading, drawing, holidays, films, volleyball, cute mammals, video games, babies and toddlers, reading, travel, writing letters.

I imagine many of you are thinking at this point: That's awesome that your boys are interested in those things!

There's more. One loves comics and graphic novels but gravitates to stories with strong female protagonists, like Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Cool! I love it.

And sports. They are thoroughly bored by team sports. They don't play them. They won't watch them. They will up- or down-arrow through any number of sporting events on TV to get to a dance contest or to watch competitive baking.

So? Nothing wrong with that.

Those are the kinds of things all my progressive friends say.

But it's often not the message my sons themselves hear from the other adults in their lives, their classmates, and the media.

For example, the first get-to-know-you question they are inevitably asked by well-meaning grown-ups is, "So, do you play sports?" When they say, "No, not really," the adult usually continues brightly, "Oh, so what do you like to do, then?"

No one explicitly says it's bad for a boy not to play sports. But when it's always the first question asked, the implication is clear: playing sports is normal; therefore, not playing them is not.

The truth is that one of them does play a sport. He figure skates, as does my daughter. When people find out that she skates, they beam at her, as if she suddenly has possession of a few rays of Olympic glory. In the days before my son stopped telling people that he ice skates, most of them hesitated and then said, "Oh, so you are planning to play hockey?"

But it's not just what people say. It's all those pesky, unwritten rules. When he was in second grade, my younger son liked the Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series. But he refused to check any out of the school library. He explained: "Girls can read boy books, but boys can't read girl books. Girls can wear boy colors or girl colors, but boys can only wear boy colors. Why is that, Mom?"

I didn't have an answer.

An obvious starting point — and the one that we have the most control over — is to change the way we speak to the boys in our lives.

As Andrew Reiner suggests in a spot-on essay, we should engage boys in analytical, emotion-focused conversations, just like we do with girls. In "How to Talk to Little Girls," Lisa Bloom offers alternatives to the appearance-focused comments so often directed at young girls: asking a girl what she's reading or about current events or what she would like to see changed in the world. I could copy-paste Bloom's list and slap a different title on it: "How to Ask Boys About Something Besides Sports."

And with a few more built-in nudges, we might expand the narrow world of boyhood more quickly. Boy Scouts could offer badges for developing skills in child care, teamwork, and journaling. Girl-dominated activities like art, dance, gymnastics, and figure skating could be made more welcoming to boys, with increased outreach and retention efforts. My son could write his own essay about trying to fit in to the nearly all-girl world of figure skating, including the times he has had to change clothes in a toilet stall at skating events because there were no locker rooms available for boys.

I used to think that the concept of gender — of "girl things" and "boy things" — was what was holding us back.

Now I see it differently.

The interdependent yin and yang of gender is a fundamental part of who we are, individually and collectively. We need people who like to fix cars and people who like to fix dinner. We need people who are willing and able to fight if needed and people who are exquisitely tuned into a baby's needs. But for millennia, we have forced these traits to align with biological sex, causing countless individuals to be dissatisfied and diminished. For the most part, we've recognized this with girls. But we have a long way to go when it comes to boys. As Gloria Steinem observed, "We've begun to raise daughters more like sons … but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters."

I acknowledge that young boys feeling pressured to be sports fans is not our country's biggest problem related to gender.

Transgender individuals still confront discrimination and violence. The #MeToo movement has revealed to anyone who didn't already know it that girls and women can't go about their everyday lives without bumping into male sexual aggression.

But if our culture shifts to wholeheartedly embrace the whole spectrum of unboyishness, it may play some small role in addressing these other issues, too. Male culture will be redefined, enriched, and expanded, diluting the toxic masculinity that is at the root of most of our gender-related problems.

Boys and girls alike will be able to decide if they would rather be made up of snips and snails, sugar and spice, or a customized mix. And my future grandsons, unlike my sons, won't think twice about wearing pink or reading about a girl detective at school.

This story originally appeared on Motherwell and is reprinted here with permission.


This article originally appeared six years ago.

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Being a parent may be 'hard,' but these moms have a better way to define the experience

The words we use can have a big effect on our attitudes as parents.

via Helena Lopes/Pexels

A mother holding her baby.

