Dr. Deborah Gilboa, popularly known as Dr. G is a board certified attending family physician at Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill Health Center. She is the author of several books as well as being a media personality, speaker and a mother to four boys.
During our conversation, Dr. G shares some of her professional parenting expertise and tips.
- What do you think is the biggest challenge when it comes to the mom/teenage son relationship dynamic?
Dr. G: Moms get very worried understandably, telling boys something they think their son might not want to hear. Like, odor. Old Spice is calling it a ‘smell-mergency’. And having driven 6 boys at the age of 14 or 15 home from a travel soccer game, I could tell you, it feels like a national emergency when you’re going down the road in the van and they all smell like that.
- The survey mentioned that “Most boys (50%) think they’re ready to “leave the nest” by the time they’re 18-19, while the majority of moms (38%) want to keep sons under their eagle eyes until they are 20-22 years old.” When is the right age to move out? Who’s the correct party in this case? The mom or the son?
Dr. G: The truth is that, every parent is an expert in their own kid. But, we know that moms have more life experience. So they know more about what could happen and boys/teens are more interested in what will happen and finding out what will happen. And so there isn’t actually one age of-course for all guys at which they’re ready to leave all supervision.
The advice that I give to parents is, since everybody wants their kids to leave the nest at some point, is to figure out what privileges/what responsibilities and freedoms could you give your child right now and see how they handle it; that wouldn’t have life threatening consequences.
The hardest part for parents is to talk about these things. It’s not just something that feels a little lower-stake like ‘hey you smell bad, we need to do something about that’. But also, ‘hey I’m worried that you’re not ready to be paying your own bills, to be holding a job and showing up on time and doing those things’. So if parents can lay out for their kids goals. Well ok, ‘can you show me that you’re ready’.
Let’s say on a smaller scale, a 17 year old says, ‘I don’t need to be supervised this summer. I’m ready to just go do whatever I feel like and come home when I want’. And a mom is really worried about that. ‘What will happen to my son if he has no supervision?’ So, don’t go from 0 to 60. Say ‘ok, halfway there is, let’s try for a week that you get yourself up on your own and get yourself home on your own, but in-between you also need to hold down a job or do your summer school assignment’ or whatever the “grown-up” work is.
So when parents point out to kids that being on their own is also about responsibility and not only about freedom, then they can have a conversation about what the son is going to take on to prove his readiness.
- Can you speak to us about how you think social media has impacted the mom/son relationship?
Dr. G: This is so fascinating in the study that 99% of moms think that teen boys have hidden social media accounts. Well, 97% of boys think that boys have hidden social media accounts. So that means, probably everyone is right, most of the time. And my concern about that as a parenting expert, is that when a guy thinks that he’s successfully hiding social media from his mom, he also thinks he has some sort of magical control over who else is seeing his social media. But we know that’s not true. And we know that teenage boys don’t have the brain development to remember that this will then live forever online.
I know for sure, because I’m a professor at a Graduate school, that Graduate schools are looking at their applicants’ social media profiles back years and years and years. So when mom worries, that what he posts now could get him in trouble later, she’s right. And when the son says ‘social media is my space and I should be able to experiment with it on my own’ he’s right also. That conflict is where the good conversation happens between parents where she says ‘ok prove to me that you are the social media expert that you say you are and show me how you’re building your brand’ – and teens absolutely get that idea of building their brand, for good, for positive. What kind of positive change are you making? What kind of positive social messages are you sending? What causes matter yo you? How are you supporting your friends online and having great relationships online? Asking our teenage sons to lead us and guide us, because they are social media experts in their generation, but not by throwing up our hands and saying ‘oh just be careful out there’ but saying ‘show me’ ‘prove to me’. Again prove to me you’re growing maturity.
- Do you have any tips for moms who want to spark dialogue with their sons about awkward topics such as puberty?
Dr. G: Absolutely. The most respectful way that a mom can do this is by first asking her son what he already knows about this. Because you probably know yourself {Farah} that if you go to a training and somebody teaches you stuff you already know, you shut down. Do they really think that I don’t know how to use the computer system at work? I’ve been here for however many years. So instead of just telling our kids ‘no sweetie, your body is going through a lot of changes right now’ and having a kid shut down and be like ‘oh I just wanna get outta here’. If we say either ‘hey can you tell me what you’ve already learned about puberty’ or say ‘hey so your aunt wants to start talking to your cousin about this and he’s a couple years younger than you are, what should she say?’ and teens do really well when we go to them for their expertise and ask them to help somebody who’s younger than they are.
- Can you discuss the disparaging numbers in regards to affection. As 59% of sons believe it’s only acceptable to show affection at home. Even more telling – 18% of sons say it’s “never” acceptable for moms to show affection. Why?
Dr. G: Teen boys are under tremendous social pressure to stop showing their feelings, especially their softer more lovely feelings. And so, anything that might make them feel nostalgic or show that they miss you or show that they’re vulnerable in ay emotional way, is socially often dangerous. They perceive it as socially dangerous. That it will change their status, that it will change their opportunities for good relationships with guy or girlfriends. Let alone their own romantic relationships. So, what moms need to do is to stop taking it personally when our kids want to put boundaries around the affection that we show them. Because teaching our sons that boundaries around affection are appropriate makes them more responsible men. It is absolutely not ok to say to a 15 year old guy ‘you have to let me kiss you’ but you may never force a girl to let you kiss her, that’s completely mixed messages. So we owe it to our sons to ask them what their boundaries are and respect those boundaries. But, we don’t have to give up on telling our kids how important they are to us because they carry around in their pockets a device on which we can tell them anything we want and no one else will ever know. So, text your son something you really like about him. If he doesn’t want to say ‘love you mom bye’ when he get out of the car and he just gets out of the car and goes, text him, ‘love you bud have a great day’. This is an opportunity to communicate with your son in a way nobody else can possibly hear.
My husband has a code with our kids, a sports code, ghost-dealers. And they know that ghost-dealers from their dad means I love you. And so when they’re getting out of the car, they all yell ghost-dealers and everybody’s satisfied.
- What is a common mistake that mothers fall in when they try to get closer to their sons?
Dr. G: That’s such a good question. I would say the number one mistake that moms make is ‘assuming’. Assuming they know how their son feels about something, that he will or won’t like something, when he’s busy figuring out how he’s changing and re-inventing himself all the time. The greatest thing about being a teenager, and social media really allows this is to continually reinvent yourself, try on new ideas and new personalities and new beliefs.
So when a mom, assumes she knows something, the son assumes she’s not interested in getting to know him and she’s still treating him like he’s a baby. And that’s the fastest way to shut down communication.
It’s easy for me to bring it back to smell, but when I want to tell my son something that I think is a terrible mistake that he’s making like wearing black knee socks with sandals or leaving the house when he still stinks. If I treat him like he’s younger. If I say the same thing to him that I’d say to my 8 year old like ‘go on upstairs you forgot your deodorant go put that on before we can get in the car’ then of course, even if he doesn’t want to go to school smelling bad, he won’t do it: ‘No I’m fine, I don’t need to, you can’t make me’.
When I treat him younger, he goes younger. If I treat him older, and say ‘hey do you want to grab your deodorant, throw it in your sports bag before we leave’ – and then give him the look that says my eyes are watering cause you smell really bad, then that gives him some cover that allows him to go upstairs. He’s all into Karkengard – grab his Karkengard smell from Old Spice and be like ‘yea just needed this for my sports bag but I’ll give it a quick swipe before I get in my car’.
It’s important to respect our sons at the age at which they see themselves, without allowing them freedoms they’re not ready for.
