GILGAMESH & MALE BONDING

Yesterday, my eldest daughter and I were talking about social differences between girls and guys: how they handle their relational problems. I told her that it was my opinion that girls would get along better if they could punch each other in the face once in a while. Of course, that wouldn’t work because girls are not generally wired in that mindless sort of way. But it works for guys. Some of my best friendships were with guys I had punched in the face, shoved against the wall, tripped onto their backs, or half-drowned in the pool over some perceived insult, some bluff called, or some threat I preempted.

What is actually strange (to women or mothers of boys at least) is that these little violences were more than often the portal to friendships...

-There was Aaron in Germany

-John (now deceased)

-Ronnie in England

-Steve and Jeff in college

-one of my bosses post-college in his kitchen

-a school superintendent at a picnic

-a financial advisor at the same picnic (Yeah, financial "advisors" need their butts kicked). 

Fighting or wrestling or otherwise expending physical energy in feats of strength seems to help boys and men draw very tight boundaries around each other. So tight sometimes they make you inseparable. I recommend it every once in a while.

This past year I’ve been reading a series of books with a young man who almost offed his brother with a gun out of defense. Besides Sun Tsu's ART OF WAR and Stephen Pressfield's GATES OF FIRE which we read later, I thought we would start off with THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, a very old Babylonian text so old the patriarch Abraham probably heard about it. I have been aware of the book for about thirty years, being exposed to it in elementary school, but I didn’t pick it up until twelve years ago and I’ve been teaching it for ten. 

The book reads clunky, probably because the culture gap between the Babylonians and Williamson County, Tennessee is so wide, hahaha. However, there has been much of the book that I, as a man, have intuitively understood more than the pagan or religious parts. The parts I understand are the healthy, masculine parts like Gilgamesh’ kicking Enkidu’s butt and breaking things in the process.

So when Gilgamesh (the half-god) and Enkidu the (half-man) first meet, Gilgamesh is on his way to make out with someone else’s wife (on their wedding night of all times). Enkidu is disgusted and outraged. He won’t let it happen, so he stops Gilgamesh at the city gate, blocking his way. Gilgamesh, being a god, thinks he can do anything he wants. So he tries to cross the threshold and is surprised to find the shorter, squattier opponent taking him on. 

A phenomenal fight breaks out, and they are all over the place, breaking the gate posts, knocking into the walls and shaking them, grunting and snotting over each other as they go back and forth. With one definitive move (clearly illustrating a popular Babylonian grappling technique) Gilgamesh throws Enkidu onto his back. It's the ancient Babylonian pinning of the shoulders and the fight is over. But an interesting thing happens: Enkidu in the moral right actually admits defeat. That strategic and mature move abates Gilgamesh’ anger, and, get this, they become best friends.

As old as this story is, the psychology of this behavior is not hard to cipher. When men fight, they fight in order to dominate each other until a winner and a loser emerge. The loser cedes to the winner. Always. End of the discussion. 

So, say, as has happened in my school before, two boys are fighting over, I don't know, Pokemon: one thinks the Diamond Version is better than the Pearl Version. They exhaust verbal debate, one insults the other, and a heated exchange takes place. A fight ensues and one boy bests the other. It is understood that the bested boy gives in. The besting determines (at least amongst the two boys) that the Diamond Version is now the preferred version even if statistics prove the Pearl Version to be better. End of the story. 

In an encounter like this, you have all the elements of a relational disagreement: it’s just that the best punch to the face wins. And guess what? Both boys are fine with it, provided it was a fair fight. It is unfair for one boy to hit the other over the head with a skateboard when the other kid has no skateboard whereby he can defend himself. The outcome will not be agreed upon if no agreement on the mode of fighting has been agreed upon (Duels were only fair when both men agreed to the duel). What is important is that when a concession is made from the loser to the winner, it actually strengthens the bond between men. It creates tight boundaries, thereby drawing men in closer.

The U.S. military is perhaps the best example of this. Bootcamp serves to create and to strengthen this bond: shared physical labor, shared humiliation, shared responsibility, shared property, shared pride. In the end it somehow transforms a boy into a soldier or a marine or an airman or a sailor or whatever. In the case of military defense, it actually does the same for women. It is not by being relational through talking that this occurs. It is by being relational through physicality that this is best achieved. 

