To start: no, there are no “trusted male figures” in our lives. My brothers & father are all conservative, and I DO NOT trust them to properly explain things without shame and/or religious context.
My son knows the basics of reproduction, but I’ve never really explained what’s “normal” things for a teenage boy to go through… mainly because I don’t know!
I’ve definitely put it off, so he’s almost 14 and is much more physically mature than most of his peers (he’s got hair in places, shaves his face regularly, etc.)… but I’m embarrassed to admit that I know next to nothing about anything else…
Could y’all help me out? What did you go through that he should know about? What should I know about?
Many thanks to anyone who can help. Please don’t be unkind. Much appreciated.
EDIT: Thank you so much for all the advice so far!! Please keep it up!!
My son & I have very open communication & a very good relationship.
Visit your local library for resources on sexual health and wellness! It’s good for you to know too. Everyone should know about the reproductive system, anatomy, STDs, how to prevent them, and what vaccines and medicines can treat or prevent STDs (For example, PrEP pills can make you nearly immune to HIV).
Fwiw, it is probably good to explain sexuality too. Or at least have books with solid sections that explain it. I always crushed on and dated girls, but then started getting nervous when I started finding boys cute too. It added a great deal of stress to my daily life. My parents thought I was straight, then kinda mangled it when I came out the first time.
There’s no instruction manual for raising kids, but like…you can definitely have the knowledge ready so that you aren’t caught off guard :)
There are books for that, that usually take all the important bits and put them in funny, engaging ways. It could be a nice thing to get, even read together.
If you want my honest advice, the major considerations are that boys turn nonstop-horny for a few years, before that naturally stops.
Apart from that, yeah, general self-development. But that will take time, and experience(s)
Non-stop?
yep, more or less at least that was my experience
Besides all the stuff related to sex that many people have already written down here:
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That it is normal to have overwhelming emotions at this age. It’s fine if he gets angry, or sad or whatever. Find an outlet for that emotion.
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He is gonna get a long stronger. It is important to approach this with sensibility: saying stuff like “strong men are dangerous” or “men are strong and women are weak” etc can actively harm young men’s mental health. I’m sure there are good resources for this online as well, though I’m not sure where. He needs to realize that he will need to control how much force he puts into things much more than as a child, but at the same time that people are not afraid of him and should not be.
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NRK had a series on puberty that is no-nonsense, straight to the point. It was hosted by a physician. Most of it is on YouTube, and from a very brief look has English subtitles. Warning, it contains full frontal nudity of people at various ages. It is rated for children in Norway, but might be shocking to someone not used to seeing nipples on TV. It should be quite informative. Watch it yourself and decide if you want your son to see it. I have no idea if it is geoblocked.
They are all hidden. At least here in Brazil.
At some point. For the love of all that is holy you MUST tell you son the following: Never come in a woman unless you want a baby. Even if she tells you to. Even if she claims she is protected.
NEVER COME IN A WOMAN WITH WHOM YOU DO NOT WISH TO HAVE A BABY
Women will baby-trap the living fuck out of young men. He NEEDS to know this.
This is utter nonsense. Condoms work 99% of the time, and most women aren’t horrible people.
Women will baby-trap the living fuck out of young men. He NEEDS to know this.
Was with you until this line. C’mon now.
It does happen. Had a woman poke holes in all of the condoms in my nightstand when I was 18. She later admitted she thought I was going to leave her when I was going to a University and she was going to the state college. I’m sure it is rare that such happens, but I wouldn’t fully dismiss it. I was paranoid after that and always went to the bathroom after and filled the condom with water to make sure they hadn’t broke or had a hole in them after sex. It wouldn’t do anything to prevent it at that point, but at least I had the peace of mind I guess that I knew it wasn’t leaking and could get a 9 month head start on planning.
It absolutely happens, no doubt! Never disagreed with that!
But putting out such a general statement like “women will baby-trap you!” is such a broad statement. Statements like that are often used to stir up hostility and is a common tactic used in spaces that are anti-women.