If there's one thing you learn raising multiple children all the way to adulthood, it's that parenthood is humbling. It's many other things, too—wonderful, joyful, delightful, frustrating, confusing and tiring—but humbling might top the list.

When you're in the early years of your parenting journey, humility hasn't always set in yet, which is how a debate between moms about whether or not parenting is hard got sparked on social media.

It began when a mom of four kids under 7 wrote on X, "So many parenting books talk about how incredibly hard parenting is. However that had just not been my experience at all. My kids are 1.5-7, I have four, and there are certainly difficult moments, but I would not describe parenting itself as being hard. Am I alone in this?"

Is parenting as hard as people say it is?

People began sharing their experiences, explaining that they thought parenting was easy too until they had a more difficult kid. Some parents said that if moms think parenting is easy it just means they have easy kids or a lot of help. Some said that if parenting is hard for you, it's a skills or attitude issue, which prompted some heated debate about how much of your parenting experience is within your control.

Many of the people who claimed that parenting was easier than they expected have small children only. That explains part of their thinking, especially if they have relatively easy young ones. But it's also a reflection of how the parenting discourse has shifted to become more raw and unfiltered in recent years, largely thanks to the mommy blogging era. Two decades ago, when I was raising my own small children, blunt honesty about the challenges of parenting came as a breath of fresh air to those of us who had only ever heard about how wonderful motherhood was. Now "real talk" has been the norm for a whole generation, probably swinging the pendulum to the other side, bombarding young parents with messages about how hard parenting is.

There's something to be said for expectation. If you go into motherhood expecting it to be hard, it may not be as difficult as you imagined. If you go into motherhood expecting it to be all giggles and cuddles, you'll be in for a rude awakening. Messaging makes a big difference on that front.

What do people mean when they say parenting is hard?

Of course, there's also the fact that "hard" is completely subjective. How do you measure that? Some moms who said parenting is not that hard said things along the lines of, "There are hard moments and sometimes it's frustrating and it's definitely tiring, but it's not hard." But some of us would absolutely equate "frustrating" and "tiring" with hard. So some of this is just semantics.

All "hard" really means is "requiring much effort or skill," which I imagine most people would agree parenting requires. However one of the above moms implied that if parenting is hard, it means you're not good at it, which understandably rubbed some people the wrong way. Same with the idea that attitude is most of what makes parenting hard.

But whether parenting is hard or not isn't even the right question. The question is whether hard = bad. I would argue it absolutely does not. In fact, I think "parenting is hard" is totally compatible with "parenting is delightful" and "parenting is enjoyable." Parenting being hard doesn't negate the joy and the wonder of it all.

Running a marathon is hard, but people still choose to do it because they love to run and because they enjoy the challenge. It's exciting and exhilarating and exhausting, all at the same time. The effort—the hard—is a big part of the experience.

Tending a farm is hard work, and it's celebrated as such. It seem strange to imply that saying "parenting is hard" must mean there's some sort of moral failure happening. Isn't hard just the nature of it?

Is parenting really supposed to be easy?

Parenting isn't meant to be impossible or torturous, but I don't think it's supposed to be a breeze, either—at least not if you're trying to do a good job. Being a bad parent is easy, at least for a while, but good parenting takes continuous, conscientious effort. There are a million circumstances, from age and stage of development, to individual temperament and family support, to your own upbringing and expectations of parenting, that can make it easier or harder. But until you've done the full arc of raising multiple children through to adulthood, you simply don't know what unexpected surprises might be in store. Humility can be chosen early on or forced upon you later, but I've yet to meet a veteran parent who hasn't been humbled by parenting somewhere along the way.

When my children were little, I had a completely different perspective on parenting than I do now that I have two young adults and a teen. Different parents find different parts of parenting difficult, and again, that's not bad. I love being a mom. Motherhood has been the greatest gift of my life and I adore my relationship with my incredible kids, but it was—and still is, in some ways—hard to be a parent. There's no way around that and I feel zero shame in saying it. The hard work of sowing good character, watering their hearts and minds, weeding out negative influences and nurturing them as individuals has allowed us to reap the fruits of our labor in a beautiful family life.

