That boy needs a strong hand!

{Today’s guest post is from the lovely Sally Clarkson and is part one of a two part series.  Sally is the main mom behind the Mom Heart Conferences.  She and her husband Clay run Whole Hearted Ministries and have four beautiful children, including two boys. Sally blogs regularly at I Take Joy.  Please welcome her!}

When Clay and I moved from California to Texas, I was to take all of my young children from Los Angeles to Dallas by myself. Flying with 3 children alone on several flights for a period of 11 hours, is not ever easy. But with two boys under 5 years of age, it seemed especially long. My now 22 year old son, Nathan, was a very active, extraverted, little boy. At 18 months, he did not have to pay for a ticket if he sat with me. However, getting him to sit on my lap through all of the flights proved to be more than I had even imagined.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, I would have to board the plane. Being awakened in such a sleepy state did not go well for him. Then, again, finally just as he was finally falling asleep after wrestling with him for the whole flight, we landed and started the whole disrupting his sleepiness cycle again.

Finally, we all arrived in Dallas, exhausted, disheveled and totally drained. My mother-in-law picked us up at the airport and suggested we stop by a restaurant before we drove the 2 hours to her house.

Nathan had had all he could take! When we sat down in the restaurant, he laid on the floor and started flailing his arms and screaming and kicking. No one could get near him.

I was frantic and left him on the floor yelling while my mother-in-law stayed with him, and I walked a little bit away from him, pretending to look at some pies in a showcase, so that I could calm down and take a breath away from this little boy that had drained all of my emotional energy and reserve.

An old man was standing next to the counter, looking at Nathan, as everyone else was also doing,  and commented, “My goodness, what a walleyed fit! That little boy needs a strong hand!”

That wizened old man at the pastry counter was right. Nathan did need a strong hand. But not just the kind he meant. Nathan was exhausted, pushed, out of his nap cycle and with his strong personality, all he knew to do to tell us of his limits had been reached, was to fall on the floor and sob.

As I grew older with my loud and active boy, I got wiser. I realized that the more I understood Clay as a man–His need for my respect, for me to be content and thankful for what he provided; that he longed for me to accept his limitations and to love him for who he was, then I grew in my understanding of how to treat my own “men in training”–with respect, affirmation, investing words of life and giving affection.

I gave Nathan, and Joel,  the strong hand that they needed to grow up, without feeling guilty or shamed for who and how God had made him. I gave him a strong hand that would make him stronger as a boy, a young man, and eventually as a man.

Seems silly to say, but boys are not girls. They are as mysterious as men, because they are men. But moms are girls, and sometimes that can be a problem. Most boys (not all, but most) will be more active, louder, noisier, less attentive or sensitive, slower to pick up cues, sometimes clueless and  just more “boysterous” than most girls. God designed them that way on purpose. Everything about them—physiology, biology, brain function, testosterone—prepares them for a different role and function in life than girls. But by God’s design, they need to be affirmed in their design by their girl mothers. God has given you a “strong hand” in their lives by way of being their mother.

From personal experience and many years of observation, moms often discipline boys for being boys, instead of understanding that God wants them to grow into strong men.

If we want them to be warriors when they are big, they need to be able to practice being little warriors when they are young. Even as our own husbands want to feel that we are happy and content with what they have provided, so our boys need to know that we are happy to be their moms, and that we are delighted that they are young men in training for accomplishing great feats some day.

For my boys, it sometimes meant laughing at silly boy jokes, taking time to listen to them talk or show off–this is the “glory” of man. Honoring their need to provide for me or to to have me listen to them, even as very little boys.

That’s not to say they don’t often need to be disciplined and trained when they stray off the path, but it is to say that boys will be boys, and that is a good thing. My strong hand in my boys’ lives helped shaped them into the strong men they have become. Sure they needed a strong corrective hand many times, but I learned that was only one kind of strong hand. They needed a strong hand in even more important ways.

{Stay tuned for Part Two of Sally’s post tomorrow where she details four specific types of strength our boys need.  You won’t want to miss it!}

• What a boy needs