Lessons Every Son Needs to Learn From His Father (That You Might Not Have Learned)

One of the things that I have seen many men struggle with time and time again is knowing what to teach their son, knowing what lessons to pass on to them, because they just didn't get the primary lessons from their dad, from the men that were in their life. And that can leave an absence inside of a man not knowing what to pass on. And so I've put together a list of some of the main lessons that every son wants to and needs to learn in his life, specifically from his father. And some of these might be lessons that you really craved and really needed, that might be things that can support you in your own development as a man, as a father. And some of them might be lessons that your son is really needing from you. So let's dive straight in. The thing that I think that nobody really talks about, I mean, not that nobody talks about it, it doesn't really get talked about enough, is that a son isn't so much listening to what you're saying, he's really watching what you do. He's really tuning into your internal world, how you respond, your anger, your fear, your relationship to success or failure, your ability to be compassionate or not. And the reality is that a boy studies his father. He's looking for a kind of transmission. And I see this from my boy all the time. He is receiving the best and the worst parts of me, whether I like that or not. And I can tell him all that I want until I'm blue in the face to ignore the parts of me that I struggle with, but the The reality is, is that he's still going to take them on because masculinity is often something that is transmitted. It's something that's embodied that is then passed down. And so the one thing that I want to start with, the main lesson that every boy needs to learn, is that his fear won't destroy him. And oftentimes the first thing that a boy is looking to his father for is some inclination of what do I do with my fear? Not how do I eliminate it? How do I kill it off? But how do I deal with it? How do I stay with it? How do I build some type of relationship to it? And do I have other people in my life that are present enough, that are relational enough to be with me while I'm dealing with fear? Because the reality is that a boy is going to be afraid. I mean, I was afraid of, you know, monsters and vampires and all types of things when I was a boy. And my son is the exact same way. He's 5. And he went through a spell of, you know, being terrified of the dark, being scared of monsters. And we need to be able to not just tell our sons how to deal with fear, but we need to be an embodiment in our own life of being able to confront the things that we are afraid of and actually talk about them. And this is something that I've had to traverse with my own boy. And he, you know, I remember him not too long ago, probably 7 months, 7 months, several months ago, he's saying to me in a moment where I was helping him with something that he was afraid of, I said to him, you know, I'm afraid of some things too. And he said, no, you're not. And I said, yeah. And he said, no, you're not scared of anything. And I said, no, that's not true. I definitely am afraid of things. And we talked about what I'm afraid of and how I confront those things. And there was a moment recently where I brought him climbing to a rock climbing gym specifically for kids. And there's this wall that is there, and the wall's probably like 30, 40 feet high. Like, it's high up. And they strap you in, you get a harness on. And the first time I took my son, he climbed up and he got maybe 10 feet up, and then he let go and he fell off, you know, and he went back down. And then I said, okay, get back up and see if you can just go a little bit higher. And he said, but Dad, I'm afraid. And I said, that's okay. And he did it. And I let him have the phrase, the saying that we've got in our family, which is, do it scared. So I said, do it scared, do it afraid. That's what bravery means. And in that moment, he looked at me and he's like, I don't want to. And I was like, I understand that you don't want to, but try anyway, see what happens. And I said, even if you just grab one extra hold above where you just got. And the wall that he was climbing on had a snake there, right? So like, there was like a snake that had a handle on it. And I said, just see if you can up to the snake, and because he likes snakes, and he's like, okay. And so he climbs and climbs and climbs, and I can see his body tensing up, and I can see that he's getting scared. And I said, take a breath, look up, the snake's right above you, just see if you can grab onto it. I know you can do it. And then I said, do it scared. And he reached up and he grabbed the snake and he pulled himself up and he looked at it, and I don't know what he said, but he talked to the snake for a moment, and then he let go and he, you know, came back down. And I took him again 2, 3 more times, and finally And finally, on the third try, the third time that I took him, he climbed all the way to the top. And at the top, there's this bell, and he rang the bell, and it was like this big moment. And he came back down, and I said, how'd that go? How'd you feel? And he said, Dad, I did it scared. I did it scared. And I said, yeah, great. And so in that moment, I was showing him, you know, here's what you do with your fear. It's okay to be afraid. Everybody's afraid. It's okay to have fear. But the lesson that every son needs is simple. And it's really, you can be afraid and still act. You are not weaker, you are not less than, you are not broken. There's nothing wrong with you because you are afraid. And the act of doing something afraid and doing it anyway is quite often the thing that we need as men to push our edge out into the world. The second lesson is that his anger has a purpose. and needs to be both directed and contained. So a lot of men will have received this lesson inadvertently or directly from parents, whether it was from their dad blowing up too much, you know, super angry all the time, super resentful, maybe abusive, or a father who was the other side of the equation, who just never