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Join our monthly support team today by calling 800 the letter A and the word family, 800-AFAMILY, or donate at focusonthefamily.com slash families. Being boy is good. Male is good. Masculinity is good. And guess what? It's very different from womanhood and femininity.
And I think that many people feel if you fuse the two, you can find this sort of no man's land where you can be a little of this and a little of that, but you can't. Well, that's Dr. Meg Meeker. She's our guest today, sharing about the importance of allowing and encouraging boys to embrace their natural tendencies to be adventure seeking and risk taking.
This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller and Dr. Meeker will offer her insights about boyhood today, offering a pretty compelling narrative that challenges some of the modern paradigms. Yeah, John, I think today boys are growing up in a world that is often at odds with their emerging masculinity. I mean, we talk about that as toxic and all those kinds of adjectives we throw at it. But I am glad I grew up at a time when boys could be boys and we got into trouble and we did things and, you know, it's just innocent boy stuff, you know, trying to be adventuresome in the neighborhood or whatever it might be.
But these are things that are so discouraged now that the culture frowns upon. And I am looking forward to our discussion today with Dr. Meg Meeker, pediatrician, and she has so many years of knowledge about boys and girls too. But today we're talking about her book, Boys Should Be Boys, Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons.
Having Two Boys, I'm looking forward to this. There's a lot of content here and we're going to get into it. Dr. Meeker is always a great guest, a popular guest. She's widely recognized as one of the country's leading authorities on parenting and teens and children's health. You mentioned the book and we have that here at the ministry.
Learn more about Dr. Meeker and her book when you stop by the show notes or give us a call, 800-A-family. Meg, welcome back. Oh, thank you so much. I love seeing you. I love being here. It's always so uplifting and encouraging. Well, it's fun.
It is fun. You know, it's, I think the opening question is a little off topic, but you know, you have been a pediatrician for about 30 years. I think you mentioned to me 30 years of observing young people and some of these patients you've known for a long time, right? When you look at the culture, when you first became a pediatrician to now, do you see a drastic change in the environment, just generally?
Oh, oh, it's enormous. And as we were talking before, people say, well, aren't you going to retire? And I said, no, because the challenges that parents have now are so much more intense than they were 10, 20 years ago. When I was in medical school, just, you know, to kind of, this dates myself, but in the 80s, in the DSM, four, three at that time, homosexuality was a psychiatric disorder. And I'm not saying that.
Yeah. And now we've got, we've got so much more that, you know, with the transgender, we've got the drug use, we've got huge rise in depression and anxiety. And when I came out of medical school, really it was a psychiatrist who took care of kids with anxiety and depression.
Pediatricians didn't have to know that much about it. That is completely shifted because now psychiatrists are so full with taking care of the kids who are schizophrenic, manic depression, that a lot of it is spilled into the laps of pediatricians. So we have learned how to take care of anxiety and depression because it's such a big part of our work.
That's huge. And a lot of pediatricians don't know what to do because it takes a lot of time and energy and training to learn how to take care of kids with depression and anxiety. So on many levels, it's really changed. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because the pediatricians, I mean, you're seeing these kids for the first time and for a long time, working with the parents on their physical well-being, but their emotional well-being as well. More so than any other specialty, obviously. So you're, you know, right from the get-go, you're with the mom and dad. I can remember those early visits. We had some hilarious visits with our pediatrician, with Trent and Troy. They were actually, our one doctor just had a great sense of humor, so he would tug at us, his parents, and go to our weaknesses pretty constantly. It's fun.
It was just fun. We were the overzealous parents, so you remember that. Oh, well, yes, exactly.
You'd hook them and bring them in. You do, yes. But in that regard, you wrote this book probably ten years ago now, Boys Should Be Boys, Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons. I would think you're saying now this is even more intense. And speak to that environment with boys that I led with in terms of how we as a culture are underserving boys and not allowing them to be boys.