Perhaps those who find parenting "easy" just have their own interpretation of what "hard" or "difficult" means. Or perhaps they haven't hit a hard stage of parenting yet. Or maybe they really did hit the jackpot combo of easy kids and tons of support and that won't ever change. Who knows. All I know is that parenting well is hard, but that hard and great and joyful and wonderful can all totally go hand in hand.

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10 things kids get in trouble for that adults get away with all the time

Why do we expect children to have more self-control than grown-ups?

Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash

Kids know when we're being hypocritical.

Raising kids is tough and no parent does it perfectly. Each child is different, each has their own personalities, strengths and challenges, and each of them requires something different from their parents in order to flourish.

But there's one thing that parents have long said, with their actions if not with their words, that justifiably drives kids bonkers: "Do as I say, not as I do."

To be fair, both moral and actual law dictate that there are things that adults can do that kids can't. Children can't drive or consume alcohol, for example, so it's not hypocritical for adults to do those things while telling kids they cannot. There are other things—movies, TV shows, books, etc.—that parents have to decide whether their kids are ready for or not based on their age and developmental stage, and that's also to be expected.

But there are some gaps between what adults do and what they expect kids to do that aren't so easy to reconcile.

In fact, there's a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to the way adults behave and the way they think kids should behave that warrants some examination. Here are 10 things some people punish kids for that adults do with total impunity:

1. Being hangry

Grown-ups are so familiar with being cranky when they need food that they coined the term "hangry." And yet, if a child melts down because they're hungry, they are expected to pull themselves together and "stop that fussing."

Sure, kids have to learn to regulate their emotional expression, but being punished for needing food and not being able to control their reactions to hunger yet isn't going to teach them that regulation. They have a hard enough time learning that skill when they aren't hungry, so give kids a little grace when the hanger hits. (And always carry snacks.)

2. Not wanting to share something special

The concept of sharing is something most parents try to instill into their kids in order to move them away from self-centeredness. That's not a bad thing, for sure.

But it's worth noting that most adults have certain special belongings that they don't want other people to use, which is totally fine, so expecting kids to always share everything doesn't really make sense. Instead, teach kids that if they have something special that they don't want to share, to keep that item put away when other kids are around. They can also learn to kindly say, "Actually, that toy is extra special to me, but I'm happy to let you play with this one" while offering something else.

3. Breaking dishes, dropping drinks, or other oopsies

How many of us don't break a dish on occasion, simply due to fumbling fingers?

Accidents happen, and it's not always because we're being careless. If a kid is tossing a dish up in the air and trying to catch it behind their back or some other foolish game, that's worth a talking to about carelessness. But if a child breaks something or drops something, our first reaction shouldn't be to get angry and blame or shame them.

Grown-ups don't get in trouble when they drop something. Kids, who have a lot less experience with their hands, definitely shouldn't. Model forgiveness and compassion by helping them clean up the mess, and move on.

4. Not responding immediately

"Did you hear what I said? Are you listening?" we ask our children mere minutes after they had to repeat "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy," to us before we were able to respond to them.

We can't expect our kids to immediately pull their attention away from what they are doing every time we want to say something to them, just as we can't always immediately shift our focus to them if we're putting together a recipe or typing out a thought or in the middle of a calculation.

It's reasonable to teach kids to respectfully say, "One second, please," if we want their attention when they're in the middle of something. That teaches them that their learning/play is worth concentrating on, but also that responding to their parents is important. Give them a little time to disengage, just as adults grant one another all the time if we need to talk.

5. Forgetting things

Adults sometimes forget their lunchbox at home. Adults sometimes leave their jacket someplace by accident. Forgetting things is a normal human phenomenon, not limited to children, and we all give one another grace when we forget something.

With kids, we tend to be less forbearing. If forgetting is a daily occurrence, then sure, it might need to be addressed. But making a kid go hungry because they forgot their lunch even though we could easily bring it to them because "this will teach them to remember it" is kind of silly. Would we do that to our spouse if they forgot their lunch? No. Why do it with a kid (again, unless it's a recurring habit)?

