I'm a Teen Boy Mom, and Here Are 7 Things I Wish I'd Known When He was Younger

I’m not sure of the hormonal dynamics, exactly, but I’m grateful to my mom friend who gigglingly confided in me that her son, who is a few years older than mine, took multiple long hot showers during the day, wink wink. That way, when my son hit 14, and he seemed to suddenly take three showers a day at spontaneous times, I was prepared to understand that this was a teen boy self-care ritual that was not going to be a lifetime habit, was normal and one that he would outgrow. Which, he did, but not before I instituted a 15-minute limit on hot showers, since we were in the midst of a California drought.

2. Get Ready to Have Second Dinners

Again, thanks to a fellow boy mom who mentioned how her sons ate leftovers or cereal for second dinners, which they foraged for themselves as late as 10 pm. As a female who had for years flirted with disordered eating, I thought the story would be 6 p.m. dinner and that’s it…but the revving engine of teen boys (maybe it was all the showers?) needed more fuel. This working mom didn’t have the bandwidth to serve as a round-the-clock short-order cook, so often this meant he ate mac ‘n’ cheese, ramen or leftovers. Give yourself the grace to know that’s OK.

3. Your Teen’s Sleep is Not Your Own

According to the National Insitute of Mental Health, most teens don’t get enough sleep. That, plus the siren call of social media and gaming, led my son to develop a sleep schedule entirely opposite from mine, which caused years of tension, since it’s hard to parent or be parented when one or the other party needs to get some rest. In retrospect, I wish I had set strict limits on phone usage and gaming much sooner than I did, because by the time my son was 15, his sleep was severely dysregulated, and he was dependent on electronics to self-soothe. At 18, it’s still a struggle for him, but he’s gotten much better.

4. The ‘Digital Safety’ Talk Needs to Come Early

The day my son, just out of tweendom, told me two of his friends sent him a short clip of them having sex, he and I were shocked. I immediately told him to delete the image from his phone, and not to share or discuss it with anyone. I explained that he should tell those kids not to send him images like that ever again because they were illegal. Further, I explained to him how underage sexual imagery was a potentially life-ruining event, and a kind of trouble that gets people permanently labelled sex offenders. I didn’t want to frighten him, but I needed him to understand that other kids’ poor judgement could hurt him if he engaged with it. He listened, deleted the video and an hour later looked at his phone and told me that I was right—numerous other friends had heard he had the video and they wanted to see it. I’m glad I tamped down that brush fire, and I wish I had talked with him even earlier about digital safety and what’s OK to share, watch and create on your devices.

5. Outdoor Time is Mandatory

During the elementary school years when my son played Little League, he was a calmer, more balanced kid than during his teen years, when family disruptions and Covid-19 quarantine isolated him from his peers and kept him indoors. I wish I’d known to institute a compulsory outside time every day.  The Journal of Environmental Psychology sums up what I saw happen with my son: “Nature deficit can be regarded as a threat to adolescents’ mental health, offering them fewer resources for social coping, resulting in low resilience levels and ultimately increasing the likelihood of anxiety and depression.” Today’s extremely online kids tell one another to “touch grass”…the need to put down the work, the social media, the looksmaxxing anxiety and just go outside and take a walk around the block.

6. One Day, He Will Suddenly Possess Vast Sports Knowledge

No one prepared me for the day that my 13-year-old would plop down in front of the television and start talking about not only baseball, but also basketball and football. I’m not a sports fan, and likewise his father was not a sports fan, so I don’t know what back street he picked up this knowledge up on. But somehow, this knowledge was historic, detailed and incredibly boring. And yet…the joy he got from enthusiastically relating his sports acumen to me practically radiated. In my case, I learned to enjoy something because he did, even though, to this day, football frankly frightens me.

7. Parent/Son Conflict is a Feature, Not a Bug

Looking back, I see that I came into parenting taking for granted that my son and I would have a smooth and loving relationship. Instead, we have experienced a rocky and loving relationship, in which periods of arguming, differences of opinion and rebellion have terrified me. (It’s not for the weak, this parenting business.) But as my son and I have climbed out of so much disagreement into a willingness to understand and respect one another, we’ve both grown as individuals.

This past weekend, as we sat on the couch watching football together, and he explained to me how Jason Kelce was an all-time great center with the Eagles and how there are lots of girls now who post Tik-Toks about football since Taylor Swift dates Travis Kelce, I was inwardly beaming at how much fun and how interesting this guy is, and how much I appreciate a chill afternoon with him. After all, when it comes to our relationship, I’ve had to do as much learning as he has.