Raising Emotionally Strong Boys

Top 10 Takeaways from “Raising Emotionally Strong Boys”, by David Thomas

David Thomas, LMSW is the director of family counseling at Daystar Counseling Ministries in Nashville, TN.  He has written several books and has a podcast called Raising Boys and Girls with colleague Sissy Goff.  

This book is divided into nine chapters with a lot of practical resources for raising boys with emotional intelligence and coping mechanisms. Here are some key highlights:

1-Teach boys to recognize, regulate, repair when big emotions come.

2-Create a space for boys to go from chaos to calm, especially when there is a lot of physicality to their emotions.

3-Struggle is good soil for growing resilience and resourcefulness, don’t swoop in and fix it, help them blossom. 

4-Feelings wheel and perspective scale-put them in accessible places and make it a habit to discuss.

5-Learning the blame-shame cycle and how to break free and take ownership of their actions.

6-Anxious boys are often highly dysregulated and can’t tolerate the discomfort of waiting, train them.

7-All emotions are communication, and anger is a warning light on the dashboard that we need to take a closer look and do the heavy work.  Utilize the health mind platter and the four quadrants as a framework for goal setting.  The four quadrants are physical, emotional, relational and spiritual.

8-Getting help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of wisdom.

• Mentors, teachers, coaches, therapist are all treasures

9-Naming/breathing/coping strategies discussed at length.

• Combat breathing

• 5-4-3-2-1 grounding techniques

10-Boys need to know their pain can be transformed into something constructive-nothing is wasted.

Our tendencies may not change, but our practices can!

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