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Two of the best things any good dad can do to a son. Make sure you grow your son's faith, take him to church, teach him about God, share your experiences, and be present in his life. If you only do those two things, your kid's not going to go wrong. Dr. Meg Meeker is our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
She'll be encouraging you as a parent to steer your sons toward healthy masculinity. I'm John Fuller and Dr. Meeker has some great advice for us as she returns for a second day. And if you didn't catch the previous episode, you can listen to that through our mobile app. John, we spoke with Dr.
Meek last time about encouraging and guiding our sons. You have boys, I have boys, you also have daughters. But man, I've lived that being the dad of two sons: how to encourage them, how to guide them, how to control them, how to get them in a headlock when necessary. They're so physical. Oh my goodness.
I love it. We used to wrestle in the basement, and Gene would yell down from upstairs, everything okay down there? Yeah, we're just doing normal stuff. Oof, you know, it was so much fun. But the boys loved it.
I mean, we did nerf fights at night with glow-in-the-dark. Nerf bullets and all kinds of. It was a blast. I love being a dad of boys. And Dr.
Meg Meeker, as I said, is here. She is a leading pediatrician helping parents with really critical, helpful insights on children and teens. She's written a number of books, and we're drawing on one of those in particular for these conversations: Boys Should Be Boys: Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons. And we have copies of this book here at the ministry. You can find out more about getting a copy and about our guest when you stop by the show notes.
We've got the details there for you. Meg, welcome back.
Well, thanks for having me back. It's so much fun. It was good. Our last conversation was a good kickoff to how do we raise boys into manhood and do that well and really moms' roles in doing that particularly. You know, let me ask you this question.
And last time we talked about this as well.
So if you didn't hear the program last time, go back and listen to it. You can get that at the website or get the app for your phone. You can listen to all the programs. But this idea that there have been bad men. We can't be naive about this.
There is a certain negative expression of masculinity where it's power, often it's sexual abuse or physical abuse because we are physically stronger. We can dominate in that way. We can intimidate.
So those things are all true, but it's kind of like anything where if 5% are horrible, and that may be quite high, but whatever small percentage are terrible, then it gets applied to everybody. And that's That's not the case. I mean, again, if you have 95, 97% of men are good people that want to live life well and protect and provide and do those things that we believe in. That's a good thing, but don't paint us with the broad stroke of that other 3 to 5 percent that may be misbehaving.
Well, and that's been a huge problem: is that culturally, because women have dominated the narrative about who men are, and it's primarily been negative. We won't put up with this, we won't put you know, the Me Too movement, we're not going to put up with the sexual abuse and so forth.
Okay, that's all good, but when there's no positive to balance it, it's like all men have been thrown into the same pot. You're all potentially sexual abusers.
So I have to treat you as though you're very dangerous. Because the narrative for women has been rewritten by feminists. And now we're sort of trying to settle it. It's like, wait a minute, we really do want to be home with our kids. Wait a minute, we really do want to do this.
That hasn't happened with men. The only people trying to redefine masculinity have been women. And what they're trying to do is say, no, no, no, we want to sort of neuter you a little bit. We want you nice. We want you quiet.
We want you kind. We don't really want you at the center of the family. We want you to kind of orbit. Christ was a lion. And a lamb.
We do lambs really well because they're safe. We don't like lions. And there's a part of masculinity that has that lion persona. Yeah, wow, that's a powerful statement. Powerful statement.
Listen, last time we started with your seven secrets to helping boys grow into manhood. I want to pick up with that. Again, people can go back and listen to the others. Number four was: remember that boys need rules. All the guys here went, oh, no, not that one.
Boys are dangerous creatures. For their survival, they need walls to run into, to be blunt. Henry Cloud would say, the wall is the boundary. I'm saying with a boy, it's a wall. Because they need to run into something, go, oh, that does not gonna work.
That doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good. I can't do that. And in many ways, you know, when they're a teenage boy, they need a man to run into because he may be the only boundary. And that's how they feel safe.
Boys need clear boundaries and rules, and they do fine with them. Because if men are anything, they go, oh, problem, tell me the solution, got it. Women will not cheer their, you know, what's causing the problem and how can, you know, we solve the problem and there's 10 different solutions. No, tell the boy, you have to be home by midnight. And if you're not be home by midnight, this is what's going to happen.