6. Refusing to eat something

We all have likes and dislikes, and one man's feast is another man's napkin food. We would never force an adult who doesn't like sweet potatoes to stay at the table until they finish their sweet potatoes. Why do that to kids?

Encouraging kids to try something they've never tasted is one thing, but making them eat something they've tried and didn't like is just ick. Kids can learn to be grateful for the food they have without being made to eat everything on their plate. Provide lots of options, encourage tasting, but don't force kids to eat anything. That's a quick way to take the enjoyment out of trying new foods and create a negative association with eating certain foods—the exact opposite of what you're wanting.

Most kids will grow out of picky eating, but there will always be certain things people don't care for. It's okay to let that be.

7. Fidgeting

Some people have a really hard time sitting still for long periods of time, adults and children alike. But kids are the ones who get in trouble for not sitting still. Look at how popular standing desks, under-the-desk treadmills and walking meetings have become for working adults—and that's even when they have comfortable, ergonomic office chairs to sit in.

Yet kids are expected to sit in uncomfortable desks most of the day without being able to get up and move around as they need to? No wonder some kids get fidgety.

8. Being in a bad mood

We all have our moments, don't we? Times when we're just feeling salty or irritable and we don't even know why? Maybe it's hormones, maybe it's hanger, maybe it's a full moon—whatever it is, we let people know we're feeling prickly and do what we need to do to either stay away from people or put ourselves right.

What certainly wouldn't help is having someone chide us for having a "bad attitude" and insist that we "shape up." Helping kids manage their mood or alter their environment when they're struggling to manage it is a much more effective life skill than punishing them for being in a bad mood.

9. Complaining

Ever seen a grown-up sit down to do their taxes without a single complaint? No, you haven't, because even if we're getting a refund the process of figuring it out is painful.

Plenty of adults complain when we have to do something we don't want to do, and it's not because we were raised that way, most of the time. It's because some things just suck and it makes us feel better in the moment to express how much they suck.

What kids complain about may seem trivial or silly to us, but it's not to them. Totally find to teach kids that complaining doesn't do any good, but not worth punishing them for it.

10. Sneaking sweets

Umm, hi. Guilty, pretty much daily.

It's technically not sneaking when you own the sweets and you're a grown-up, but it feels like it. And who can blame kids for wanting to raid the cookie jar or the chocolate chip stash? Not saying they should. Just saying I get it, kid.

What else belongs on this list?


This article originally appeared on 3.1.24

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Gentle parenting: You're doing it wrong. Watch how it's supposed to look.

People often think "gentle parenting" means letting a child walk all over you, but it doesn't.

Images courtesy of Gabriel Hannans/TikTok (@the_indomitable_blackman)

Gabe Hannans explains what gentle parenting is and isn't.

One of the benefits of parenting in the 21st century is that we have decades of research on child psychology, behavior and development to draw best practices from. Unfortunately, all of that knowledge can also makes parenting more confusing than it already is.

It's not that the research is faulty, it's that people often don't take the time to actually understand what specific parenting philosophies actually entail. There's perhaps no more notorious example of that than misunderstandings about what "gentle parenting" means.

For many parents, "gentle parenting" sounds like a nice idea in theory but unrealistic in practice. Many imagine it means always using a calm and quiet voice, asking a child nicely to do things (or not do things) without setting any rules or boundaries around behavior. With that understanding, what ends up happening is a parent tries to "gentle parent" their child with scenarios that go something like this:

"Ellie, would you please put your shoes on?"

[Ellie ignores Mom and continues to play with her toys.]

"Ellie, it's time to get your shoes on. Can you stop playing with your toys, please?"

[Ellie shakes her head no while continuing to play.]

"Ellie, we have to go now. Mommy needs you to put your shoes on. Can you cooperate, please?"

[Ellie says, "No, I don't want to!"]

"Come on, Ellie. I know you don't want to, but please be cooperative."

child playing with blocksChild playing with blocks. Photo by Karolina Kaboompics/Pexels

And so it continues, with Mom asking nicely and Ellie refusing until Mom finally loses her patience and yells, at which time Ellie complies. Conclusion: Gentle parenting doesn't work.

