Hello readers! It has definitely been a while since I’ve written. Getting my brain to focus on a post has been quite difficult lately. ADHD is to blame, it’s both a blessing and a curse!
This is not exactly ADHD related, but if you are a MOM raising only boys…. You need to read this! It was written by an admin in a fb group I belong to, exclusively for “boy moms”! I, myself, have 6 sons!
We are hard on ourselves and struggle often to raise these little male humans, obviously… Moms are not boys.
Again, this was not written by me! I just had to share! Enjoy!
What Does It Mean To Be A BOYMOM?
Everytime I read an article or social media post about what it is like to be a boymom I see a comment about how raising girls is exactly the same & just as hard as raising boys. Usually, the comment is made by a mother who doesn’t have any sons & I have to smile & shake my head because I know that she doesn’t understand. She can’t understand. She probably thinks that the term Boymom is simply a way to perpetuate gender stereotypes, a way to laugh off the boys will be boys culture, & a way to make moms with sons feel superior because they gave birth to the golden children that have penises.
This can’t be further from the truth!
Boymoms know that there are many similarities between boys & girls. Girls can make messes & eat mud pies & boys can like to paint their toe nails & sleep with baby dolls. Girls can be obsessed with dinosaurs & boys can love to bake cupcakes. I have seen the #boymom & #lifewithboys tag used for everything from pee on the bathroom floor to a picture of a toddler boy who got into his mother’s makeup & put it on his face so he could be like mommy.
Boymoms are proud of our boys & each & everyone of them is different & unique in their own special ways.
But the truth is that raising boys comes with one huge difference from raising girls. A boymom is tasked with raising a child who she will never fully be able to relate to. We try our bests to give them all of the love & support they need & our goal is to raise them to be good men, but there are many instances in their lives when we are blindly guiding them through things that we have no experience with. Things we don’t fully even understand. I frequently compare it to living in a foreign country when you don’t speak the language. This is what makes being a boymom somewhat more difficult of an experience than raising girls.
It starts when they are toddlers & begin to explore their bodies. Boymoms are left wondering just exactly why little boys become so obsessed with playing with their penis & balls. We don’t see our friends daughters sitting in church with their fingers in their vaginas, but little Timmy has to be reminded eight times to keep his hands out of his pants.
Potty training is also a different experience with boys. Females have it pretty easy. We sit, push, stuff comes out, we wipe, & we are done. Boys have to worry about things like aim, spray, & volume. This is a challenge that seems to plague even the best of them their entire lives. Boymoms actually have to teach their sons to use body parts they have never had to use themselves.
As boys get older being a boymom gets more challenging. As women we could easily teach a preteen daughter about her period & sympathize with her when she gets bad cramps. However, as women we don’t know what it is like to have surges of testosterone running through our body. We have never had to worry about our voice cracking while reading out loud in class & we don’t know what it feels like to get a random erection in front of the entire school during a talent show. Despite our inability to relate we still have to help our sons through puberty.
Than our teenage sons start to be told to ‘act like a man’. Boymoms have never had to ‘act like a man’ because we are women. There are so many conflicting messages in the world about what it means to be a ‘man’ so again we have to help guide them through something outside our realm of experience. We have to teach our sons that they are bigger & stronger than women, including their own mom, & therefore must act as protectors instead of aggressors. This is something mothers of girls will never have to worry about.
These are just a few examples. There are many experiences during adolescence & adulthood that are biologically different for males than for females.
This is why we identify as boymoms. This is why we write articles & social media posts. This is why we come together as a community to discuss our experiences. Why we lean on each other for advice. Why we assure each other that things our sons do that seem wierd to us are normal.
We can’t always reach out to our friends & family that are raising girls or who only raised girls because they don’t know how it feels. We can’t always get comfort from the men in our lives because they also don’t 100% understand what we are going through. Parenting boys isn’t as hard for them as it is for us because they know what their sons are experiencing because they were once young boys too.
So we label ourselves as boymoms & we find our squad. The other women who understand. The ones who offer support with out judgement.
So mothers of girls, when you see a mom caption her picture #boymom or a mom who has a cute shirt on that identifies her as a ‘mom of boys’ know that she uses that caption or wears that shirt because she is proud of her sons & she is proud to be a part of the community of women who are raising their boys together. Allowing her to acknowledge that her experience as a mother is different than yours in no way diminishes your own experiences. You are a bad ass mom too & raising girls can be extremely challenging as well, but it is different than raising boys & it is ok for both boymoms & mothers of girls to acknowledge those differences.
Boys & girls are equal but they are not exactly the same. #lifewithboys