Me saying “men will assault you!” would not be acceptable and would get me attacked and downvoted to hell. It’s astounding to me that statements like this about women are supported.
Yeah, a better way to put it would be “There are women that may attempt baby-trap you, and you should always be mindful of that”
Absolutely.
Yeah it really wasn’t the response I expected to teaching your child about their body. Not sure what that person has been through, but it did seem random. I expected responses like how to properly clean oneself.
Yeah… don’t love the “women will be actively trying to ruin your life”–angle.
However, it’s a good idea to let him know that some potential partners will have bad/manipulative intentions, no matter the gender, and how to look out for that.
I made no mention of my kid’s orientation, so… make of that what you will. Lol
Yeah, people make stupid decisions no matter their gender, ideologies, or whatever else. I think one of the things I wish I would have learned more about at that age was the absence of structure. School is all very structured. Everything is about checking a box. Get this prerequisite, go to these classes. Be there at set times, get a set grade level and you will be fine. Get a certain score on the SAT/ACT or what not and you will be fine. Everything is almost definite. Once you leave high school/college there really isn’t any of that for your life unless you create it yourself. Get a job sure, within that job they will have structure. Nothing is telling people to check these 3 boxes and then move out of that job in 3 years and into the next step, as the steps no longer exist and staying in a single job is unlikely to land you where you need to be successful. Loyalty to a company doesn’t mean you will get raises or promotions. I wish I would have spent more time creating the maps and goals I want to achieve outside of the structure given to me, and work on achieving those goals and creating timelines they need to be done by. A certificate to move up/diagonal in my field, map it out and when and where you want to throw those 100 resumes out too and hope one of them will come back. Then already be working on other structured steps curated for my life aspirations.
I procrastinate on many of those things, because there are no due dates. It’s go to work, make dinner, clean, mow lawn, take care of chickens, blah blah blah to get to the next day week year, but then you never get around to improving yourself because I never set required boxes for me to check.
Lemmy.world is worse than fucking reddit was with gender relations lmfao
Weirdos end up on Lemmy. Many of us are a splendidly wonderful, if pedantic, sort.
And then there’s the weirdos that… aren’t that. The ones who never built social skills or the ability to look at the world from beyond their own limited experiences. The ones who extrapolate with reckless abandon, usually in the traditional directions of punching down.
I’m sorry if they or someone they know got baby-trapped, but that is DEFINITELY not the usual nor should it be phrased like it is.
I’m more shocked at the amount of upvotes the comment has.
His point isn’t wrong. He could have explained it better but telling a teenage boy how to not get girls pregnant regardless of what they tell him is not a bad idea. I definitely had experiences with girls I slept with telling me not to worry about it and at least one of them went on to have a teen pregnancy by another dude. They weren’t trying to trap me. They were just dumb. So was I and I got really lucky that there were no consequences. Teenagers say and do dumb shit and the more cognizant your son is of that the better. If he’s anything like me he’s not going to be thinking about consequences in the moment.
His point isn’t wrong
Women will baby-trap the living fuck out of young men. He NEEDS to know this.
The above sentence is the one I’m taking a stand against. The rest was fine up until that.
You are 100% correct to have an issue with that. My point was more to answer why he is still getting upvotes. The premise of his comment about not cumming in women you don’t want to impregnate is correct. The motivation of the woman is pretty irrelevant to the conversation. He is wrong about that but it’s not the main point.
You need to understand that is one of a host of reasons and things that can be said. I’m not going to write a 40-page essay. Frank talk is necessary, too bad you can’t see that and choose to focus on the gender thing. That’s really about you and not me. Frank talk about all aspects of sex is vital. Get a grip.
edit: And I’m not going to sit here and qualify my statements carefully in case you’re too in-the-weeds to focus on underlying points. I don’t need to “not every woman” and bs like that. You should be smart enough to not need constant pandering to and kid glove treatment.
