What Does Your Son Need? A Good Example Set by Parents – ryan

Have you ever heard the song “Watching You” by Rodney Atkins? He starts off talking about his son sitting in the car seat eating his lunch as they drive through town, but when he slams on the brakes and the food spills, his son says a four-letter word. When asked where he heard it, his son said he learned it while watching his dad. Obviously, the singer wasn’t proud of that. However, later in the song, he notices his son praying. When asked where he learned to pray, he again said he learned it by watching his dad. All sons need a good example set by parents.

I had a similar experience with my son. About the time he entered high school, he became pretty helpful. His catch phrase became, “It’s OK, Dad. I know how to do stuff.” It turned out, he learned to do a lot of “stuff” while watching me through the years. As they grow, our boys are always watching us. Hopefully, they will see more good than bad. Here are 5 things our sons should see us do.

1. Honoring Women

The philosopher Voltaire said, “We are guilty of the good we did not do.” It is not enough for us to treat the women in our lives with love and respect. When we see women being objectified in the media or in real life, we need to have conversations with our sons to make sure they understand how to treat women. This may even require us to call out a friend or relative who’s making inappropriate comments and setting a poor example for our sons. Boys whose dads don’t speak up (or who objectify women themselves) easily can become men who do the same thing.

2. Putting Our Families First

There are a lot of distractions in society today. Committing to leaving work at work, setting down the cell phone, and skipping poker night with the guys are just a few ways we can sacrifice our time to be more present with our families. Most of our sons will grow up and get married someday, and their wives and kids are going to need them to do things like leave work at work, consider their families’ best interests when making decisions, and put their wives’ and kids’ needs above their own. They won’t know to do that, let alone how to do it, if we don’t show them.

3. Treating Their Mother With Love

This is one of the most important things our sons can see us doing. If they see us treating their mother with love, their chances of being quality husbands and fathers will greatly increase. And yes, this still applies if you’re not married. With increasing divorce rates, many young men are not observing traditional relationships between their father and mother. And yes, these can be difficult situations where hostility, jealousy, and resentment can easily become evident.

But these situations make it even more important to make sure we have a loving mindset when interacting with their mother. Whether we are in solid marriages, strained marriages, or co-parenting situationstreating our sons’ mothers with love and respect will always be the best option.

4. Treating All People With Compassion and Patience

We are constantly interacting with people who may be dealing with stress, anxiety, or other issues. We may have a restaurant server who has financial issues, a driver on the road who is running late, or someone in line in front of us at the grocery store who just got bad news. We will usually never know why a stranger is having a bad day, but we have a choice: help make that day better or be a reason it becomes worse.

Telling our sons to be patient and compassionate with other people will never be as effective as demonstrating it.

5. Serving Our Local Communities

It’s important for our sons to see that we care about the people around us. This can be by doing something formal, like serving as a member of your local school board or church council, or it could be serving at a community event like helping with a local food drive. One of my favorite community activities has been serving as an All Pro Dad team captain at my kids’ school.

Our communities are in need of positive leadership. It is never too soon to teach our sons to be tomorrow’s leaders.

Sound off: What do you hope your son learns by following your lead?