It is interesting that when Gilgamesh and Enkidu become best friends, Gilgamesh is apparently thwarted from being a butt and bothering the young brides (Yes, even the winner makes concessions). What beautifully happens is that they combine arms to do greater feats of strength, like dethroning the gods. Oh, I forgot to mention that point. There is some hubris involved in the masculine psychology of feats of strength.

Of course, not every man has an urge to settle disagreements like this?

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DAUGHTERZILLAS & THE DETHRONING OF KONG

As a child I used to watch the old film reel of Godzilla vs. King Kong. We kids knew that Godzilla was the badder of the two for a couple of obvious reasons. 

-First of all, Godzilla was reptilian, cold-blooded, and serpentine (which our Western heritage associated with the Devil: Mr. Toad, Grendel, Golem and the Grinch being close relatives). 

-Second of all, Kong was mammalian, warm-blooded, and especially demanded our Darwinian empathy. Also, we associated Godzilla with the Communists, so Kong, by default, was American. Kind of.

Daughterzilla can be a vehement, fire-breathing dragon against which the efforts of a raging Kong do little good but escalate the height of her fury, postpone the resolution of essential concerns, or extenuate the territory of collateral damage. Aggressive daughters are naturally calibrated by fathers to pummel masculine “interference” into compliance, while the only “ceiling” on the absurd lengths to which a strong-willed daughter will go to get what she wants is often the fluctuating will of the father. If she can push hard enough (or simply enough), she can dislodge fatherly resolve or modify a fatherly scruple. I am thinking about two generic kinds of Daughterzillas.

1. MEDUSA. A Medusa has the power to emotionally unravel (or knot up) her father at a glance, with a word, with sheer presence.  A few weeks ago in line at a local store, I heard a girl call her father a “butthead.” I did a double-take, not because the girl was disrespectful, but because I heard her father laugh. 

Nervously. 

The daughter, sixteen or so, continued to melodramatically chastise him in front of me over the mechanical malfunction of her car radio. She was in his personal space, and he was leaning back sheepishly. He responded in soft, nonsensical bursts of laughter, eye avoidance, and the jingling of change in his pockets to each successive, scathing indictment which went something like the following:

“Dad, you’re such a butthead! I told you to fix the radio when I was sick almost all of last week! I told you! And I need it this weekend but now I don’t have a frigging radio!”

“Haha. Mmm. Hmmm.”

“You are so gay! Just give me the frigging money and I’ll get it fixed!”

“Hmm hahaha. Now, calm down. We still have time. I’ll take care of it tomorrow...”

His viewing his daughter with half-closed eyes and peering at her out of the corner of his eyes underscored how painful he found this discourse to be. It was my guess that dialogue between him and his daughter was oftener of this sort than not.

Fathers like this have been trained to feel guilty for not taking care of their daughters’ needs, needs being dictated by daughters. Usually, the father’s relationship with his wife has been supplanted by his relationship with his daughter. 

-Perhaps, the wife is hard to please. 

-Perhaps, the wife is emotionally detached for any number of reasons. 

-Perhaps the wife is too domineering. 

I have typically found fathers like this to be replicating the kind of ideal relationship with their daughters that they have found to be hopeless with their wives. So disappointment is not an option, or it's a painful option.

Medusas intuitively feel their fathers' voracious need to bat a 100% insofar as making them happy is concerned. If they feel resistance of any sort, they intuitively know how to humiliate him into action: by attacking those very drives that compel fathers to spoil their daughters: insecurity. I think it to be a wicked thing for daughters to do, young or old.

2. LADY MACBETH. My wife and I invited some people over to dinner one evening and the father and daughter didn’t even sit down. 

Seriously. 

They stood at the far end of the kitchen and talked to each other.

Seriously. 

I tried to enter the conversation a few times, but the father (who was in a foul mood of the hissy sort) would just look at me like I was interrupting his father-daughter time. Actually, they were talking about the mother who was trying to enjoy something to eat with my wife.