You can't drive the car for a month. No, no, that will oppress this. No, we need to keep our sons safe. physically, emotionally. and so forth.
They need rules. In this case, let's talk about the s the smartphones. Around this issue. Have you seen a change of that? Smartphones, first of all, I hate them.
Smartphones, dumb people. Smartphones, dumb people. I hate them. My husband uses a flip phone because he, anyway, yeah, phone use and social media, which girls aren't particularly on social media, but too much screen time is very bad for boys because many teenage boys have difficulty communicating and articulating feelings and thoughts, particularly to girls. This makes it 10 times worse because they're less engaged in healthy conversation and communication.
And so the less time boys spend with screens, the healthier they're going to be emotionally. And the relationships are going to be much, much healthier the less time they are on screens. And for boys, a lot of that screen time is video games. We know the more time a boy spends on a violent video game, the more aggressive he becomes. It rewires his brain.
Yeah. Clearly. In the book, Boys Should Be Boys, you mentioned George. I'm sure it's a different name for this person, but this college, I don't know if he's college age or younger, who had an addiction to gaming. It described George's plight.
and what needed to be done. Sad to say, it's not that unusual. Correct. This is a boy that started gaming, liked it, an hour to it. And I want to say, very well-educated, conscientious.
Good parents, friends of mine, okay, started an hour or two a day, and then he was doing more. And he was doing more in the middle of the night. And this is what parents need to realize: no devices in the room after a kid goes to bed because they'll sit up at two, three, four, five in the morning. And this kid just sort of slid into a gaming addiction unbeknownst to his parents. They started to realize that when he wanted to drop out of basketball and then he let his girlfriend go, he withdrew from his friends because he was spending upwards of 12 hours a day gaming.
Good, good kid, and he knew when he came to see me, he had a problem, there was an addiction. It had power over him. Yeah. because no one saw what was happening. And this is the destructive behavior a teenage boy can just slide into if his parents aren't really paying attention to what he's doing at three in the morning.
Got it, we got to know that. And to know how to stop it, and to know that they have the right, the duty to stop it early on. Yeah, that's good. Secret number five, acknowledge that virtue is not just for girls.
Okay, let's spend a little time in this space. How can parents and mentors help train a boy's mind to be inclined toward virtue?
Well, to talk to them about virtue, to talk to them about chivalry, to talk to them about courage and what courage looks like, that courage looks like being afraid you're going to fail, but you step into it anyway. you know you're scared of algebra you're going to fall you're going to take care oh well march in there and risk failing. Because you're a risk taker. You can risk to fail.
So talk about virtues and spell them out, you know, as a parent. Name them, you know, perseverance and tenacity and even the fruits of the spirit. Start there and say, this is what, do you aspire to be this way? Do you say, yes, I would like to.
Well, how are we going to get you there? Yeah. You know, it's a we thing because by the time you're 25, I would like these virtues that you have to be solid. I would like you to be a courageous 25-year-old man who's not afraid to walk into a boardroom or to walk, you know, to your kids or whatever. Is that the kind of person you'd like to be?
Yes, mom. Let's talk about grooming you to get there. If you want to get there, you cannot spend 12 hours a day on a video game. You cannot be having sex with a gazillion girls in college. You cannot be playing beer pong every night of the week in college.
If you want to be a successful, strong, courageous. Man. Which every boy will say he wants to be that.
Well, you're not going to get there if you're doing this at 18. And so this was, and you know, I'm not passing judgment on parents or this boy or anything. Like I said, it was great. It fell into him because our culture sucks him in like it sucks kids, boys into pornography. It comes to them.
Meg, you write in the book that God makes sense. To boys. I love that statement. I mean, I have poured my parenting time into my two boys in that way. I believe they have a firm grip on that.
They don't always behave the way I want them to behave. But I mean, generally they get this. It's like, yeah, God does make sense to me.
So I think I can attest to that statement, but explain to me why you said that.
Well, here's what I see. Just having watched a generation of kids grow up. Kids are born with a sense that there is another world. They're spiritual people.
