I’d like to tell you a story in five chapters.
It’s about boys coming of age with their love of life intact in these troubled times, and what it might ask of us as parents.
It’s about the approach to adolescence as a time of endings, and a time of great promise.
The story may be strangely familiar to many of you.
Chapter 1: You have a son!
Many years ago, your son arrived into this world. His infancy passed faster than you’d imagined it could, and his toddlerhood too. It was a time of great joy, and a weird insanity, of making ends meet, of remembering to care for your partner, of sleeplessness, exhaustion and irritations.
Still, for years you did everything imaginable to successfully shepherd your son to thrive in this world.
You did the inner work to heal your wounds and parent with compassion. You did Steiner school and Nature Camps and holidays with the grandparents. You read up on attachment parenting, carried him in a sling, and met his turmoil with calm compassion that took a toll on your sense of composure. You ate organic or homegrown produce, read him old folk tales and sang lullabies until you both fell asleep.
Chapter 2: The Change
You had barely begun to catch up on your sleep, when you first noticed the early signs of his morphing into a young man.
It became clear to you that he was approaching a threshold. It was fantastic and exciting. And it was frightening too.
Something had clearly come to an end, and something else hadn’t quite yet begun.
And as you went back and forth between what was and what was yet to become, you realized: it was not only him that had changed. Your role as a parent was radically different too. You were on the edge.
Chapter 3: The Dimming Light
Just a few years ago, when he was still a boy full of life, you knew how to parent him, tuck him in at night, and safeguard his dreams.
And then the day came when it was no longer true. You found you had more questions than answers.
Screens and social media appeared in his life and you felt yourself losing him to the worlds outside your house, and the worlds within himself.
He began to express ideas that concerned you and you didn’t know where they’d come from. Maybe that screen he would always stare into, or his peers.
You wondered where his sense of awe and playfulness went.
And you wondered how he might make it on his own as a young man? Had you done all you could to prepare him for life outside of the family? What does any young man growing up in these twisted and chaotic times even need to mature with an intact sense of wonder? Is that even possible anymore?
Your heart was breaking.
Chapter 4: The Failed Interventions
Your wild and wonderful boy was drawing further and further away from you.
You had a sense that something else was needed, but you weren’t sure what more you could do on your own.
Perhaps you recognize some of these situations.
You tried discipline and consequences, but it drove a wedge between you rather than set the ground for understanding and respect.
You tried asking him questions about his life, listening to his concerns, making suggestions, but he didn’t say much and you weren’t sure how to reach through to him any more.
You limited his use of smartphones, gaming consoles, computers and social media, but you felt like a domestic police, surveilling his every move.
The warmth of your time together seemed surpassed by a prevailing sense of mistrust and tension.
Your son, whether he said it directly or not, was saying, “I just want to be normal.”
He became less and less interested in your alternative, hippy approaches to life. They cost him his belonging amongst his peers, a price he didn’t want to pay.
Chapter 5: Asking for help on the edge
And so now, here you are.
If only someone else would step in and help your son across this threshold, to leave childhood behind and head beyond the family into a wider world with excitement and passion and dedication.
For many of us there are days when our hearts ache in the absence of a circle of people who are willing to help us raise our boys.
Maybe you are a family seeing your son set his sights beyond the home and feel at a loss at how to be of use. Or you are a father wishing your grandparents, uncles and other people around had guided your son into the wider circles of life. Or you are a single mom, wishing you had some male role models.
For most parents I meet, there is no help coming.
Or they have asked their community for help and been met with silence.
But there is something we might yet do as parents. Or many things. Together.