got angry, never showed anger, never let himself get angry. And in both examples, a boy doesn't learn what to do with his anger. And maybe a boy, maybe you grew up in a household where your dad actually wasn't even around, so you didn't even see his anger, but you received messages from your mom like, angry men are dangerous men, and be really nice and be kind. And so you never really learned what to do with your anger. And one of the roles of a father, as far as I can tell, after, you know, having worked with thousands of men over the years, One of the roles of a father is to be able to receive his son's anger and to teach him how to respond in the face of it. And so part of our role as a dad is not to crush our son's anger. It's not to shut it down. It's not to dominate him with our own anger and control him. And it's also not to be, you know, completely disconnected from our own anger. It's the ability to show, here's what I do when I'm angry. I'm angry, and here's how I respond when you're angry. And so I've told my son, I've said to him, I'm okay if you're angry with me sometimes. And so my son will let me know, I'm angry with you, I don't like that. And I'll say, that's okay. It's all right for you to be angry with me, but we don't punish, we don't disconnect, we don't stop loving. It's okay that you're angry and that you don't like that I'm giving you a consequence because you broke the rules. It's okay that you're angry and disappointed because I'm saying no to you right now. That's fine. The answer is still no. The consequence still stands, but I don't need to have a big outsourced reaction. And the unfortunate part is that what happens for so many boys is that when they start to get angry within their family system, dad can sometimes move into this very triggered space and dominate him. And so his anger goes underground and he doesn't learn how to deal with it. So sometimes I'll do things with my son, like I'll say, okay, grab a pillow. You know, punch it, hit it, get some of the anger out, get— put all the anger into the pillow. Or I'll say, let's go grab the pads and you can punch the pads, you know? Or I'll say, tell me what you're angry about. Or I'll say, let's sit down and take a breath. Sometimes if my son is really angry and upset, I'll say, lay down on the floor and lay there without moving and breathe and let yourself feel the anger and it will pass. And sure enough, after 2, 3, 4 minutes of laying on the ground and breathing into his body, the anger passes and he's fine. Sometimes he's angry and I'll say, do you need a hug? Do you need to be helped? Or do you need to be heard? And in that, I'm giving him a choice to express. But the problem is that so many sons, and I was one of them, maybe you were one of them, we don't receive any modeling, healthy modeling for what to do with our anger. We see explosion, we see violence, we see abuse, we see aggression, we see domination, and we receive that. And Whether we like it or not, we oftentimes repeat those patterns because we haven't seen any other version of what to do with our anger. And every boy needs to witness what his father, what a man does with his anger. And every boy needs to be able to bring his anger to his father in a way that is received, that's not shut down, that's not dominated, that he's not punished for, that is actually He experiences one big thing that every young man needs, every young boy needs, which is containment. I'm okay even though you are not. The third lesson that I see so many men needing to have learned when they were boys is how to lose and that it's okay to fail. We spend an enormous amount of time teaching young boys to win. We teach them how to win. We teach them that it's important to be successful, but we do not teach them how to look to— how to lose. But a son who has never watched his father lose, he's never watched his father lose an argument, lose a game, admit that he was wrong, lose some status, he grows up believing that failure leads to exile. Failure is death. Failure is wrong. Failure makes you weak. But what a boy needs to learn is you can fail and still belong. You can fail and still be loved. You can fail and learn, right? And so there's a great saying, which is, you either win or you learn. And I've started to say this to my son constantly. Ah, you learned today, you know? Oh, you learned. What did you learn in that moment when you didn't win, when you lost? Because my boy, I noticed, had a massive outsized reaction to losing. And this is the case for a lot of young men. A lot of young men will take losing personally. They take it to mean something's wrong with me, I'm not good enough, I'm not gonna get praised, I'm gonna get ostracized, I shouldn't try again. And that loss, that failure becomes equated with who they are. I'm a loser, I'm a failure, I'm not good enough. And so one of the things that we both need to embody as fathers, and maybe you didn't receive this as a kid, is how do you as a father respond to failure? How do you deal with it? How do you encounter it? And so one of the things that I've started to talk about with my son is the mistakes that I've made, the failures that I've had, the L's that I've taken, whatever that might be. Again, making sure that I'm giving context to him. I'm not talking about like a business failure that he can't understand. I'm talking about something that he can get. The 4th big lesson, and this is, I wish every son could learn this lesson. So many of the men that come to work with me, they didn't receive this lesson from their father, and they didn't receive this lesson from anybody. But the 4th lesson is that you are loved for who you are, regardless of what you do. You're loved for who you are, regardless of what you do. And so in some ways, in many ways, what this is actually about is about separating personhood From action, personhood from behavior. When kids are small, when they're 3, 4, 5 years old, they equate what they do with who they are. And so it's our job as a parent to, when we are enacting consequences, when discipline is happening, when that kid gets something wrong, when your boy does something wrong, to say, you're a good kid. That