Are you the parent or other significant role model of a boy and you want to give him the best chance of growing up well but you aren’t sure how to do this? What types of conversations do you most often have with your children? What are your goals and priorities as a parent?

There are many paths to becoming a fulfilled adult, and children tend to have the best chances of finding them when they have important internal tools that help them have a good relationship with themselves and others.

Yet many boys don’t learn these types of skills, at home or elsewhere. They can be discouraged as not being manly while their unhealthy alternatives are encouraged and even celebrated. This makes life harder and more limited for boys and men, as well as for the people around them. Because of these outdated cultural norms, boys often need more to help to learn these skills.

Parents can think that boys don’t want or need to practice internal development, but this isn’t true. Boys and men are not only capable of having rich and rewarding inner lives, but this makes them happier as well.

Teaching your son new ways of thinking about himself, his emotions, and how to relate to other people may be very challenging, as can changing your own beliefs about what is the most important for your son to learn. But it can have a huge impact in the ways your son will come to view the world and himself.

This is rarely easy but the benefits for your entire family often make it worth the effort.

Please be aware that this article uses the language of parents and sons, but parents certainly aren’t the only figures in a child’s life who can teach them important lessons. If you’re reading this as another significant role model in a child’s life, this still applies to you.

Why the emphasis on boys?

Do boys need more help learning about emotions and developing their inner worlds than girls? What benefits are unique to boys?

Helping boys build internal tools so they can be mentally strong and healthy is incredibly valuable to their well-being.

People who have a well-developed inner world know who they are. They know what they’re feeling, their favourite pastimes, how different experiences have shaped them, what they hope to accomplish in the future, and much more. Having a rich inner world is rewarding because you have a strong connection to yourself as a person so you can live authentically while being better connected to your experiences.

Children are born largely lacking a sense of their inner world. They rely on others to regulate their emotions, don’t reflect on their feelings or try to control their reactions, are often quick to give up and demand help, and they struggle to empathise with others.

Many complex emotional skills are largely impossible for very young children as their brains haven’t developed the capacity for them yet. But as children grow up, they should become increasingly insightful and capable of controlling themselves. Learning how to do this and developing the tools that make it possible is easier for some children than others, but all children can benefit from guidance.

However, boys aren’t always given as much help as they need or sent a strong enough message that emotional development is important, even by well-intentioned loving parents: these skills are in their blind spot.

Many boys’ parents, often without realising, don’t give their sons’ feelings enough attention and discuss them infrequently, aren’t responsive to their emotional needs, and are permissive when their sons angrily lash out instead of helping them with emotional development.

Rather than being encouraged and guided in developing important internal tools, boys can be sent the message, by people directly involved in their lives and culture as a whole, that emotional regulation, empathy, self-worth, and self-awareness are feminine and not necessary or appropriate for men.

When boys grow up without learning these skills, they can become men who rely on others, especially the women in their lives, to treat them in ways that make it easy to stay calm and pick up the pieces for them when they lose their composure. And instead of identifying and addressing the challenges that are making life more difficult for them, they live with the discomfort.

Being detached from your emotions and your inner world makes life more challenging and creates a great deal of unnecessary work and limits. Teaching your son the skills that will enable him to recognise what he’s capable of and utilise his internal resources to find solutions to challenges and have a good relationship with himself and others gives him the best chance of being deeply and meaningfully fulfilled as a child and when he becomes a man.

Parenting in ways that are counter to common societal messages isn’t unique to boys. Parents of girls are also likely to have blind spotsthey would benefit from recognising and compensating for, although these are in different areas for boys and girls.

By understanding the blind spots that exist for boys, you can be in a better position to help your son develop and appreciate important skills that are too often discouraged, despite how significant of an impact they can have.

Important skills to teach boys

How often do you discuss emotions with your son? How do you typically react when he’s upset? What types of behaviours do you want your son to value and strive for?

It’s understood that children will need help from their parents and other role models to develop practical skills like reading and how to ride a bike, but they need guidance in developing internal tools as well, especially boys.

By teaching your son important tools related to emotional development, you can give him the resources he needs to become a fulfilled adult.