Absolutely. I wrote this book because, doing my research for my book, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, I realized how under siege men are, adult men, and how masculinity had taken on this in the public. It connoted oppression, people being mean, from a woman's standpoint. Women sort of, you know, taught this. And I thought, wow, you know, if this is happening to men, what's happening to boys? And that's what really prompted me writing the Boys Should Be Boys book, because I saw this emergence of the degradation of masculinity and turning masculinity into an ugly, dirty word. And I think that comes out of a lot of the women's movement, you know, from way back. But I really did it, and I really believe it's more pertinent now than ever, because in the book I say, boy is good, male is good, masculinity is good, and guess what, it's very different from womanhood and femininity. And I think that many people feel if you fuse the two, you can find this sort of no man's land where you can be a little of this and a little of that, but you can't. It's so true. And I'm thinking about the messaging that occurs toward boys that in somehow just because you're a boy, you're bad.
Exactly. And we may not even notice that, even as parents, but how the schools disparage that. What is happening in the culture, I think in both parts, one that we have to be equal, and we have to as teachers and people engaged with young people, we have to communicate that. And then secondly, this idea that boys are worse than girls. Rather than both are beautiful, both are great, both are created in God's image.
But who's winning with that? Well, you know, we say everybody has to be equal, but we don't really mean it. We want women to be more powerful than men. And this is what's really emerged. And this is where the denigration of masculinity, the idea of masculinity, manhood has come from. And I've seen it, you know, all along since the late 70s and into the 80s, you know, the emergence of women's power. Women don't want to be equal to men. They want to be better and they want to pound. And it's too bad the idea that you can champion both a boy and a girl or a man and woman side by side, they don't believe that's true.
One has to win or the other has to win. If you look in early elementary schools, a lot of the school teachers are women. And when they come into a classroom and they've been taught via, you know, subconsciously, television, radio, media, and so forth, that masculinity is not a good thing, that boys are kind of out of control. They need to be medicated because they're just too bouncing.
They don't color in the lines. You've got a bunch of young women who are in early elementary and elementary schools. And so there's this natural undergirding bias against boys that begins that early. Well, you know, this is a comedic example of that.
But, you know, when you're at Christmas time, you're watching the Christmas story. And so who's out at the flagpole sticking their tongue on the flagpole? It's not a bunch of girls. It's the boys. It's the boys.
The double dog Daria type. That is an elementary school playground. And that's what I remember. And the point is it's unhealthy to work against that and to tell boys not to be daring, not to be adventuresome. It is kind of that God-given instinct of what we are as male is to go to the edge, to be the pioneer.
It doesn't preclude girls from doing things like that. But, man, don't make us girls. Well, and that's the big rub is that I don't believe, I believe we're at a time where we don't really want two sexes. We want neutrality. We want sameness. And we don't want equality when we want sameness.
And in order to do that, we have to emasculate men and boys. And I think that, you know, it's interesting you talk about risk, taking a risk. We're also a very risk-averse society. We don't want anybody to be harmed. Parents, young parents, they don't want their kids vaccinated. They don't want them this. They don't want them on antibiotics. Some young parents will say, I don't want my parents to hold my baby because, for the first three months, because of this and this and this.
We don't want anybody taking a risk. And if there's anything inherent to masculinity, it's risk-taking. It's very interesting, too, because we can say, articulate the differences between men and women, boys and girls. But think about this. You ask any kid if his mom was different from his dad, there's no question. Absolutely. You were a little more afraid of your dad.
I was. You also, look, I can't tell you the number of mothers, single mothers I see who are afraid of their teenage boys. Because teenage boys are angry, who don't have a dad around, and they will go at their mother. If you think about, too, what was it in Louisiana a number of years ago where they had a lot of violence in the school. And these kids were out of control. These teenage boys were out of control. And 40 men in the area said, we're done with this.
We're going to appoint one dad to go in the school every day and just walk the halls. And so one man, I think there were African-Americans, walked in the halls, and within two weeks the violence went away. Masculinity is. It's a presence. It's a power. It's a spirit, if you will, in a very positive way that's very different from the feminine spirit.