He complained in a whiny voice to his thirteen-year-old daughter until I wanted to throw him out of the house. He alternated between denigrating the mother (in whispers that the mother could hear) and talking about worship music (hahaha). They kept whispering back and forth until I got that eerie feeling that the daughter was not just a pawn being used by the father against the mother, but a willing participant, egging her father on by jarring his memory to add to his catalog of injustices. 

A few years later, the marriage ended in divorce, and the daughter was having a hard time extricating herself from her father, though she saw that he was clearly in the wrong. She was stuck.

I have seen this elsewhere, too, in a relationship between a father and daughter that ended up being wholly inappropriate. The mother was a Christian drunk (she was a pastor’s wife and a drunk), and the father’s response was to ignore his wife’s behavior and turn his attention to his daughter (whom I originally thought was a quiet and sweet girl). 

I later learned that they would share information about the mother to each other and that the girl actually acted as a “spy” for dad, feeding him information (much of it untrue). So when that marriage broke apart, the daughter was the worse off for it. To this day the daughter hates her mother. And the daughter is a drunk.

What is maddening about a Lady Macbeth is that she becomes willing party to the demise of the mother in order to solidify her position in the household. Also, she uses her sexuality improperly (her willing ear or her ability to comfort her father) in order to gain immunity from being treated like a child or in order to drive a wedge between the parents in order to become that much more indispensable to the father. 

-Does she do it for sexual reasons? Not all of the time. 

-Does she use her sexuality to achieve her own ends? You bet your bottom dollar.

Where the father is shamefully wrong is by his putting the pressure of the marriage upon his offspring. By doing that, he creates an emotionally inappropriate bond that often leads to an inappropriate attraction/desire between father and daughter. 

Of course, the daughter completely wants to back out of the situation when the dependence of the father becomes too much for her. But she can't. It is very much like sexual immorality. It happened, and you cannot easily take it back by willing it gone.

Ever experienced this?

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MATRIARCHLINGS: DOMINEERING DAUGHTERS & SUBSERVIENT MOTHERS

What little I have read on mother-daughter relationships, I've made up for with eleven years of signature, observational techniques at the school I founded, Stone Table. A policy I employed over a decade ago gives each new student of mine a nine-week grace period to showcase his or her natural skill-sets and character weaknesses without too much interference from me. That is to say, I don't and won't personally develop an official opinion about a student’s character, her habits, or his intentions until after one quarter of familiarity. Yoga employs a similar technique. Muscles tend to resist the first several sessions of stretching, because they perceive the contortion to “feel” wrong. The longer the muscles are stretched, the more they give in until they reach their maximum comfort level.

Because my expertise largely lies in helping parents identify the seeds of dysfunction that lie germinating in the deepest part of their child’s being (only to suddenly manifest itself at the ripe, old age of twelve), withholding judgment for several weeks about that child’s “being” allows the child to reach a maximum comfort level in which those seedlings will naturally unfold themselves in normal ways without much provocation from me (besides the apparent environment of “ease” with which that child initially finds my school). Through this method I have observed a hundred sides of passive-aggression, battled the galvanized ego of compliant behavior, stared in the face of the sinister side of shyness, and filled up dozens of notebooks on the many deceptions of artificial maturity. I have watched students suffer uncontrollable breakdowns at the drop of a hat, fits of rage that came out of "no where"... and while I don't know what the devil looks like, I have actually had a child manifest what many would consider to be a demon, speaking to me in what I can only describe as a “filthy” tone at a decibel much deeper than his own and one that seemed to be generated apart from the natural work of his diaphragm and vocal cords.

For many years, however, the Matriarchling was a puzzle to me. I knew there was something curious about these dominating, doting, sheep-herding types, but I wasn’t able to put my finger on it until late. The Matriarchling can be defined as the alpha female. While she is not necessarily a “mean girl” who determines what is popular to wear, what is popular to discuss, and who is popular to hate, she has the intrinsic powers to become one. She also has the potential to become the quiet, faithful confidant who knows way too much information about way too many things about way too many people for her own spiritual good. She is the “little mother” upon whom too much responsibility and privilege has been thrust at such a young age that she is treated as an exception wherever she goes, never experiencing the baseline of corporate femininity. She's simply lost. 