Except what Mom is doing in that scenario isn't gentle parenting. It's gentle, sure. But it's not parenting.

Behavioral specialist and teacher Gabe Hannans explains what gentle parenting means in his popular TikTok videos. He also takes it a step further and demonstrates what gentle parenting actually looks like in practice.

In one video, Hannans stitches a video showing a mother losing her cool and yelling and swearing at a toddler who wouldn't get out of the garbage when she asked nicely with the caption, "When gentle parenting is not working."

"So, gentle parenting is not talking to your child like, 'Oh, little Billy, you gotta stop. Stop that, little Billy,'" he says. "If I need a kid to do something, I'm gonna walk up, 'Hey, little Billy. This is what we're doing now.' I'm gonna say what you should be doing instead of what you shouldn't be doing."

Watch him explain the effect that has on a child's brain:

@the_indomitable_blackman

#stitch with @nazahmathis397 Learn what gentle Parenting actually is... #sahm #NextLevelDish #foryoupage #children #fyp #GetCrackin #kids

In another video, he demonstrates what gentle parenting might look like in practice with a specific scenario in which he asks a kid to come inside because it's about to start raining. The kid, Jimothy, responds in a way that's rude or disrespectful because he wants to stay outside a little longer. Watch how Hannans handles it:

@the_indomitable_blackman

#stitch with @Life with Sam 🤪 Gentle, permissive, Conscious, respectful, different names, same principles. High expectation, Hugh responsiveness. It's not violent, fearful or shameful. it teaches the lessons you want them to learn. If you wanna make the switch and have Questions, that's why I'm here! #parents #parenting #respect #fyp #foryou #foryoupage

As the parent in the situation, he doesn't act as if he's not bothered by the kid's reaction. He's real about it, but he doesn't react with anger. He models healthy emotional control. He makes it clear that the expectation is mutual respect, and he models and explains that, too. He has the kid come up with a respectful response and has him practice it. Then he shows the kid that the respectful response works better, offering positive reinforcement of the desired behavior.

"A lot of parents are unfortunately holding on the belief that gentle parenting is permissive parenting, and they are not the same thing," he says. "They are so different because gentle parenting actually does teach respect, it teaches boundaries, it teaches expectations, it teaches what you're supposed to do in a given interaction. It's what proper parenting looks like."

Sometimes gentle parenting is referred to as conscious parenting or respectful parenting, but it's all the same thing. It's parenting through the lens of teaching, with the understanding that kids aren't born knowing how to act or communicate or behave or express themselves. We as parents have to patiently and persistently teach them all of those things, and that looks a bit different at each age and stage.

What about things like tantrums? As Hannans shows and explains in another video, taking a proactive approach to prevent tantrums is much more effective than waiting for them to happen and then having to manage them. Tantrums happen—it is developmentally appropriate behavior at certain ages and stages. But there's a lot that a parent can do to lessen the chances of a kid melting down.

Here's one example of how a parent can prepare a child to go shopping and set the expectations beforehand for what a trip to the store is going to entail.

@the_indomitable_blackman

#stitch Kids will tantrum, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Teach these kids to self regulate when they're calm. Set expectations and boundaries AND HOLD FIRM TO THEM. For more information... Check out the book I wrote. #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #parenting #parents #teaching


Every parent knows that parenting is complicated no matter how much research we do and how much knowledge we have. Each child has their own innate personality that parents have to get to know, and each parent has their own upbringing, environment, culture and tendencies to contend with. Most of us want to parent well, but figuring out how to do that with all the different variables at play is hard.

But that doesn't mean there aren't better and worse ways to parent. We have research-backed, effective ways to teach a child how to be a solid, upstanding human being without having to resort to harsh punishments. Screaming and yelling, spanking, humiliation, shaming and other "old school" methods might seem like they "work" in the short term, because they cause a child to shut down and do as they're told out of fear. But that doesn't teach them what respectful behavior or emotional regulation actually look like. It doesn't give them the tools and skills they need to make choices for themselves. That's what gentle parenting is all about.

Follow Hannans on TIkTok for more gentle parenting education and demonstration, and check out his book, "This is Parenting," here.

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