Raising them. Losing it. Finding myself anyway.
Welcome to the frat house
If you've read this blog before, you know my house is basically a frat house for elementary schoolers. Not much has changed, except the brothers got bigger and the pledges learned to talk back.
Maxwell is 7 now. Franco is 5 and a half (the half is very important to him; please do not round down). Bedtime is still a WWE event with no ticket sales. They regularly request "fight club with Mommy" before snuggling under the covers, which is adorable right up until someone's elbow finds my eye socket.
"Poop" remains the funniest word in the English language. "Butt" has joined the rotation, and they use it as a noun, a verb, and occasionally a complete sentence. I am the sole referee, professional butt wiper, and on-call snack concierge for two boys who treat personal space like a rumor they heard once and never confirmed.
I have run organizations with 65 staff. I have sat across from boards, funders, and state legislators. Not one of them has ever head-butted me in the chin hard enough to fracture a tooth that later had to be pulled. My children have. And yet, here I am. Smiling. Carefully. On one side.
Most days, I laugh about it. Some days, I lie awake.
The goddess years
Let me enjoy this while it lasts. Right now, in the eyes of my boys, I am a mythological goddess. I am smart. I am good. I am loving. I am pretty. I am perfect. I am basically Wonder Woman with an oversized SUV and a snack bag.
The other morning I packed Franco the wrong lunch (apparently the peanut butter sandwich" didn’t meet his expectations), and I dramatically joked, "Sorry, I am such a Bad Mommy."
Both boys jumped in like my defense attorneys. "No! You're a good mommy!"
I revel in it. I soak it up like a sponge. Because I know it won't stay. Someday soon I'll be embarrassing, uncool, and a lot less smart. I'll be dropped off a block from school. My jokes will get an eye roll instead of a belly laugh. The goddess will be demoted to the lady who asks too many questions.
But right now, my voice is the loudest one in their world. And that's exactly why I keep thinking about what I'm doing with it. Because the clock is ticking, and someday soon, my voice won't be the only one in the room.
Who will they be when I'm not in the room?
Here's what keeps me up. Not the poop jokes. The moments I won't be there for.
The bus seat where a kid gets picked on and everyone else looks out the window. The friend who dares him to do something dumb, or dangerous, or cruel. The group chat where a photo gets passed around that never should have been taken. The party where someone has had too much to drink and can't really say yes. The locker room where the joke goes too far and every guy is waiting to see who laughs first.
I won't be in any of those rooms. My boys will.
And I'm not worried they won't know right from wrong. At 5 and 7, they know. Ask them if it's okay to hit, take, lie, or be mean, and you'll get a very confident "NO" and possibly a lecture. Knowing right from wrong is the easy part.
The hard part is doing right when it costs you something. When it's awkward. When your friends are laughing. When saying "stop" or "not cool" or "I'm getting help" might make you the weird one, the snitch, the buzzkill.
Good men aren't born. They're practiced.
Over and over, in small, boring, everyday moments, long before the big ones show up. So that's my job now. Not to raise boys who never mess up. To raise boys who know what to do next when they, or someone around them, does.
The herd is loud
I have spent my career in child development and education. I know kids learn far more from what they see than from what we say. I also know that somewhere around middle school, the volume on my voice starts to drop and the volume on their friends' voices cranks all the way up. That's normal. That's healthy, even. Until it isn't.
The herd is loud. It's funny and fearless, and it decides who's in and who's out. Today the herd isn't just the boys at the lunch table. It's the group chat, the guy on YouTube with the rented Lamborghini, and every comment section with an opinion.
And going against the herd, at 14 or 19 or 22, takes a kind of courage most adults I know don't have. Saying "dude, not cool" when everyone else is laughing is a lot harder than winning fight club with Mommy.
So I keep asking myself, by the time the herd shows up:
THE VOICE IN MY HEAD
Will my voice be in there somewhere? Small, maybe. But loud enough?
Holding court in the car
A few weeks ago, the parent group chat lit up. A child at school had made several comments about wanting to "kill" another child.