I've drafted up the following four signs of a Matriarchling in relationship to her mother. See if you recognize any of these traits in your own daughters (or in your own mothers.. or in yourselves, mothers):

1.  A MATRIARCHLING IS EXPECTED TO MAKE HER OWN DECISIONS. Matriarchlings are expected to perform at an ultra-mature level so that mothers will tend to have a hands-off policy that allows the daughter to develop at her own pace and on her own. This is because Mother thinks the daughter knows herself well enough and sometimes even better than the mother does. So mothers will be careful not to give orders. Instead, they will suggest while simultaneously affirming (“I think it would be fun for you to join gymnastics, but it’s up to you.”), or she will inquire of the daughter while simultaneously affirming her (“Would you like to do gymnastics? You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, but I thought you might be interested.”), or she will leave it up to the daughter entirely (“What would you like to do?”). 

In cases where one or several of these techniques is dominant, the mother as matriarch of the family concedes matriarchal status to the daughter by not insisting that she knows what her daughter should be or will do. Occasionally when Mother becomes aware that the daughter is in charge, the mother will assert her matriarchal status by arbitrarily imposing some stupid dictate upon the daughter with such aggressive intensity that it is threatening. In that case, the daughter’s position as Matriarchling is further galvanized because now she must be the mature one.

2. A MARTRIARCHLING DOES NOT PLAY WITH OTHERS: SHE ORGANIZES THEM. Matriarchlings are sheep herders. They enjoy instructing others on what they should be doing or advising others on how they should be doing it. You can spot a Matriarchling at play, because she is typically the one in charge or the one suggesting changes in how playing should be done. You might overhear a Matriarchling say something like “Ok, now you are going to do this and then I will come in and say ‘How are you’—no, you don’t come in like that… and don’t…no, no, no, you are not doing it right.” 

Or the Matriarchling might be the more compliant of two dominant children at play in which case she suggests changes to the game like “What if we played it this way so that we could each have turns? You can be that for five minutes and then I can be it for five minutes.” In this example, the compliant child is the Matriarchling because she is counter-organizing (and especially if she is incessant about it). 

Or the Matriarchling might threaten “If you don’t do it this way or if you don’t share or if you don’t let me have that, then I’m not going to play or I’m going to tell on you.” 

Suffice it to say that girls like this do not really ever get around to playing without some aspect of their egos getting in the way which to the mistakenly proud parent might look like the fumbling beginnings of God-given, organizational skills. Mothers are typically supportive of Matriarchlings, because their daughters' egos appear to be “conscience” upon which a mother can depend to be responsible for the younger children or to be responsible around other people her parents would not typically allow her to be around.

3. A MATRIARCHLING  IS CONFESSIONAL. Nothing sucks a mother into the world of the Matriarchling like confession. The Matriarchling will tell her mother secrets or she will confess to her mother a lesser wrong or she will ask her mother "mother-daughter" questions and advice. 

However, in the case of the Matriarchling this is largely to draw the mother into the Matriarchling’s confidence and not the other way around. Matriarchlings intuitively know that you have to give something in order to get something, and Matriarchlings know what they want. So she will render herself vulnerable in order to make her mother that much more vulnerable. 

I knew of a girl who confided in her mother that she had a little “indiscretion” with a boy. Oh, but it was only handholding for which the mother was so relieved and overjoyed that she confessed to her daughter that she herself actually had sex with several guys during high school ("But you shouldn't."). Months later when the daughter was found out to be having sex, get this, with several guys during high school, her mother tried to browbeat her for irresponsible behavior only to have the daughter laugh in her face. 

A mother should always ask herself why the daughter is making confessions, especially if the confession is preceded by the promise not to tell dad or if it comes out of no where or if it seems prompted by nothing in particular.