Young people have to discover who they are and learn how to behave in ways they won’t later regret, which is difficult. And they can expect to receive a great deal of unhelpful and unrealistic advice from others, while having mistaken beliefs themselves. So having tools that give them insight into their thoughts and feelings to more realistically understand them can be very beneficial.

Emotional Regulation

One of the most valuable skills for children to develop is emotional regulation.

Emotional regulation is the ability to control your reactions when you’re upset and potentially overwhelmed. You can soothe yourself to feel less impacted and then reflect on the experience to determine potential ways to address it.  

There are several components to emotional regulation. The first is understanding what you’re feeling.

Children are highly emotional and, especially when they’re very young, lack the ability to understand their emotions. They can honestly answer “I don’t know” when asked how they feel or why they did something. As they get older, they should increasingly be able to control their emotions and be capable of identifying them, but this is difficult without help from adults, and boys don’t always get as much help as they need. Some parents are even quite permissive of boys who lash out or lose control when they become upset because they think it’s in their nature as males.

Children who can’t control their emotions are typically difficult to be around, for people of all ages. They can’t express what they want and often get upset when their needs aren’t met, which is frequently because they can’t communicate them.

This is common for young children but it’s rarely consequential because these types of behaviour are expected of them and they largely lack the ability to act in ways that are truly harmful. But as they get older these types of outbursts become less acceptable to the people around them, while their increasing size and strength means they can be more dangerous. So it’s important for children to learn to control their emotionally-driven reactions.

In order for your son to be able to control himself when he gets upset, he needs to know about the different emotions he’s capable of feeling.

An emotion that is vague or unidentified has the potential to be intimidating and overwhelming because you understand so little about it. But naming emotions takes away much of their power, so once you label what you’re feeling, it can become an experience you have the capacity to manage. Instead of emotions existing as threatening and difficult experiences, determining what you’re experiencing gives you insight, and with that often comes ideas about potential solutions. So instead of being an upsetting experience with few options, it becomes a challenge you can address and overcome. Doing this requires having an emotional vocabulary.

For many boys and men, the only emotion they think is acceptable for them to have is anger. Becoming angry can even be treated as a sign of masculinity and is therefore desirable, while all other emotions have the potential to be shameful and embarrassing experiences.

When you can determine which emotion you’re feeling in different situations, you can ask yourself what caused it and what actions you could take to improve how you feel. Your son could realise that he’s feeling stressed about an upcoming test and studying to feel more prepared or doing something relaxing to let his mind rest.

If you recognise that you acted in ways you now regret, you can learn from these situations to avoid them in the future. This could be your son recognising that he doesn’t like the way he feels after yelling at a friend so he thinks of ways to have healthier reactions when he gets upset.

However, identifying and learning from emotions is a logical process that can only happen when a child is calm, so they need ways of releasing their emotions before they can understand them.

Children are often able to consistently and effectively discharge their emotions when they’re taught specific techniques they can turn to when they’re upset.

How your son does this will depend on his personality, and it will almost certainly change as he gets older. Some children want connection and comfort but others want to be left alone. Emotionally intense music can be cathartic for certain children while some prefer listening to something calming or need silence.

Because there is often a great deal of physicality to boy’s emotions and they tend to be active, having a physical way to release emotions can be effective for boys. Encouraging a child to move (run, hit a punching bag, jump up and down), draw their emotions (often aggressively and abstractly) or even just scream, can all be effective outlets for their emotions that can help them regain control.

As they mature, the time they spend releasing their emotions becomes an opportunity to mentally review what happened, including their reactions and how justified they believe they were.

However, going on screens isn’t an effective way to release emotions since screens are numbing. Screens can be comforting and help children – as well as adults – feel calm, but they don’t allow you to process your emotions the same way that other types of activities do. Because being on a screen almost always requires sitting still, there isn’t any physical release. And since they occupy your mind, you lose the opportunity to reflect on the situation that caused the emotions. So your son might feel better after spending time on a screen when he gets upset, but he’s only masked the pain of the experience without having learned anything.

Once he’s taken as much time as he needs to calm down and is feeling ready to talk, although he might not want to, help your son understand what he was feeling and why. Discuss the events that led to him becoming upset for insight into what caused it and how he feels about his reaction. Ask him to consider whether he did something he regrets or if he’s proud of himself for practicing self-control.

