How to Raise a Boy | To the mother standing at the start line: Breathe, you are doing it far better than you fear

The year is 2007, and Son No. 2 has just been born. Son No. 1 was born two years and four months prior. You’re in the hospital, impatient to go home, and excited to “get started” with this whole parenting gig, now that the family feels complete.

The hope and excitement are almost as palpable as the fear. The doubts and insecurities are as real as the tiredness. The ache of those C-section stitches is dull, and you’re wondering if you will be striped like a zebra below your belly with two C-section scars, one from each birth, or if your obstetrician cut over the previous scar.

But the question that sears through your brain with the precision of that scalpel is: How am I going to raise these two boys? How am I going to know what to do?
In the beginning, you will worry about food — how much he eats, how much he poops, how heavy his diaper is, how much he sleeps. You’ll measure and weigh. Thankfully, once he starts moving, you’ll get less obsessed with the numbers.

The phrase “this too shall pass” will become your mantra as you grow into being a mom. “This too shall pass” will carry you through sleepless nights, diapers, and toilet training, the terrible twos, the first day of school, the first time on an airplane, tantrums, bruised knees, cheeky replies, and sulky, grumpy days. “This too shall pass” will take you through first fights with the best friend, and seeing him get hurt when he was left out. It will take you through losing football matches, getting caught off the first ball in cricket, and bad haircuts. It will take you through fevers that seem like they’ll never break, and boisterous, volatile spit ups. “This too shall pass” is versatile, and always brings hope. “It” will pass. And generally, when you’re not looking.

You’ll worry about friendships. “Friends influence us so much,” you’ll say. You’ll worry that he might become friends with the wrong kid, the most troublesome kid in the class. Well, Nalini, I’m here to tell you that there will always be that troublesome kid, in school and in life, influencing your boys. Your job is not to ensure that your boys don’t befriend “that” kid, but to ensure that they stay their course in the friendship.

You’ll fret about his grades. You’ll want him to be at the top of his class. You’ll stay up at night worrying that he will not figure out what he wants to do in life. Why can’t he put in more effort? Why does he not hand in homework on time? Why does he look disinterested? Breathe, dear Nalini. These things have a way of resolving themselves. Expose him to as many subjects as you can. Read to him; have him read to you. Don’t follow a syllabus. Let his curiosity be your guide. You’ll know what he’s curious about from what he chooses to watch or follow, and what he talks about.

As he grows older, teenage years, and beyond you’ll be plagued by the biggies — alcohol, cigarettes, vaping, drugs, sex. You’ll feel inept discussing these things. You’ll feel exhausted at the frequency with which these conversations need to be had. Boundaries, consent, respecting your partner. How can one ever stress these enough? How can you teach them about equality in their intimate relationships? Ah yes, yet another conversation. Keep the water ready in a pot to boil the chai. Hard conversations get easier over chai.

Nalini, your boys will learn more from how you and their dad treat each other than from anything you try to “teach” them about relationships. Respect, love, trust, and most importantly — how to fight, how to disagree — these are the key ingredients of every relationship in life. Children learn how to fight fair from the grown-ups in their lives, and your boys will pick up far more than you give them credit for just from observing you.

What I’m trying to say is that you’ll worry that you are doing the wrong thing. You’ll second guess yourself, you’ll long for a manual to help you troubleshoot, and your heart will ache. You’ll want to teach your boys kindness and empathy, to be principled and to do the right thing. You’ll want to raise them to be like… you. And that’s not really hard, Nalini. They’re part of you. So maybe the key to all of this is to raise them as though you were raising yourself, a girl. No one knows you better than you, and heaven knows we need more kind, compassionate men, with a little bit of softness in them, in this world. Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to toughen our girls, but soften our boys.

So, dear 30-year-old Nalini, remember: You won’t always know what you’re doing, but you will always know who you are. And that is what will raise your boys — your values, your mistakes, your apologies, your humour, your stubborn belief in kindness. The phases will pass, the challenges will pass, but what stays is the love you pour into them, the love that finds its way back to you in unexpected ways. You’re not raising “boys”. You’re raising people. And you’re doing it far better than you fear.

Love,
48-year-old Nalini

Sorensen is a children’s author based in Mumbai