Something bigger.
Something bigger.
They're open to it. They want to hear about it. They want to see it. They want to talk about it. But I believe, and even Christian parents, is we talk our kids out of God the older they get.
Huh. Because we feel we need to defend it all the time. And if kids see you constantly defending something, then they say, well, maybe it's not real, or maybe you think it's not real. Case in point. I have had a number of children, young children under 10.
Under 10. Describe angels to me. I'm not kidding you. I have the best job in the world. And I sit there, and one girl recently, she's about 11, describing how she's having a hard time falling asleep at night.
And I went through sleep hygiene and da-da-da-da-da. She said, Well, I finally got better because I noticed when I would look at my door, and it was dark in the room, an angel would stay in the doorway between my room and the hall. And immediately her mother said, What are you talking about? Don't do that. I said, No, please let her talk.
I want to know what she saw. No kidding. Yeah. So she describes it. Kids have described that to me.
They don't just say that to me when they're 18. When they're five, they will talk to you about God and what he looks like. They will draw pictures of God. It's natural to them. The sense that God is real is natural.
It feels good. They want to pray. Ask a little five-year-old if they want to pray. Oh, they'll go on and on and on, or they'll let you go on and on and on. And also, as a physician, I had to find studies that showed that believing in God helped you get through school.
It kept you away from sex, drugs, and alcohol. It helped your marriage be better. And so I thought, God is good for you.
So even parents who don't want to believe in God perhaps will believe the research on God and how good He is for their kids. Your kid is likely to do better in school if he has a strong faith. Period.
So, if you don't want to believe me that God is real and that He loves you and your kids like mad, at least look to the research. Kids get it. We train kids out of a belief in God. Boy, that's sad, actually. It's very sad.
And Christian parents do that as well. And I've seen this. I've seen it. I've seen it because either they get legalistic or they teach their kids to behave in a certain way when the kids aren't ready or they want their kids to evangelize in the ninth grade and kids, you know, we make it too complicated for kids. Oh, so true.
You mentioned a moment ago just about teaching boys about the fruit of the Spirit. You know, and one of the things with the Beatitudes, of course, you know, we've read those with the boys over and over again. And I remember Trent not long ago, probably a year or two ago, said, you know, I did a word study on that, the meek one, because he's lifting weights. He's a big guy. He's like six, seven.
He's big. Big. And he said, you know, Dad, that meek statement, it's not being weak. He said, meek. It's having the strength to get the job done.
But restraining yourself. To put it all in the order of God. I was like, wow.
So it's not like, you know, just lay yourself down. It says, I can take care of business, but I'm going to choose God's way. Of intervening and controlling this situation. That's very masculine. Controlled.
Power. Yeah, you've got the power to see. You have the power. You see the power. You appreciate it and embrace it.
But you control it. I appreciate that. I think that it doesn't make sense the other way, actually, that, you know, just be a doormat. No. I mean, again, that can answer men and women.
If you have no power, what is there to control? And see, that's what we're trying to take away from men. Yes, we want abuse to go away. We want cruelty of men towards women to go away. That's not power.
That's mental illness.
Okay. But when we talk about true, good, masculine power, we're talking about inordinate strength that is well controlled. And that, to me, is the epitome of masculinity. Look at Jesus on the cross. Yeah.
He could have jumped down in a minute. Let me ask as we're winding into the end here: how does a father's faith and a mother's faith shape their son's? Faith.
Well, first of all, we know that boys are more likely to continue on an adult faith if their father had a faith when he was growing up. Huh, that's good. Yeah, because they look up to the authority in their dad and they believe if dad believed in God and taught me about him, then God is really, really, really real.
So, two of the best things any good dad can do to a son, make sure you grow your son's faith, take him to church, teach him about God, share your experiences, and be present in his life. If you only do those two things, your kid's not going to go wrong. That's a reassuring. Yeah, that's a. Don't worry about all the other stuff.
Those two things, you've got it. Yeah. Let's end with number seven, which is to remember that the most important person in your son's life is you as a mom or a dad. Let's describe that, that influence. You know, I remember seeing a survey, Meg, a while back, but it said, this was of teenagers, that their parents, it was like 60 or 70 percent, said their number one influence in their life was still their parents.