Young children don’t have the concept of regret and struggle with long-term thinking so they might not be able to have these types of reflections, but these are skills they should increasingly develop.

The point of these conversations is to learn from the experience, not to shame or blame your son. If he did something he shouldn’t have when he was upset, especially if he hurt someone, it’s important to let him know that his actions were unacceptable, but offer support and reassurance that although what he did was wrong, he isn’t a bad person. There’s no such thing as a bad emotion, but there are bad reactions to them.

By having these discussions, you can help your son learn that he’s responsible for his actions, even when he’s upset.

This message – that his behaviour is the problem, not him as a person – often comes across best when paired with discussing ways to make amends, both through undoing any damage he may have done, such as cleaning up a mess, and apologising for his actions.

When your son is young you may have to tell them the best ways to make amends and explain that he should apologise, but as he gets older he should be able to identify these himself. He might not always pick what you think he should do, but this is part of the learning process.

By teaching your son how to control his reactions when he gets upset, you can help him to feel a sense of personal empowerment.

People who don’t think they can control of themselves when they get upset can view themselves as a victim. Children can believe it isn’t fair that others make them get angry and lash out. So even if they’ve hurt another child, they believe that the child who upset them is the one who should be blamed for their reaction. Adults can have these beliefs as well, such as blaming bad drivers for their mood when they experience road rage.

Feeling unable to control yourself can also lead to blame that turns inwards. Children who often behave in ways they regret later can think poorly of themselves and identify as a bad person since they feel incapable of controlling their reactions to difficult emotions.

But understanding that you have the ability to control your emotional reactions, which you’re always responsible for, and possessing tools that make this easier can be empowering. When your son acts in ways he regrets, he can recognise that he did something he shouldn’t have and there could be consequences, but he chose the actions that put him in that situation, rather than being forced to do something that he’s now being held accountable for.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and care about what other people are feeling. It’s putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to consider their perspective and experiences.

It’s important for children to learn to empathise with others because empathy is essential to healthy relationships. People who are empathetic are often more enjoyable to be around because they recognise and care about what you’re feeling. They can offer support when you’re struggling, share the celebrations for your accomplishments, and are interested in what’s important to you.

Children – who are born very self-involved – typically lack empathy because the ability to conceptualise what others are feeling takes time to develop. It requires understanding emotions and doing the mental labour of considering what someone else is experiencing.

However, learning how to empathise can be discouraged in boys, and parents can be unempathetic with their sons, such as telling them they’re fine when they’re upset. Boys can also be sent the message – directly or indirectly – that caring about emotions makes them weak and things like apologising are unmanly. This prevents them from understanding their own emotions or caring about the feelings of others.

As a result, they can have few meaningful relationships because they aren’t responsive to other people’s emotions so they aren’t pleasant to be around. This is unfortunate because strong relationships are one of the most important aspects to being happy.

Children who empathise with others as also more likely to be kind to themselves.

Some children are very hard on themselves: they can criticise themselves intensely when they make mistakes or under-preform and are highly critical of their perceived flaws, including those they can’t change, like their height. But if they’ve practiced empathising with others, they can more easily extend this compassion to themselves.

By encouraging your son to practice empathy, you can give him a better chance of having healthy and rewarding relationships with himself and others.

Grounded self-confidence

Self-confidence refers to how you think about yourself. You recognise what you’re good at and your positive qualities, even if these aren’t widely appreciated. It isn’t based on out-preforming others but instead on living in alignment with your values and doing things you’re proud of. You could finish last in a race but still feel happy with the outcome because you’re glad that you were able to finish. Being successful and getting compliments certainly makes it easier to be confident, but ultimately it comes from within.

Self-confidence is valuable for children, but they’re not always given the tools or best types of encouragement that help them develop it, especially in a healthy way.

In order for self-confidence to be healthy, it must be realistic – you have to possess the skills and abilities that fuel your confidence. If you think of yourself as someone who is very punctual and take pride in yourself for being respectful of others’ time, but you’re almost always late, then this isn’t a healthy source of confidence because there aren’t the actions to support it, only the intent.

Parents can try to give their children healthy self-confidence but be unsuccessful. They can overemphasise winning and accomplishments because they think these are necessary to being confident, and/or be unrealistic when praising their children. Both approaches can have adverse outcomes.

If children are expected to be high performers, their sense of worth comes from pleasing others with what they can accomplish. Instead of asking themselves if they’re happy with their results, they instead consider how they compared to others or if they pleased the people who are invested in them. They can even worry that being loved and accepted relies on them being the best and excelling in sport, academically, creatively, etc.

But if children are frequently praised for accomplishing very little, they will have an inaccurate perception of themselves and their abilities.

Telling your son that he’s excellent or the best at something when this isn’t true won’t give him realistic self-confidence. If he recognises that you’re being dishonest, he can think you view him as fragile and needing insincere praise. This can even make him believe that he doesn’t have any skills or abilities that are worthy of genuine praise. Instead of thinking highly of himself due to your encouragement, he can question all praise and wonder if any of it is genuine.

Alternatively, he could believe what you tell him and then have to find ways to support this inaccurate image of himself. This could be finding excuses for preforming poorly, such as blaming referees for treating him unfairly or claiming that he could have won a competition if he had bothered to try. Some people will find others to give them compliments that support their over-inflated view of themselves; this is a trait of narcissism.

Children who are given excessive inaccurate praise can also become entitled. They can think that their results should be held to a different standard than others’ because this is what takes place at home.

These outcomes are true of all children, but boys can be particularly susceptible because of traditional views of males. They can either feel the need to work very hard to get ahead to prove themselves, or believe that they have very little to prove because they’re men.

Grounded self-confidence is a healthy alternative to comparing yourself to others and needing to feel like the best because it comes from the ability to find examples from your life that show you’re living in alignment with your values and doing the things you think are important to being a good person. It doesn’t matter if other people know about them and you don’t need to come in first because the only person you’re in competition with is yourself.

Getting to know yourself to live meaningfully

Regulating your emotions, practicing empathy, and realistically appraising yourself all involves introspection and builds self-awareness and personal insight. These skills enable people to know themselves and find personal direction.

When you know yourself, you can identify what gives you a sense of purpose and belonging, which is necessary for determining the best ways to feel happy and fulfilled. You know what you want for yourself and what will give you meaning.

Having a meaningful life enables you to live beyond seeking out the next momentarily satisfying experience. You can do things that give you a deep and gratifying sense of accomplishment, including things that aren’t just rewarding for yourself but potentially better the lives of many people, such as joining an environmental cause.

Yet boys and men aren’t always encouraged to get to know themselves. They can be sent the message that self-reflection and personal insight are feminine pursuits that aren’t important for men.  

But when you know yourself, you’re more likely to discover different things that will improve your life, both in the moment and in your future. You can live authentically because you’ve considered the value of your different traits and know how to be a person you think is worthy of connection with others and respect from yourself. You can make plans you’re excited about for the future, recognise and learn from your past mistakes, identify what relationships and pastimes are serving you and which are draining you, and overall have a sense of purpose and accomplishment.  

These are ambitious goals and not ones that need to be rushed into during childhood. But childhood is the training ground for being an adult. When parents can help their children develop a growing awareness of who they are and the type of person they want to become while giving them the tools to accomplish this, they can have the confidence and capabilities to grow up into this type of person.

What you teach your child has a very strong impact on who they become as adults. Parents can’t control what messages their children internalise, the goals they set themselves, who their role models are, and a great deal more. But they can give them tools to become someone who possesses the values and traits you think will give them the best chance of becoming a happy fulfilled adult, which is the goal of nearly every parent.

By understanding what tools can be overlooked, or even discouraged for boys, you can be even better equipped to help your son personally excel.

When boys are taught to accept and learn from emotions in themselves and others, instead of suppressing, ignoring, or being critical of them, they can have a much higher chance of finding healthy paths to real and lasting happiness.

Approaching emotional development with your son, especially if he’s older, can be intimidating and possibly even feel like a potentially risky endeavour that is best avoided. But your entire family can benefit from giving emotional development more attention.

Techniques for teaching your son these skills will be in the following month’s article.

If you would like to know more about emotional development, both in yourself and helping your son to develop it, I encourage you to reach out to me. As a trained counsellor with experience working with families, I can help identify your family’s greatest challenges, suggest ways you could improve them, and offer support and feedback throughout the process.

We can have a free, no-obligation phone call to discuss this if you’re interested.