At this age, it's almost impossible to tell what that is. A game? Something he picked up from a YouTube video? A kid who doesn't understand the weight of the word? Or an actual threat? 30 years ago we might have shrugged it off as kids being kids. Today, as a parent, there's no room to wonder. You take it seriously. Every time.
As the texts kept coming, I wondered: would my boys know what to do if that kid was talking to them?
So we held court where we always do. The car. The only place where they have no distractions and absolutely no escape. The ride to swimming, to soccer, to track, you name it. Seat belts on, snacks distributed, court is in session.
We played a game of scenarios. What would you do if a kid at recess said he wanted to hurt someone? What if he said it to you? What if you said something like that to a friend, as a joke? What would you do then?
And here's the thing. They knew.
Every scenario, good or bad, they knew the right response. No hesitation.
I sat at the red light, staring at them in the rearview mirror, not sure what I felt. Surprised that they knew? Proud? Or just sad that in this day and age, my 5 and 7-year-olds need to know it at all?
Honestly, probably all three. And then someone asked if we could listen to the poop song again, and court was adjourned.
What I'm trying (because I can't just lie awake)
I don't have this figured out. But here's what I'm doing now, while they still think I'm the funniest person they know (some days):
1. "Stop" means stop. Even when you're laughing. Fight club has one rule: when someone says stop, it ends. Not after one more body slam. Not when you're done having fun. Right then. They complain. I hold the line. (Franco has since figured out he can yell "STOP!" the second he starts losing, which is a separate problem I will deal with after more coffee.) But the 7-year-old who learns that someone else's "stop" matters more than his fun is practicing for a much bigger moment.
2. Their bodies are theirs. So is everyone else's. No forced hugs for relatives. No tickling after "no." Ask before you touch. They roll their eyes so hard I worry about permanent damage. I say it anyway.
3. Would you say that if they were standing right here? When a mean joke about a kid comes home from school, it doesn't get a laugh in this house. It gets that question. Usually the answer is a sheepish no and a fart noise. Progress.
4. Snitching vs. helping. I've joked about "snitches get stitches" when they tattle about who looked at whom in the back seat. But I'm working on a better line: if someone is getting hurt, scared, or made fun of, telling a grown-up isn't snitching. It's being brave.
5. We practice the script. Court stays in session in the car. What if a friend was being mean to a kid at recess? What if everyone was laughing at something that didn't feel right? Sometimes the answers still involve ninjas. That's fine. We're building the muscle.
6. "You can always call me. No questions asked, no lecture." I'm saying it now, at 5 and 7, so it's old news by 15. If you're somewhere that feels wrong, call me and I will come get you. Period. (I may cry in the car on the way. That is not a lecture.)
7. I'm praising courage more than being liked. When Maxwell stuck up for his brother on the bus after he had a little accident, I made a much bigger deal of that than his soccer goal. I want them to know which one I'm proudest of.
8. I'm asking their dad to say it too. This one matters most. Boys need to hear from the men in their lives that being a good guy and being one of the guys aren't always the same thing. And when they're not, you pick good guy. Every time.
The honest part
Here's what scares me: I can do every one of these things and still not know. I can't follow them into the dorm, the locker room, or the group chat. At some point, who they become will be up to them.
But I keep coming back to this. In every room where something isn't right, it only takes one. One guy who doesn't laugh. One guy who says, "Come on, man." One guy who walks out and calls for help. One guy who decides his friends' approval matters less than someone else's safety.
I can't guarantee my boys will be that guy. But I can make sure they've heard my voice say it, again and again, long before the herd shows up. Loud enough to drown out the podcasts. Loud enough to beat the group chat. Possibly loud enough to get a noise complaint.
The goddess years won't last. I know that. But if I do this right, the words might outlast the halo. Long after I'm the embarrassing lady at drop-off, I hope it's still my voice they hear when the room goes quiet and everyone's waiting to see who laughs.
To the other mamas raising boys: what are you saying to yours? What's working? I'd really like to know, because I don't want to figure this one out alone.