Which most of us, really? It's not their friend group, it's not their social media group. But the fact that they said it was their parents is a little bit jaw-dropping. You know, you think about your typical 30, 35-year-old person who's struggling and goes into counseling. What do they start talking about first?
Their relationship with their mom or their dad. It isn't, well, I had a coach who was mean to me, or my best friend when I was in seventh grade did this. It's all about that primal attachment to a mother and a father is so deep and so God-given that it shapes the identity of a kid because they need that parent. They don't need a coach, they don't need a teacher. I mean, in a different way, but it's that attachment to the parent.
It's through a mother and father where the child gets their identity, their value, their sense that they're loved. How many 56-year-old men do you know are still trying to prove their worth to their dad? My dad would love it that I've made this amount of money. My dad.
So we know as adults, it's our parents who really wounded us, but who also shape the greatness in us, really. And so, but parents have a hard time believing that because we haven't been trained to think that way. We've been trained to think that when teenagers are teenagers, it's all about peers.
So back off, because what teenagers really need is a good set of peers. Yeah, they need a good set of peers, but they need a good, strong parent. And sadly, We have trained fathers to buy into that lie and that's why so many have disappeared from their kids' lives. I think that a lot of men who are in prison feel like throwaways. They feel they're throwaways.
Nobody wanted them. Nobody needed them. Even their kids didn't need their dad. All their kids needed was them to show up and mom would take it from them. And the truism is many of them didn't have a dad.
They didn't have a dad. And any man who grew up or woman who didn't have a dad, they'll just spill it. They won't be able to articulate how painful and why it was painful. They'll just tell it to you. When I interviewed a lot of women for my father-daughter book, women always had one of two responses.
They either gushed about their dad or they broke down in tears. When it comes to your dad, there's no middle ground. Interesting. No middle ground. With your mom, you know, I mean, yeah, you love her and you hate her and this.
When it comes to your dad, it's just different. If you had a great dad, you succeed. If your dad wasn't there, you're not sure if you can succeed. Very true for a boy. And also, that's where a man gets a sense of what masculinity is all about.
It's through his dad. Yeah, that's good. You recount. A story about counseling a father who was having difficulty communicating with his son. That would, like every dad would put his hand up, oh, that must be me.
But they kept repeating kind of the same things this dad did, that he Was fathered, like, you know, so we don't fall far from the tree, basically. And sometimes that's hard because our dad was not a good father. and we repeat those mistakes. How did that story end?
Well, it can end in many different ways. Because I've worked with a lot of fathers who grew up without a dad. And dads come into parenting with a preload. I never knew my dad. I feel pain of not having my dad.
My dad was always abusive to me, and we take that into parenting. And then, if a dad is parenting a son, he begins to repeat that being abusive or just leaving his son or not communicating. If a dad was yelled at and he grows up and starts yelling at his son, he'll never be able to stop yelling at his son unless he recognizes he learned it when he was a kid and he's got to stop. Because the patterns are so ingrained we repeat what we know.
So let's figure this out.
So, sun. I'm not communicating with you well because I didn't ever learn how to do it.
So let's start fresh. How do you need me to communicate with you? Help me out here. or sun. I'm so sorry I'm yelling at you.
I don't know any different. How I'm going to really work hard in this. Can you help me stop yelling at you? You say that to a kid, you've won him over. Yeah.
You say to your 17-year-old boy, son, I am not treating you well. I want to change, hold me accountable, but help me along the way because I don't really know what you need. You're in. I mean, that's all kids want. Meg, for both the mom and the dad, one of the great guilts that we carry can be that our boys aren't performing.
You know, they're just not hitting the standard. They're not hitting the mark. And you can pick the age. It doesn't matter whether they're teens or twenties. Speak to that idea of grace.
You know, the longer I live, the more the analogy of God's character toward us is like a father. I mean, he is our creator, he is our Abba Father, the scripture says, to refer to him as daddy. I mean, that's pretty amazing. But to bring that down to earth, so to speak, how do we. Do that with our own children, particularly our boys, as we're talking about boys today.