Do you think “frank” means “without nuance or care for how what I’m saying could be misconstrued as bigotry”?
Like, literally the only change I know I’d like to see is “there are some women who” and like… that’s hardly an imposition, y’know? Definitely not a “40 page essay” either.
Doesn’t even need to be a trap, accidents happen (i.e. missing a dose of birth control).
yeah honestly this is the only thing
There is a wealth of resources regarding sexuality and thematics for adolescents in general available here: https://www.youmo.se/en/
also, Big Mough comes recommended by the city of reykjavik, which has lots of stuff regarding sexuality and gender issues, but not all in english.
i want to emphasise training how to use a condom, finding out the correct size is something that’s on his to do list. Proper hygiene is also learned (my parents didn’t give a shit and it caused me problems far longer than necessary) - tell him if he needs to shower, body odor changes fast during puberty, and it’s easy to be nose-blind to your own smell.
I saw someone recommend giving a gift card for a sex toy - i think that’s a good idea, the sex drive in puberty was constant and to be honest at times annoying and distracting,
Aside from basic biological stuff, trust and consent. Consent is required. Trust no one you don’t know extremely well and are in a committed relationship (especially as regards protection and contraception).
I wonder if educational videos exist on this. I assume so somewhere. As a dude in his 40s not having kids, I thought “maybe I should reach out to volunteer to help” but, at the same time, realize there are so many weirdos on the internet I would always say no in the same circumstance. Maybe if there are no educational vids, I could try to create something.
Raising kids is hard. Good on you for trying to do things properly. Best of luck!
What did you go through that he should know about? What should I know about?
As a male, not much really happens, other than feeling grumpy as hell pretty much all the time, an undeserved sense of superiority after realizing how logic works, and a fucking intense sex drive. I cannot stress the last part enough, teenage boys are a horny bunch and, thanks to the internet, will probably masturbate multiple times a day. What you should tell him, and hope it enters his brain, is that the more porn he consumes, the less likely he’ll be to feel satisfied with actual sex, which can lead to disappointing relationships later on.
Another couple of comments said to “knock before entering his room”. If you want to “assert authority”, open without knocking and, if you catch him in the act, just nonchalantly tell him to “do it elsewhere and clean up properly” - if anything, teach him to wipe it dry and don’t use water to clean up. He will feel ashamed from being caught, but if you, as his mother, treats it as something natural and expected, hopefully he’ll get the right idea that, yes, that is something to be done in privacy, but not necessarily something to feel ashamed of.
Talk about sex. Tell him that he must wear a condom when he does it and to keep a bottle of lube to help (water based lube only, oils will wreck condoms)
Lastly, if he ever brings a girlfriend home, tell her to only do it with a condom and to not accept any of his possible excuses to not use one.
Opening anyone’s door without knocking is just being a dick and violating another person’s privacy.
Don’t use water to clean up? What the fuck?
Semen becomes super sticky and kind of “curdles” when mixed with water and becomes significantly harder to clean off.
Dry clean first with toilet paper or some disposable cloth, then wash with water and plenty of soap.
Male puberty happens a bit later than female puberty; at almost 14 he’s either in the thick of it or just about done.
I don’t think male puberty is quite as “what the Lovecraftian fuck is happening to me right now” as female puberty. His voice either has or will drop, this isn’t physically painful but it’s not fun how people react to it sometimes.
He is going to GROW. When I was 15 I outgrew a pair of shoes overnight. Came home from school one day, took my shoes off, went to bed. Woke up the next morning, those same shoes didn’t fit. In the next couple years he’s probably going to have some joint or bone aches just from growing so much. My parents fed me Tylenol which did basically nothing, I’m not convinced Tylenol works. It’ll slow down by the time he’s out of high school but where girls are pretty much at adult size at 18 boys will keep growing a bit into their early 20s.
He’s gonna get stronger. Sometimes it’s going to sneak up on him; prepare for the occasional moments of didn’t know his own strength style clumsiness.
