Mothers and Sons

I must confess that at times I feel a little confused about how to be a good mum to Jacob. Not because he's particularly difficult, (in fact, I may be biased but I think he's gorgeous), but because he's a boy. Firstly, I came from a family of girls and secondly I have had no experience of being a young boy! Put this altogether with the baggage that seems to go with being a boy these days, and it's sometimes hard to know how to be a good mum to a little boy.

I found this talk on mothers and sons very good in helping me think again about my role as Jacob's mother. Particularly helpful were the parts of the talk which dealt with the way we are to encourage our sons in their relationships with their dads and draw our sons' attention to the example of their father. I sometimes struggle when Jacob goes to talk to Dave about things before me, but this was a good reminder that I should rejoice in the fact that he has that kind of relationship with his dad, and uphold that relationship.

I also found some of their insights about our goals as parents (for all our children) and their use of an illustration of children as arrows really insightful. The arrow is not intended to always stay in the quiver. Our job as mothers and fathers is to shoot them out into the world when they've grown up. As they grow up, we have lots of practice opportunities to release them. These practice opportunities are (often painful) reminders that one day we'll need to release them for good. One of the examples of this mentioned in the talk was when our kids start school, which I found very timely!

Related to this point, something else in this talk which I haven't heard addressed much before were the godly ways we can relate to our future daughters in law. It was a real encouragement to me to hear some testimonies near the end of the talk of the godliness of a particular woman, who (going against the stereotype many of us accept) was loved by her son's wives and had a real and meaningful relationship with each of her daughters in law.

If God has blessed you with sons I encourage you to listen to this talk!