Connor Beaton says boys need to learn that fear won't destroy them. Fathers should model courage by facing their own anxieties and talking about them openly. Beaton shared his fears with his son while helping him through something scary, showing him that being afraid is normal and how to handle it anyway.
The main lesson that every boy needs to learn is that his fear won't destroy him. Oftentimes, the first thing that a boy is looking to his father for is some inclination of, what do I do with my fear? 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? 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. He's saying to me in a moment where I was helping him with something that he was afraid of, I'm afraid of some things too. And we talked about what I'm afraid of and how I confront those things. 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.
How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary
