Which ON BOYS episodes were the Best of 2021? 

Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels

The answers may surprise you!

1. Highly Sensitive Boys with William Allen By age 5, William Allen understood very clearly that he was different. People told him to “man up” and that he “needed to be tougher.” Their words and reactions to his emotions told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was not living up to the masculine ideal. And, like many highly sensitive people (HSP), William reacted strongly to criticism. He internalized it and assumed that people were laughing at him, for instance, rather than his ridiculous costume when he took the stage in a school play.

William says parents can help their highly sensitive sons learn how to verbalize and test their internal thoughts.. If you liked this episode, you may like Sensitive Boys (w Sandy Gluckman)

1. The First-Time Mom's Guide to Raising Boys

Jen & Janet talk about Jen's first book, The First-Time Mom's Guide to Raising Boys! “If you don’t express an openness or willingness to listen to your son’s viewpoint, he’s not going to listen to yours. Remember that you have different perspectives. When it comes to social issues, your son does not know what happened 20, 30, 50, 100 years before he was born. So you have important perspective that you can share with him. But at the same time, you don’t know what his daily experience is like. You don’t fully understand what’s happening in schools, what it’s like to be a kid today." If you liked this episode, you may like Parenting Tween & Teenage Boys

1. Dr. Michele Borba Knows How to Help Boys Thrive Many boys are stressed but don’t tell their parents because “they don’t want to hurt us,” Dr. Borba says. They want and need coping skills, and aren’t getting what they need from school social-emotional learning (SEL) programs. And they’re really worried about “flunking life.”

It’s time for parents to pivot and refocus their parenting efforts. The first step, Dr. Borba says, is to prioritize mental health. If you liked this episode, you may like You Can Thrive with Chronic Illness and Special Needs

1. How to NOT Raise an A-Hole Karen Alpert (of the blog Baby Sideburns), a mom of two and author of Mamas, Don’t Let Your Kids Grow Up to be A-Holes: Unfiltered Advice on How to Raise Awesome Kids, recognizes that parents are terrified of inadvertently raising assholes.

“It is definitely one of my big fears,” she says. “I don’t want to raise a kid that’s an a-hole. All the sexting and scary stuff and  male chauvinism and racism  – I’m trying to hard to teach my kids that stuff shouldn’t be part of their lives.” If you liked this episode, you may like Just Don't be an Asshole (w Kara Kinney Cartwright) 

1. Keeping Boys Safe Online (w Amy Lang) Boys today don’t even have to go looking for porn; it finds them. A simple, developmentally appropriate search for “sex” or “boobs” can lead to some pretty disturbing content in just a click or two, which means we have to talk to our boys about sex, likely at lot earlier than you may think.

“All the research shows that parents are the most important influence when it comes to sexual decision-making,” Amy says. “If we don’t get in the door early, our impact is less. It’s really important to establish yourself as their go-to person.” If you liked this episode, you may like Parenting Sexually Active Boys Need help with your boys? Subscribe to Jen’s newsletter, Building Boys Bulletin

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