Becoming a Man, Becoming a Woman
- Amy Baker
- Jan 18, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 26, 2018
I have been an educator for 20 years, but the last five years have been focused exclusively on adults and relationship. First and foremost, I am interested in the sociology of the family and the anthropology of relationship as both pertain to the "public good" of children, but in a broader sense, I am interested in helping individuals and couples develop themselves and their understanding of Self and Other in order to have a good shot at making a positively productive relationship. It helps to have studied the 1-5-year-old crowd for 20 years.
In my new book, Dear Joe, I wrote a chapter juxtaposing raising a four-year-old boy with the way to treat your partner. For any of the recommendations, they are fitting for people in relationship with a Woman, a Man, or for raising a child of any gender or sexuality. For this blog entry, I will try to be gender-neutral, but sometimes will revert to masculine pronouns.
Here's what I know about making healthy adults, particularly men, from that observational study:
It is important to be loving, respectful, aware of every Being's individuality, and fluid in Other's desire for both connection and autonomy. It is important to allow anyone space to be both vulnerable and self-reliant, but found it a particular need of boys.
It is important to be consistent, loving, firm, and communicative. Spend time talking about words, their power, and calling things the right name. Name things. Talk about feeling words and how to find the right word for the situation. Discuss which objects are inanimate and cannot, therefore, be stupid.
Have high expectations according to ability. Do not expect him to do or be what he cannot yet be, emotionally, socially, or developmentally. Scaffold his learning when he is on the brink of becoming able to do something that is a tiny bit out of his reach. Never mock him for being unable to do something but help him visualize when he will be able to do the thing. Encourage him to find his edge. I believe we all must find our edge, but believe for boys, naming and encouraging it allows them the security to become self-aware, purpose-driven men.
Encourage him to try new things. Encourage him to breathe and notice his body when he is angry or sad. Encourage him to notice when his rage is a manifestation of grief or rejection.
Hug him when he identifies the source of his anger or sadness. Hug him when he is happy, proud, affectionate, cooperative, funny, imaginative, or excited. Hug him when you're proud of him. Hug him when you are displeased with certain behaviors, careful to help him separate the boy (or girl, or man, or woman) from the behavior. Hug him when you’ve missed him or he’s missed you. Hug him when you apologize. Hug him when you seek to help him understand that you would like an apology, or at least to repair with him when he has been more rough or aggressive toward me than I am comfortable with .
We reinforce our goodwill for one another by naming things and giving hugs. We reinforce our attachment with one another and our place in family, school, community. This gives a child (or an adult) confidence to move from a secure base into the world with a steady sense of self and a fortified core of identity.
We do not always hug. Sometimes he does not want a hug, and I support his decision in knowing when he does and does not want contact. Sometimes I do not want a hug when he wants to give or get one, and he gets to learn from this moment an internal response to disappointment, an awareness of boundaries, and in this age of awareness around consent, an internal gauge of adjusting his desire with another’s boundaries and shifting boundaries. I do not name these as such because he is four, but I know that this exhaustive early work lays track for later internalized knowledge and understanding when we one day do talk about boundaries, desire, consent, and disappointment.
Do not offer pity, condescension, or helicoptering. Offer judicious linguistics, warmth, affection, respect, dignified Socratic prompts that are expansive in the ways they invite discourse, respite. It is not shaming. It is truthful. It is compassionate. It is a manifestation of the imperative each of us has to be the change, to be loving and kind to all, to be in action of the principles of self-identity. It is the alignment of "who I say I am" and "who I am." It is an energetic contract made binding by breathing it into word. It is freedom to be kind and vulnerable, while realizing that we negotiate our roles and values constantly.
Tell him he is perfect and good how he is right now. Tell him even if you are displeased in a particular moment, he is still good and perfectly made. Part of our job as parents and our roles as lovers is to acknowledge and declare our Love for our child or our Other as they are in any given moment and to also guide behaviors. We utilize our time like a calculated scientist to instill (or communicate) the lens of our values we wish Other to know are important to ourselves.
I tell him that when he is bigger, my time will run out to show him what is important to me and it will be his time to play with trying them on, but more importantly, to discard them while he plays with nuances of persona, free will, and developing his own thought and raisons d’ êtres, and that my job will be to breathe into that space and let him be himself, reinforcing that I love him in whatever moment he is in. He thinks he will be big when he is six. I tell him we can negotiate his bigness when he gets his whiskers. He laughs.
Vow to be the embodiment of the Wise Woman (or Wise Man), the crucible who does not martyr, the good mother, the sexual being, the feminine archetype, the model and pedagogista. Extend acknowledgment of the goodness and perfection as Other is in this moment, while also guiding awareness to the feminine Other longs for but has not known.
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