4. A MATRIARCHLING MAKES HERSELF INDISPENSABLE FOR THE SAKE OF IMMUNITY. Over the years I have had several female students go over and beyond to help clean up the school, to work with younger students, to attend school functions, to do all of the things a good girl would do only to hear horror stories about the behavior many of them displayed while attending my school after they left my school. You can imagine how irritated I was. I would talk to these parents after the child left my school (actually, they would talk to me) to find out that the mother typically knew what was going on but did not inform me or dad. 

One year I had a girl who wanted entry back into my school. She found our teaching style to vibe with her on a level she didn’t find anywhere else (She had been to public school and was currently being homeschooled). I was about to let her back in when I found out through someone else in town about a chicken party (do your own research on that) that had taken place and gotten out of hand, cocaine that had been snorted, chairs that had been thrown, a girl who had been slapped, the police who were called, and this girl had been in the middle of it. 

I originally had scheduled an appointment to speak with her mother for the very next week. Her mother sat in that meeting, crying and telling me how proud she was of her daughter and her decisions and how she had been really “following the Lord.” She was ready to come back to my school and to “further” her character growth. I asked the mother how much Coke-snorting was allowable in the following of the Lord. She was taken back, and tried to tell me that it was another girl who did that. Her daughter was at the party to be a testimony and to stop her best friend from being the life of the chicken party. Sure, it was a wholly unsuccessful attempt, but she was sure her daughter would get a jewel in her crown for “doing the right thing.” I asked the mother how many men her daughter must satisfy to get a jewel in her crown.

Suffice it to say that Matriarchlings are intuitively powerful. The safest way to insure that your daughter does not morph into one is to insure they are involved in age-appropriate behaviors OF YOUR CHOOSING. Never let the conscience of culture have more say than your own conscience in the raising of your girls or boys for that matter. 

By the way, Matriarchlings are not to be confused with Daughterzillas, the result of a relationship between a dominating daughter and her subservient father. Yeah, I know it has a bad ring to it, but if I have to create a ridiculous category to get someone to listen, then I will.

Do you have a Matriarchling or are you one? 

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CODDLEMONSTERS (PART TWO): 11 SIGNS OF SMOTHERLINESS

So how do you know if you are a coddle monster? I've drafted up eleven warning signs (largely for Americans). Barring ethnic, regional, and cultural inanities, mothers should avoid the following behaviors for their boys who are over twelve years old. If you find that you do one or two of these things, you're probably fine. If you find that you are doing several of them, you want to stop. Now. 

1. YOU ARE YOUR BOY’S ALARM CLOCK. I hear about this all the time. Mothers remind boys when to go to bed, when to wake up, when to take a shower, when to get ready for school, when to get ready for work. Let him be late a few times and have the discomfort of facing his principal, his coach, his boss. When a mother doesn't remind her boy to complete a responsibility in a timely manner, her boy ends up blaming his mother, in which case the mother responds by ridiculing her son’s inability to do things in a timely manner. This cycle continues until he hits a midlife crisis in which case he has a rude awakening or continues to replicate this behavior until the grave.

2. YOU DO YOUR BOY’S LAUNDRY. I am not sure how I can be any more tactful than to say that a mother has no business touching her boy’s underwear or any other article of clothing that has touched his naked body. A clear barrier has been breached when a mother does that. Or a barrier has not been set up when a young man doesn't care that his mother does that. When a boy has to routinely wash, dry, and put away his clothes, he learns what a dirty person he is and begins to make conscious decisions not to pick his butt or not to use his white t-shirts to wipe the sweat off his face or not to leave his clothes in a dirty pile in the corner. Mothers who do their sons’ laundry well into his teenage years don't understand that they prevent their sons from developing a mature, hygienic awareness. Hygiene is so much more than smelling like AXE or gargling Listerine.

3. YOU SEE YOUR BOY UNCLOTHED. I can't think of any reason a mother should be in the bathroom when her grown son is taking a shower or in the tub, yet many mothers see it to be no problem. They come into their boys’ rooms in the morning to wake them up by pulling off his sheets, revealing his half-naked body... and they think it’s funny. Or they come into the bedroom when he is half-dressed. Worse yet, they allow him to walk through the house half-dressed or to lounge all day in his boxers. This scatological indecency allows young men to be mooks for longer than they should be. They take that same attitude into their romances and marriages, and what do you get? A little boy still.

