Should you raise your sons to be warriors or wimps?
What does it mean to raise your sons to be warriors? As parents, that’s the choice that society seems to be giving us.
Years ago I had a wealthy client who, for reasons I never quite understood, took a liking to me and began to mentor me in my career. This was a self-made multi-millionaire known far and wide for his business savvy and intelligence.
He had founded and built one of the largest and most successful insurance companies in the country.
One day I shared with him my dream of providing my kids all those things I never had growing up: a beautiful and spacious home, a nice car, freedom from financial worries, etc.
All the stuff I thought was important.
His response absolutely floored me: “Why do that to your kids? Why coddle them? Teach them fight for what they want out of life. Teach them to be warriors.”
It’s the best advice I was ever given.
How To Raise Your Sons: Scrappy or Gentile?
There’s a lot of debate these days about whether we should be encouraging young boys’ aggressive nature versus training them to be gentile and polite.
If you’ve ever seen a mother stop her kids from wrestling in the backyard “because we just don’t wrestle in this family,” then you know what I mean.
If your school frowns on all things competitive, but gives out “participation” certificates, then you get what I’m saying.
Somewhere along the way, we lost our appreciation for the warrior spirit in the way we raise our sons. Yet without that spirit, there would never have been a United States of America.
Sure, we want our sons (and our daughters, by the way) to be gentile and polite when the occasion calls for it. But if we are to survive as a nation in this dangerous world, we also need them to be warriors.
As one who grew up in a home with 6 rowdy brothers, I can assure you that rough and tumble behavior was a family tradition at our house. We fought like mortal enemies—and then Mom stepped in and sent us off to our rooms. Not as a “time out,” but as a punishment.
The truth is, roughhousing brings joy. As humans, we’re hard-wired for roughhousing, so the body and mind are in tune when we let it take place. Studies in neuroscience actually show that, when the brain’s play circuits are activated, we feel joy.
When we roughhouse with our kids, we teach them how someone bigger and strong holds back. We teach them fairness and self control. We teach cooperation and the importance of playing within the rules.
So let your sons get rowdy as their nature dictates. For extra points, get a little rowdy yourself.
Lesson 1: Teach Your Son To Fight and Win.
There are misguided people in the world who are attacking our cultural definition of being a boy.
They want to control how you raise your sons. They want weaker boys, pacified young men, without that innate fighter instinct that made us the stronger, protective gender in the past.
Boys need to be boys. They need to run wild in the back yard, playing pirate or dragon hunter with other boys, wielding toy guns and waving wooden swords.
We need to inspire our sons and give them strong role models. They should be reading about Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Treasure Island, Davy Crockett, Abraham Lincoln and other literary and historical characters who demonstrate the best of the male gender.
Our sons need to play the hero, rescuing fair maidens, riding great stallions, and standing up for what is right. Through imaginative play, kids learn the value of strong leaders. They come to recognize that the world is not made safer by weak, passive men whose only life experience is from a video game.
So when your son role plays as a courageous champion, he’s learning life skills that will serve him well when he ventures out into the world.
The lesson for us parents: Let your sons participate in aggressive, competitive play from time to time. Teach them the limits of such play, and in doing so, you teach them how to channel that aggressiveness to the good.
Lesson Two: Teach Your Sons To Protect And Provide
This is another value we’ve lost in the past few decades. We’ve lost an appreciation of men as protectors and providers.
Give your sons whatever they want, the loonies tell us. Don’t raise your sons to feel the pain of poverty or the discomfort of living within their means.
Instead, we pampered them. And what happened? Some of these sons turned to anger and violence in the delusion that the world is victimizing them.
Look at the Antifas of the world. Most of them grew up in middle and upper class families where they never tasted the self-sacrifice and sense of moderation that warrior sons know.
All too often, there are no male models in the home to teach them how to love their families, how to protect them and provide for all their needs. So without restraints and guidance, they grew up to value only themselves.
As parents, we need to nurture the natural instinct of our warrior sons to protect and provide for their loved ones.
Lesson Three: Teach Your Son’s To Pick The Right Causes and Win the Right Battles.
Without moral guidance, our sons will never know when to step forward and act like the warriors they were born to be.
Boys need a moral compass based upon the laws of God that can guide them in picking their battles.
They cannot stand by when rioters run rampant in our streets and beat up innocent people, or where police stations are torched and stores looted. They cannot stand idly by when brainwashed woke mobs threaten their given rights under the constitution.
We need strong sons who have the courage to right wrongs even if it means stepping out of their comfort zone.
We need to make them tough yet fair. We need them to be God loving, family loving leaders and providers.
We need them to be warriors. That can happen only when we bring out the natural warrior spirit that dwells within every young boy. Plan your parenting skills so you’re raising a warrior.
Today is a good day to begin.