Physical activity is a good idea; sports, marching band, shop class, if you can get him up and moving during the day and not packed into a classroom it’ll be good for his brain. Boys don’t really do well sitting in a classroom all day.
For the above three reasons he is going to have a VORACIOUS appetite. I ate 5,000 calories a day and struggled to gain weight in high school. Let the kid eat. A hungry teen is an angry teen. Somewhere around 19 or 20, either in college or in the get a job part of life, that growth spurt is tapering off and there’s less physical activity inherent in life, so the need for calories is going to decrease but his ordering habits won’t. 19 years old is about time to start ordering medium combo meals.
You can expect a certain amount of teenage moodiness; his brain is rewiring itself. He’ll have feelings. Society isn’t okay with this. He’ll learn how to express nothing but anger or amusement. This is ultimately for the best; once he’s an adult he will be expected to do two things: Work and die. Having feelings is accomplishing neither of those so he is expected to…never do that. Some people will ask him for displays of emotions; he will quickly learn that they are not interested in his actual feelings because those would require, like, dealing with or whatever. They want to see an impromptu rom-com performance.
Unexplained genital pain is never normal in males; “it hurts, and it has hurt for awhile now” is reason to see a doctor.
Really off topic, but can you tell what happened with the shoe situation afterwards? What did you do then?
Just about the time me and my mother started brainstorming solutions, my father walks in the room and says “What are y’all fussing about?” and when the situation is explained to him he rolled his eyes and threw a pair of his tennis shoes at my feet.
Puberty ends at about 21-23 for women and 23-25 in men. The brain does some crazy af pruning of neurons between 13 and 23. While the actual hormone flood starts early, the entire process takes much longer to complete on a brain function level.
I think you and your son having an open communication is a very good thing. Be prepared, though, that this can change. This can be due to feelings of shame getting stronger during puberty.
Be patient and remain open to communication and it most likely will return.
Also, find trustworthy sources of information your son can access to find answers to his questions and respect him when he wishes to inspect there on his own (again, if you remain open and respectful, he probably either keep confiding in you or will again if he doesn’t at some point).
And from personal experience, I can add: it helps if you’re also open to learning things from him! I know I’ve learned lots from the younger generation, even though I thought I was knowledgeable enough! (Especially lingo and how to give and check for consent in non disruptive ways)
First off…you are a great parent. Respect. The most important thing I wish I heard at 14 is that changes are normal, sexual desire is normal, a teenagers body is spurting growth and this may be awkward, but also normal.
When I was 14, my knees hurt because of my growth spurts.
When I was 14, there were a lot of awkward arousals that I had to cover with my back back.
When I was 14, I was still smaller compared to others, by 18 I was towering above everybody.
When I was 14 I was a coward with girls. When I really shouldn’t have been.
When I was 14, I was bullied, and wish with all my heart, I would have Stood up for myself…if I had a cthwr figure to tell me that instead of teachers telling me to be peaceful Instead.
Hell, maybe a big brother program would help.
Hell, if you are desperate, DM me…maybe I can help
There are these things called books…
Oh that’s great. Which ones? I doubt that Pride and Prejudice or The Very Hungry Caterpillar are very helpful here.
If you can’t even recommend any book on this topic, then your comment really doesn’t help OP at all.
Kid is lucky to have you.
I had a mum and a dad, and they did their best, but I wish they had been more interested with my well being in this way.
You’re doing great.
As a guy, best I can say is educate him on what women go through. Make sure he knew what is going on, so he doesn’t look like an idiot with a woman. And so he isn’t like me and learn about how periods actually work when he’s almost thirty because he doesn’t get a joke in a movie.
What he needs to learn at this age isn’t what he will do through, school will do that for him. He needs to know what others will go through. Religious thinking kept most of female anatomy out of the public schools I went to.
So what movie taught you about periods?
Happy Feet. (the sequel obviously)
Ahh, thought it would have been Crimson Tide
I could have said The Shining :p