4. YOU LET YOUR BOY SLEEP IN YOUR BED. This does happen, and it's ridiculous. I knew of a young man at the age of 12 and 13 who slept with his mother every night and had done so since he was very little. Because his father worked night shifts and was virtually never around, the mother was always alone. She needed the comfort of her little boy, and he had never developed the habit of sleeping in his own room. So five or ten or twelve years of age did not matter to him. I was concerned when I first heard about this, so I spoke with the young man about it. He had no conscience whatsoever that he should probably be sleeping in his own room. I did learn that he tried to break himself of the habit. By sleeping in each of his older brothers’ beds. But they soon tired of that. Perhaps, this point is a rarity, but it bears mentioning.

5. YOU DEFEND YOUR BOY BEFORE HIS FATHER. Fathers can get out of hand, I agree. However, every time a father corrects, yells at, or otherwise gets frustrated with his son, does not demand that mother come to the rescue. Boys are hardheaded. They really are. Boys respond well to masculine imperatives, because it steels within them the ability to act when they don’t want to act, the ability to follow through when they don’t want to follow through, and the ability to do the thing they hate the most because they want to conquer it: not understand it. They need that man-fear. Mothers do their boys “favors” when they defend them, and  many boys understand exactly what it means. It's mom’s way of saying “I’m sorry son for our last argument. This is me telling you I’m sorry.” Or it is her way of saying “You owe me some respect next time.” This kind of role-playing hampers a boy’s ability to transition into manhood, because he develops a conscience that masculine confrontation is despicable.

6. YOU DO YOUR BOYS’ SCHOOLWORK FOR HIM. Need I say much more? Why does a mother do her boys’ schoolwork while he is sleeping, on an outing with friends, or just hanging out? The coddlemonsters will say she does it because she loves her boy. However, she really does it because she hasn't yet cut the umbilical cord. She is so intertwined with her son's personae that his failures are their very own failures. A mother like this will do anything to help her boy appear to be successful... even to the extent of cheating, lying, and stealing for him. Many a mother has spent the night typing up research papers, doing research for research papers, or putting the finishing touches on a project which the young man won't recognize as his own when he wakes up the next morning.

7. YOU INVADE YOUR BOYS’ PRIVATE SPACE. Coddle monsters are sneaks. They are voyeurs, listening in on phone conversations, putting their ear up against the bedroom door or wall, browsing through their sons’ texts, phone numbers, and Internet history. Looking through his bedroom drawers, going through the pockets of the pants he has discarded on the floor, smelling their sons’ clothing, and checking underneath their blankets for any sort of clue that would help them understand their boys’ activities away from mom. The same mothers will talk through the bathroom door while the son is using the restroom or shower or talk his ear off when he is trying to sleep. The mother wants to regulate the experiences of her boy, and ultimately, his growth.

8. YOU MONITOR YOUR BOY'S MONEY. I know of boys who have jobs, but they don't have bank accounts or a bank account they have set up themselves. They turn their checks over to their mothers, hoping that she is going deposit the money, keep track of it, and sometimes make it grow. The same mothers will not allow their sons to withdraw any of their own money, because they have determined that he is saving up for college or for a car (of her choosing). However, they are willing to “loan” him a fiver or so whenever he needs it, further drawing that boy into her neverending bosom of smotherliness. Also, such mothers will borrow money from their boys’ account whenever they get in a bind. He doesn’t know how much money he has anyway.

9. YOU ARE YOUR BOY'S CHAUFFER. Instead of driving your son everywhere, why not let him get his drivers’ permit, or his license, or buy a car? In addition, why not put the responsibility upon him to get from point A to point B? Why can’t he walk? I'm surprised at how many athletic boys who pump loads of iron or are able to wrestle any opponent in their weight-class are controlled by their mothers in this way. Mom won’t let him walk three miles to a friend’s house or to work. No, he has to wait around for Mom to finish her work around the house before she can drop him off. And he sits there playing video games or watching television when he could already be there and back before his mother is done. This subtle form of control contributes to her son’s mooching off his girlfriend, fiancé, or future wife.