was not a great choice. You're a good boy. That broke the rules. So there's a consequence. And we separate who we are, our sense of self, from the action, from the behavior, from the choice and the decision. And when we do that, a young boy, a child begins to learn, I'm good. Who I am is good. Who I am is lovable. Nothing's wrong with me. That decision wasn't great. That action wasn't good. And we focus in on the behavior instead of, what's wrong with you? How could you? Why did you do that? And unfortunately, so many young men do not learn this lesson. And what they receive out in the world is, who I am depends on what I do and how well I do it. And so competency gets confused with self-worth when competency is actually tied to your self-esteem. You can be as competent as you want, as successful as you want and still hate who you are. You can be as competent as you want and still think and feel internally like you're fundamentally broken and flawed and damaged. And so every boy needs to receive the lesson, you are good, you are lovable just as you are, and that action, that choice, that behavior is something that maybe isn't good, that maybe needs to be changed, that needs to be addressed. Now, the last piece is really an important skill, which is how to repair. And this is a lesson that I don't think previous generations really got a lot of. Fathers didn't really apologize for their actions. You know, I think about my grandfather, and I know from talking to my dad and my uncles, that man probably never apologized to them for anything, right? Here's World War II vet, you know, He was a wild, wild, very charismatic man, but I don't think he ever said, I'm sorry, in his life, you know, for any of his actions. He was amazing in so many ways, but the act of repairing relationally didn't happen, you know? And so one of the things that we need to be able to embody for our sons, and one of the things that you as a son likely craved and longed for and really needed from your dad, Was the repair after he messed up. If he lost his temper, if he cut you out, if he forgot something, if he missed something, if he just shut down and ignored you and gave you the cold shoulder, he needed to repair. And unfortunately, so many young men do not receive this. It's almost like we equate apologizing, owning wrongdoing as the parent with failure, with weakness. And, and so for so many boys, what they learn is apologizing, repairing equals weakness. It's something that you shouldn't do. And so many young boys grow up to become men who don't know how to repair after they've failed, after they've gotten something wrong. And so they— it— what it does is being unable to repair has a deep amount of shame inside because you fail, you make mistakes, you mess up. Maybe you lied, maybe there was a betrayal that happened, you broke trust, and you have no real inclination of how to repair the relationship. So imagine that you did something, you got something wrong with your car, right? Like you blew a gasket or the alternator died, and you just had no idea how to repair it. There's a deep shame that comes along with that, not knowing how to repair. And what it leads to is— Shame. Staying in this kind of relational superiority. I need to maintain this position of strength at all times, no matter what has happened. And the problem with that is that young boys, they learn— again, they learn through the ways in which we operate as men, the ways in which we operate as fathers. And one of the things that a father needs to teach, needs to transmit to his son is the art of repairing. You know what? I got that wrong. I lost my patience. I apologize. And this doesn't need to happen all the time, but it certainly needs to happen when you as a man and you as a father act out of alignment with who you have decided you want to be. And in doing that, you teach your son the embodiment Of integrity, that you don't have to be perfect, that his goal in life is not to be this perfect being who never makes mistakes, but that you can be a humble leader who's willing to say, you know what, in that moment I got that wrong, I apologize, will you forgive me? And when you can do that, you raise a human being, you raise a boy who can be strong, who can lead, who can get things wrong, who can take risks, who can fail, and who can succeed. And no matter what happens, he knows how to repair when things have gone wrong. And my guess is that in the future, this is going to become an even more invaluable skill. This is going to be an attribute that if a young boy has, he has the ability to say, you know what, I was in the wrong. That wasn't the right course of action. He is going to be able to thrive in work, in success, with money, in his own health, in his own mental wellness, in his relationships more than anybody else, because the act of repairing is what makes things stronger, right? Imagine that you went and worked out and you tore all the muscles in your biceps up from doing biceps and and triceps, and they never repaired. Like, the act of repair is the fundamental final step in what makes things stronger. And so if we raise boys to not know how to repair after they've made a mistake, they walk around with the shame, with the heaviness, with the frustration of having all these open tabs that never get closed down. So they don't really know how to forgive. They don't really know how to seek forgiveness when they've been in the wrong. And this passes on hurt, pain, confusion, and disconnection. And that boy will grow up into somebody who doesn't feel like he can make mistakes, and it will pressurize his system to such a degree that he'll continue to make them. He'll sabotage more and more and more because the lesson that he's wanting to learn is how to repair. So I'm curious for you, which lesson did you really need to learn from your father, and which one are you really working on as a dad right now, if you are one? Please share in the comments and let me know if you want to hear more of the parenting, young boys, because this is a big thing that many of you have asked me for. As always, don't forget to man it forward. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.