Parenting: What They Won't Tell You, and Why

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The biggest boys in the seventh and eighth grades are setting a physical standard of masculinity--deep voices, big muscles--that creates anxiety in every other boy. "Am I strong enough to protect myself?" "Can I be a man if I'm not very athletic?" A 13-year-old boy hears the words gay and fag used in school every day and hopes they don't land on him. In the kitchen he looks down into his mother's eyes and thinks, Why is this woman giving me orders? I love her, but I'm bigger than she is. That perplexes him because he still needs her so much. Boys, like girls, are having a lot of dark nights of the soul in which they see how disappointing adults can be and how unjust society is, but they may not be able to put their fears into words, or they do not want to because it makes them feel weak.

How can parents help 13-year-olds?

*Have faith in child development. (You were 13 once, and you survived.)

*Don't take their self-absorption personally. It's not a plot to hurt you. Their brains, hormones and interests have changed. You're not central anymore.

*Don't ask them intrusive questions or read their diaries, but when you are seriously worried about them, do tell them directly in a serious way. Don't let them blow you off with a defensive remark.

*Keep up the family rituals that have always sustained you all: family dinners, church, camping, skiing and watching the same dumb TV shows. Thirteen-year-olds need to feel that they can touch their own childhood frequently and be nourished by traditions they know well.

Thompson is a psychologist and co-author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, among other works