And it's so powerful it's hard to articulate it. And yet everybody knows it's there, but we're in a culture that wants to neutralize masculinity and then femininity as well. Well, one of the things that the culture works against, men know this, boys know this, there is a pecking order. You go to the gym, there's a pecking order.
You know it pretty quickly when you walk in. Who's the top dog? Who's the second in command?
Who's at the bottom? It just is. It's true on the playground when you're picking teams. Thankfully I used to be the guy that got to pick some of the teams.
Ended up quarterback of the football team. I mean there's part of that. And again there's just this institutional hatred toward even that orientation that there should be leadership in the playground. We want to eliminate leadership in the playground.
Why do we want to do that? Let's get to the book content. You list seven secrets.
I want to get into that so why don't you just list them and then we'll come back and ask some questions about each one. You bet. Know how to encourage your son. Understand what your boys need.
Their needs are different from girls. Recognize that boys were made for the outdoors, sticks and trees and rocks. Remember that boys need rules.
Acknowledge that virtue is not just for girls. Learn how to teach your son about the big questions in life. And remember that the most important person in your son's life is you. Now those sound very basic but when you really drill down a lot of parents when it comes to boys particularly mothers how do I encourage my son?
What do I say? You know I don't want to step on toes. So they sound basic but when you actually try to live them out it can be a little trickier. No that's good. If you go to the first one and unpack that a little bit that's knowing how to encourage their sons. You're not talking about false praise.
No. Because we sniff that out pretty quick too. Everybody gets a trophy. That ain't true. And sorry for the grammar there but it's on purpose. But the idea that it's not false praise that sons need but what do they need in that area of lifting up? Well again fundamentally parents need to understand your boy is not your daughter.
So if you're going to encourage your son in the correct way in a biblical way you encourage his masculinity. What does that sound like? Give me an example. It sounds like you know go outside and find something to do and go make a fort. Go figure out what to do. Take a risk. Climb the tree. Make snowballs.
Make an ice fort. If you fall off the top of it it's okay. You know to really encourage your kids to live and to I always say every playground at school should have a couple of big trees in it. You'd never find a tree in a playground at school because they don't want the boys to fall out and hurt themselves.
Or they don't want the boys to be able to climb the top of the tree and the girls can't. They've been changing a lot of the equipment at schools near us. They've been making it safe. The slides are gone. The metal slides are gone.
Everything's flat. There's all the plastic chips at the bottom now so when you fall you hit something soft. So if you're going to encourage your son to walk in a masculine way you encourage him to use his physical and emotional strength.
And that means climbing and running and yes hitting. Maybe not other people. But encourage that physical strength because the bottom line is men are stronger than women. I mean again Meg some people are going to be hearing this and going oh my gosh that's so archaic.
They are so behind the times. And it's fine because this is what we all agree on in terms of the Christian ethos to this. Men will be men. We need Davids. We need the little boy Davids in the playground.
Exactly. Who are not afraid. Yeah meaning I'll slay the giant.
Give it to me. I will get hurt. I don't mind being wounded. I don't even mind my feelings being hurt and a girl calling me something. And for those who say that men aren't stronger than women I would ask any woman out there if you're in downtown Chicago one in the morning do you feel differently walking on a dark street alone or with a six foot two husband.
There's no question. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and our guest today is Dr. Meg Meeker. We're covering some of the content in her terrific book Boys Should Be Boys Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons. Get a copy from us here at the ministry.
The link is in the show notes. John you have a daughter that's very outdoorsy. I do.
I know that was running through your head. So it's not again it's not a one size fits all but I mean she's worked in state parks. She lives outdoors and climbs mountains and runs marathons and there's no end to her delight in being outdoors. But she also has this very feminine side to her that wants to connect with people that has this huge heart particularly for kids who are at risk and struggling. So I see kind of that mom part of her built in kind of coming out.
But that's interesting Meg. I mean again this isn't a one size fits all and so you go with your child's bent in that regard. If they love the outdoors that's great. And that's what God did with us.
You know he created us so differently and that's what freedom really is. Having the freedom to embody different parts of your character. The feminine part of your character with it soft and tender and wants to be very patient and kind. But there's also a different part of your feminine character which means you can be very physically strong and capable. My niece is an elite athlete from the University of Michigan.
