The Great Man: Pledge For Boys
He will come.
“I am a good student and a great man. I am responsible for following my own list each day. Neither my parents nor my brother or anyone or anything else are responsible for my failure or my success at completing my list of daily tasks. If I fail, it’s because of my own lack of diligence. Likewise, when I succeed, it’s because I, myself, alone am awesome! No one else can take the blame or the credit for my personal achievement.”
It dawned on me this year that I have to raise the men I want to see in the world. Our feminized, soft society is not turning out strong men. I noticed even when I started dating 20 years ago that the sensitive man is so sensitive to his own feelings, he doesn’t realize you have any. This isn’t the result of better parenting. The backlash to me saying this is, “you either focus all your efforts as a parent on young men’s feelings (to undo damage done to parents by 1950’s style corporal punishment “toughening up” children) or you are a violent, tyrannical parent.”
I had someone tell me this week in earnest that the way to teach my children resilience and strength is to acknowledge their feelings and apologize to them. His original post said “it’s not our job as parents to toughen up our kids…” That’s patently false. Teaching resilience, boundaries and accountability is exactly our job as parents, and resilience in particular is a toughening of the human spirit. There’s no way around that.
Toughness is good. We want a tough truck, a tough case for our cell phone a tough protector in our lives. Toughness implies durability, endurance, strength, courage and invulnerability. These are good qualities as opposed to teaching vulnerability which I see all too much of these days. You don’t want a vulnerable computer, a vulnerable password, a vulnerable security system or foundation on your home. Notice the opposites are invulnerability (super power), trust, safety and most of all, integrity. While something can be soft and strong, it cannot be vulnerable and strong. Those are opposites by definition. We need to stop teaching weakness. It’s unnecessary. Weakness/vulnerability is inherent until we grow and evolve. The stronger we get, the more secure we become and are able to be open with others without being vulnerable. This as far as I am concerned is THE WAY.
While I do believe in leading from example, I see the selectively apologetic parenting example given by my friend as an obvious trauma response to abuse. Here is a weak individual trying to shore up his insecurity by getting validation for his neediness from others. This grown child wants his parents to apologize to him for abuse. That’s ok. I hope he gets that. He may be legally an adult, but he’s not a man. He’s not a parent. That’s ok. But, he’s in a pretty vulnerable position to be offering parenting advice to healthy adults and people who are parents.
OK, so why am I even quoting this misanthrope?
First, it’s because a bunch of people who do have kids liked and applauded his post. That was disappointing to the point of irksome to witness. The reason why it was so irksome is because I fell in that hole early on as a parent and as an adult survivor of child abuse trying to right all the wrongs of my childhood with my own children. Gentle parenting advocates “educated me” to avoid laying necessary boundaries for my kids, to shy away from giving my sons high standards and to fear holding my kids accountable to those standards. What’s crazy about low standard or no standard, unconditional parenting, the part I learned the hard way is that kids with high ingenuity, intelligence, skill, determination and ability evident from infancy live down to their parent’s standards or lack thereof.
While I appreciate leading through example and I do apologise to my kids when I mess up, kids don’t always understand all we do for them or ourselves as adults. They miss how much strength it takes to be a parent each day to respond calmly and with ease, to make life appear effortless to them. While the monkey see-monkey do approach seems obvious in theory, in reality, we fold their laundry while they are sleeping, we pay the bills online out of sight, we are socially pressured to be a good, loving, generous parent by not burdening our kids with our parental struggles. They see very little of what is done for them behind the scenes, and we are discouraged in our ever feminizing culture from sharing what we do with them lest we make them feel guilty for what we signed up for when we elected to have children.
Kids need to see and know that taking care of kids and personal responsibilities is hard. They also need to know they are capable of doing hard things. Because kids learn through repetition, they require accountable practice of doing routinely harder and harder things. This is called discipline. I am a hardcore disciplinarian with myself in practice and as a model for everyone around me, and moreover, I am a disciplinarian with the standards I set for the young men in my life. They will each learn to make some woman’s life and burdens easier one day. As I type this awkwardly with my left hand, having injured my right in a couple consecutive falls, my sons are doing all my dishes and housework I customarily provide. This- on top of a high standard of scholastic tasks as well as their usual house chores.
What I learn as I continue to expect great accomplishments from them is that they are happier, evidently more fulfilled by their contributions to our household. They are less the whiny, complacent and solipsistic creations of my guilt riddled, passive, apologetic, feminizing early parenting style (or rather lack thereof).