But how do we emulate the grace of God? Toward that prodigal child? I think it's a great question. I learned this through a friend actually who had a son who got a girl pregnant at 16. And she was beside herself.
Christian mom, I think. She even did a lot of work at a church. Very, very bright woman. And she was beside herself. I failed.
I failed. This kid's been brought up in the church. He loves Christ. What has happened? And she said, She's walking along the beach and she was quiet.
And all of a sudden, she didn't hear a voice, but she heard God sort of speak to her inner spirit.
Now, wait a minute. I'm the perfect father. And look at my kids. And so you can be a perfect parent and you can have a 16-year-old who's going off the rails. Right?
Because God is a perfect parent, but that's the free will. But again, even if he's going off at the rails at 16, you've still got nine years left to get him to 25. It's not always about you. You know, God's in there too, and kids have free will, and they have different personalities. They have very different, and we know that it's there's a whole lot of nature in there, too.
And, you know. We do the best we can and that's Good enough. And I think at the end here, Meg, you and I both have heard this over and over again. The things that we talk about here at Focus on the Family, it's not a formula. These are prescriptive suggestions, recommendations.
If you do these things, there is a higher potential. Of success, not a guarantee. And so, because people have free will, your children have free will. We have free will before the Lord.
So, in that context, we can only do the right things and then trust God that that will sink in at some point. Absolutely. And not to overown it. No, no, don't overown it. I have another friend who adopted a very, very high-need daughter, and the daughter died of a drug overdose at 22.
And she failed if I said, Wait a minute. If you hadn't adopted her when she was six, She probably would have died at fourteen. And she knew the Lord when she died at twenty-two. You succeeded. Heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking. But we are here to steward these kids. I would also encourage parents to keep it simple. I like that. Give them enough attention.
Give them some affection. Affirm them before God. You know, give them a faith. And it's going to be okay because what your kids want is your attention and your love and your time. And they want you to listen to them.
Yeah. I like that. Parenting isn't algebra. No, and you don't have to have a PhD. But we think it's algebra because there's so much out there on the internet.
There's so much pop psychology and so much parenting advice that's so overcomplicated. And a lot of it's just bad anyway. But, you know, but just really keep it simple and trust your instincts because God will show you if you really, you know, have some humility. And, you know, it's really not raucous science, but it feels like it because we just want to get it right. Yeah, we want to be perfect.
And you can. You've got the wiring. Every dad and mother have all the wiring they need. They just need someone to encourage them to keep using it and just keep on going.
So good. Dr. Meg Meeker, this has been great. Your book, Boys Should Be Boys, Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons. I so appreciate the content.
Thank you for writing it, number one.
Well, thank you. Thanks for being here, number two. You bet. It's always a pleasure, and thank you for what you do as well. It's so good.
And we want to get this into your hands. As a parent, as a grandparent, to give to your adult children, this is wonderful guidelines and again, prescriptions on how to help build your sons into becoming men. And, you know, seven things. I think you can grab those and run with them. A few weeks ago, we heard from one of those sons, as I just mentioned.
Ryan wrote to us and said, My mom really benefited from Focus on the Family. She listened to the broadcast and loved the books from Focus on the Family until she passed. I know God is working, and now, as her adult son, I am benefiting from Focus on the Family's books and broadcasts. Focus has done a lot of good, and I really appreciate your work and ministry.
Well, Ryan, thank you for that note, and you are a great example of a life impacted by Focus on the Family. If you can support us with a one-time gift today, we'll send you a copy of Meg's book as our way of saying thank you for helping us to bring hope and joy in Christ. To many more families. Yeah, support this show and the General Ministry of Focus on the Family. When you call today and make a generous donation, our number is 800, the letter A, and the word family.
You can also donate and request Meg's book, Boys Should Be Boys. When you stop by the show notes, the link is right there for you. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Jesus Christ is the ultimate source of truth.
As we celebrate his birth this Christmas, I hope you'll be inspired to share God's truth with grace and love. Become better equipped by listening to my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daly from Focus on the Family. Every episode, I talk to fascinating guests about important cultural issues and how we can reach people for Christ and share his joy. Listen at refocus with JimDaily.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