She's very kind and sweet. And the freedom for the male is that I can be fully masculine and I can capitalize on my physical strengths, my tendency to want to take a risk, to want to drive fast even though you know it's not a smart thing. But I can embrace that.
But I can also embrace another side of me that loves opera that wants to take care of my wife when she's really sick, the tenderness. And that's the beauty of the complexity of the human spirit and the human person. And I think that the damage we do with boys in particular is we try to put them in a lane and we say this is your lane and it cannot include traditionally masculine character qualities because we don't like them.
Absolutely. You know right now I'm thinking of the Good Samaritan things that are happening in the culture and not long ago we had that case in New York where that man took action against somebody who was threatening the lives of those on the subway and of course there's been the person that was set on fire. The context for my question is this. When the culture diminishes masculinity, you have fewer people willing to step up to right injustices because the cost becomes too high. We are less safe. But it is evidence of exactly what you're talking about when we don't encourage good men to take charge, to step up, to engage when there's danger.
You're going to have a lot of just passerby's. You know we're really willing to shred truth and get rid of truth in order to create a narrative we want. It fits our feelings. You know men don't need to be strong. We don't need them to help us on a subway because they're really not any different from us which means then if somebody steps up to get rid of a guy who's harming you, that's a bad thing. How twisted is that? Yeah just to control the situation. Just to control the narrative that masculinity is a bad thing therefore it can't be exercised even if someone's life is at risk.
That is so twisted. Listen let's move to number two. Secret number two is understanding what our boys need.
Now explain that. What does that mean knowing what they need? Well they need a lot because they're very complicated people just like women are complicated people. First of all the discouragement to many dads out there with a four or five year old kid who falls down on the playground and starts to cry and the dad comes up and just said, you know, just don't act like a girl. You don't need to cry.
Just sort of suck it up. Men should not behave like this. And then the mother comes in and criticizes the dad. Boys are emotional creatures. Boys in large part get their emotional language from their mothers in general. Now there's some dads who teach it to their sons and by that I mean before a child is age seven they learn cues from their mom about is it okay to cry. I feel like I want to cry but dad's looking at me like I'm a bad person if I do. So it's okay to cry. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to feel.
It's okay to, you know, feel very compassionate. So mothers need to learn that that's part of their son's life is building a solid emotional life and feeling secure and good about it. So that's a need that boys have usually comes from the mom, this emotional language. Then as boys get older it's all about dad because I often say a boy needs to learn how to be a man by watching a good man. He needs to see a man in action. Boys watch their fathers. So moms need to move out of the way and it's got all about dad in the teen years.
Teach your son how to be a man who treats women well, who is not threatened by women, who is not threatened by being a strong man and exercising his ability to do well what his female counterpart can't and to be okay with that. Yeah, you know Meg, our experience with our oldest particularly, I mean he was not a compliant child. So he had his decisions and he knew where he wanted to go, I mean pretty much right out of the womb I'd say. And Trent was just that strong-minded. I can remember when we were doing foster care we had the foster kids in. First he was terrific with those kids. It was amazing. He became the big brother and I was so proud of him and he was kind of struggling at school a bit at that time and I remember saying to Gene, it's pretty awesome he gets an A plus for being a big brother to these foster kids.
We need to recognize that capability. And he really got into it. His heart was for those kids.
It was amazing. But I remember specifically a time when he was no longer at the house. He had moved out and was going to college and still is. But he came over for dinner, had a great meal that Gene had prepared and he sent a text and said, Mom, thank you so much for taking the time to make that great meal tonight.
And I remember looking at it, Gene came and showed it to me and I went, who is that? But it was a moment that his maturity caught up. And I mean it's rare that he doesn't send a note like that to Gene after coming over for dinner now.
Very consistent and very mature, very thankful. And I think it's just encouragement to parents to allow their boy's brain to catch up. Like the male brain matures like at 25 is what the research is showing. So you may need a little more grace for some boys because they may not always get it. But speak to that idea for the parent to be looking outward because we're so in the moment. When that child is 22, 23, 24, that boy, you're going to see some significant changes or you should in attitude.