Kids not only need to see you doing things, they need to hear about the mechanics of doing. How do I feel or think about doing all the things? It’s not always joyful, but it’s much easier, feels quicker and everything is more fun when I consciously choose joy. They don’t know this if I do not explain the reasoning behind the practice.
I want them to be the men I wish to see in the world so they repeat their pledge with their father every day when they wake up. They look forward to it. The meaning of these words continues to shape them, steer them toward virtue and righteousness and impress a healthy and positive outlook on their whole life. They are now 10 and 12, and I wish I had started expecting them to be great men much sooner. They love it! When they make mistakes, they hasten to account for them, and they seek my corrective guidance in what to do going forward to avoid mistakes or in learning how to atone. They get our respective temporary roles as parent/teacher and student, and they are rapidly developing in their lifelong roles as men caring for a mother/woman.
This Pledge is part of our daily rules printed and hanging in my sons’ room.
You can read the full list here. Leave a message below if you’d also like a printable PDF of these rules, and I will gladly get that to you.
The Rules
You Are Highly Intelligent and Disciplined Men. These Rules Are Here To Keep You Focused On Your Tasks And Help Inspire Personal Initiative Each Day!
These guidelines are here so that there is less confusion and more personal discipline. You can achieve everything you put your mind to, everything we ask of you and so much more. You can finish your tasks quickly and easily if you follow these rules!
Daily Schedule Rules
Read this each day before you begin:
“I am a good student and a great man. I am responsible for following my own list each day. Neither my parents nor my brother or anyone or anything else are responsible for my failure or my success at completing my list of daily tasks. If I fail, it’s because of my own lack of diligence. Likewise, when I succeed, it’s because I, myself, alone am awesome! No one else can take the blame or the credit for my personal achievement.”
Here are the list of reasons a man may fail to achieve his daily tasks.
Not doing his work, not feeling like it.
Asking whether it’s “screen time, yet” without looking at his tasks. You will KNOW when it is screen time if you complete your list of tasks AND ask your parents each day if there is anything else you can do to help your family after your tasks are complete.
Asking other people what a man needs to do next. Everything you need to do is outlined for you in order on your list. If you are asking your parents, we assume you are ignoring the easiest way for you to answer your own question and choosing the hard way.
Wandering around aimlessly before tasks, between tasks or anytime his daily tasks are incomplete AND not staying focused on the next assignment. No one should have to remind a man to look at his assignments. You are a man and are more than capable of developing a habit of looking to your own list for what you need to do next. Roaming around the house or walking in circles lost in your own head is not on the list and is not responsible, manly behavior.
Arguing or complaining about having to complete the tasks. This is your education as a good student and to continue to become a great man. My JOB as a parent and homeschool teacher is to give you tasks you are capable of handling which will ensure your education and future success. I have one job to do. This is it. You are not the parent or the teacher. You are the student. Act like a good student and a great man every day throughout the year and you will be rewarded with screen time and movie rentals and ice cream trips and book purchases and many other things you enjoy. This also ensures a good relationship with yourself and your family which is the most important thing on earth.
Arguing about having not done his assignment correctly, neatly, diligently, long enough or anything that causes me as his teacher to ask that this man spend more time on an assignment redoing it or practicing his task as long as he needs to in order to improve himself. As a good student and a great man you will accept corrections with a grateful attitude and save everyone time by quickly finishing your tasks according to my recommendations and corrections.
Blaming anyone or anything else for his failure to get on schedule and/or stay on schedule to complete his tasks.
All of these 7 poor behaviors will take more time, cause disruption and keep you (and me) from completing tasks as quickly and as easily as possible. They also hurt our good student-teacher relationship. Each of these behaviors will result in the consequence/penalty of 24 hours/ 1 day of screen time restrictions.
ARGUING, COMPLAINING OR THROWING A TEMPER TANTRUM IN RESPONSE TO RECEIVING A PENALTY WILL RESULT IN ONE WEEK - 7 FULL DAYS OF SCREEN TIME RESTRICTIONS. GREAT MEN ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR FAILURES AND GET BACK TO WORK.
Again, if you would like a copy of my pdf, I’ll send that out via email. Leave a comment below to get started with that quick process.
I remember seeing this list on your sons' wall and being so inspired. I would like a pdf for all my friends who are parents! Thank you for sharing this.