7. Please don’t compare me to my father, especially if you don’t like him.
You might go to great lengths to try to ensure your son doesn’t know you don’t like his father, but kids aren’t stupid. They can sense that you’re not all that fond of their father. So when your son does something you don’t like and you say “You’re just like your father!” or some similar statement, your son is likely to hear “I don’t like you!”, or worse, “I hate you!”. If there are aspects of your former partner that you admire and respect, by all means, point out to your son those qualities in himself. In addition to not comparing him to his father, don’t expect him to act like his father, either. You might think his father is a jerk, but that does not mean your son will be a jerk. Much of his personality will be determined by how you raise him.
8. Telling me to “man up” or “grow a pair” is not helping.
Society seems to have developed an expectation that men will not or should not show emotion. We teach our sons not to cry, not to express sadness, and that admitting to depression or other things like it is a sign of weakness. We expect girls to begin crying and being more sensitive to everything when they hit puberty, but we’re often surprised when our sons do the same thing. Unprepared for this, some mothers think they need to teach their son to suppress the tears.
Some mothers will put it as bluntly as “man up” or “grow a pair”, while others will tell him to stop crying or that there’s no reason to cry over whatever it is he’s crying over. Either way, this is not fair to your son. Just as with a girl in puberty, boys’ emotions are out of control, too. They don’t know why this insignificant little thing is making them cry, and they can’t explain their anger or any other feelings they’re experiencing right now. What he does know is that he needs you to be there for him, to listen to what he can tell you rather than ignoring him or basically telling him that his feelings don’t matter.