Absolutely. I can't tell you how many times I've had parents of a 15, 14-year-old boy come in and say, he won't study, he won't do anything, he's so unmotivated. And I said, A, his story isn't written. And the way he is at 14 is not going to be the way he is at 15. And I often tell parents, your job as a parent when your child is two or three or five is to raise a great 25-year-old.
So here's the good news and the bad news. If your child is acting lazy at 15 and he doesn't want to be motivated, which is really common for boys at 15, here's the good news. You have 10 more years to help him get it right. So you're absolutely right. Maturity, physical maturity, cognitive maturity, emotional maturity, those are critical. That's a critical 10-year period. So to really encourage parents, whatever antics your son is up to at 15 or not up to, it's going to be completely different.
You can have it. I remember my son went through a period, he just really didn't want to talk to me. It just broke my heart.
What was I doing? I tried to talk to him on an emotionally more deeper level, and he didn't want to do that. He just didn't want to do it, but I had to convince him that he really should because I'm his mother and I'm tender. And he pushed away and my feelings were so hurt. Then I realized he's a boy. Let him go. That's a whole show unto itself.
Let him go because he'll circle back around and then he'll write the notes. And for my son, it was sending tulips. Oh my. Yeah, and all the moms. Never got them from my daughters. All the moms began to cry. But he didn't do it until he was well into his 20s. He wouldn't talk to me at 15, sending tulips at 25. But I think, Meg, the difficulty with that, I think particularly for moms, it is hard to think out seven years, ten years, because the emotions are right here in front of you.
It's so tangible. And you don't think this caveman is ever going to get, you know, mature. Like, how many times have you told him to say please and thank you? And it's still not working and they're 15. And, you know, you get in this moment where you can't imagine them being smarter, better, more thoughtful at 23, 24.
Well, and a mother panics. And dad's probably too. If they're not doing it, and I've had him for 15 years under my roof, if he doesn't get it now, he's never going to get it.
That's not true. You know, your son knows what you want. He knows you want him to say please and thank you. But for some reason that has nothing to do with you, he's just not ready to do it.
Let him be. And so I really want to encourage parents. You have to think of the long game. At 15, at 10, even at 18, his story isn't written. You know, I've been doing this long enough.
I've worked with a whole generation of parents now, and now I'm seeing their kids. So I really can say this with a lot of honesty and sincerity. Let him be.
His story isn't written at 15. Yeah. And then, boy, then hang on. It'll get better. Trust us. Meg, this has been so good. Let's continue. We've really only covered three. And that third one we kind of did prior to number two, which is, you know, allowing your boys to be outside and be physical and do that outdoor stuff.
Let's pick up next time with the rest of the seven, and we'll dive into those. Thank you for being with us. Oh, thank you. So much fun.
Yeah. And I hope this has grabbed your imagination, whether you're the parent of a boy or the grandparent of a young man. This is a resource that you need to get, and, man, share it with those around you who are struggling.
How many people at church do you see? And we saw that we just went to an amusement park, and, man, the out-of-control kids. I was like, I just wish I had a box of resources I could hand this book and other books out to. But it's always an opportunity to be a light in someone's life and to do that with wisdom, obviously. But get a copy of Meg's book, Boys Should Be Boys, Seven Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons. I think it addresses all the key issues of the culture today, and you can get that directly through Focus. If you can give us a gift on a monthly basis, that'd be great. Be a part of the ministry, helping parents and helping marriages, helping save babies.
I can't think of a bad thing that we do here, John. So be part of it. Help us in every way and sign up to be a monthly sustainer. A one-time gift is good as well, but we'll send you a copy of Meg's book as our way of saying thank you when you support the ministry in that way. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. Or we've got details for how you can donate and request resources, including this book, Boys Should Be Boys, in the show notes. And on behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for part one of what is now a two-part conversation with Dr. Meg Meeker. Plan to join us next time as we continue the conversation and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915