10. YOU ARE THE ONLY PARENT WHO SPEAKS TO YOUR BOY ABOUT SEX. I've had mothers tell me that they have great relationships with their boys in that their boys can tell them anything. While I am always happy to hear mothers affirm that, I have often learned that I did not quite understand what they meant. What they often meant was that they had very open conversations about sex. I am not talking about sexual morality. I am talking about sex from the pros and cons of methods to their sons' confessions of sexcapades with his girlfriend or any number of girls or with himself or occasionally with another boy. Coddlemonsters get really excited when their sons confide in them these kinds of sordid things, because it's the ultimate compliment you could give a coddlemonster. I knew a boy who confessed to his mother a particular attraction. To an animal. I am not lying. She thought it was a sign that he was “pouring" his heart out. I thought it meant that he needed professional help.

11.YOU ARE BEST FRIENDS WITH YOUR BOYS’ GIRLFRIEND. While some mothers have the ability to maintain healthy friendships with their boys’ girlfriends, I typically find this kind of three-way relationship unconscionable. Especially with mothers who have to be either best friends with their boy’s girlfriends or completely disapprove of them altogether. Of course, the coddlemonster doesn't want the competition of another female, so it only makes sense to win that female over. Not only does she gain a new friend, but she gets to keep her boy! Such close relationships like these can be crippling, though, because the mother is forever present while alone at home with her boy or through her close monitoring and interrogating of his girlfriend. The girlfriend will disappear while the real relationship between mother and son continues.

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CODDLEMONSTERS (PART ONE): MOTHERS WHO SMOTHER THEIR BOYS

For over fifteen years I have noticed a prominent factor in the emotional-underdevelopment of boys in our great land (or maybe just city): mothers. Not just any mother, but the coddlemonster. Coddlemonsters are mothers who have the dominant voice in the masculine development of their boys. The “coddle” portion involves a mother’s encouragement of certain childish or juvenile traits she finds reminiscent and endearing about her man-child. The “monster” portion refers to the incessant cajoling of her man-child to mature apart from those childish factors she nurtures and cannot live without.

Of course, that does not include all hardworking single-mothers, nor does it include all proud, doting mothers. Mothers, aunts, grandmothers, female teachers, and other admirably feminine models of behavior have always and will always largely inform the masculine population (else there would be no human race). However, where a father or grandfather or responsible male can be influentially involved in a boy’s life but chooses not to be is where the coddlemonster wreaks havoc.

Years ago I worked with a boy who was a foreign adoption. He was clever, but his parents thought him to be ignorant, and his mother specifically likened him to a lost puppy. Not only must he learn English at the age of twelve, but he had to learn it while going to school. He came to my school for a short while where I immediately saw an uncomfortably tight bond between mother and son (actually, it was only tight from mom’s side and only tight from his side when Dad or I wanted to get involved). 

During lunchtime that first week of school he told me (and mimed) how he would feign ignorance and set off the burglar alarm in the house by continuously using the front door. His father would explain to him in slow English how he must not do that. But he kept it up, his father patiently explaining each time how he must not do that... choosing to "explain" because Mother was nearby, enjoying both the childish innocence and bestial ignorance of her little boy.

After being at my school for several weeks, I had to pull the young man aside because (as his English got better), he was vocal about hating his mother. You would think he would want to keep that conversation between himself and me. However, that evening I received a call from his sobbing mother.

“H-H-How c-c-could you-u-u say th-that to him?”

“Say what?”

“Th-Tha-at hi-is moth-the-ther d-doesn’t l-love hi-im!”

I tried to explain to her that her son was making it publicly and widely known throughout the school that he hated her. I had simply pulled him aside to tell him he was not allowed to speak about his mother that way.

“HE DOESN’T HATE ME! YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND HIM LIKE I DO!” 

Clearly, I didn’t. What followed was a combination of Bible verses and Dobsonian logic about boys. Over ten years later what followed was drug charges and incarceration.

Now, I do not propose that I knew everything about her boy (what hubris). What I did know, however, was that he was, forgive the pun, milking her for what she was worth while despising and hating her at the same time. She did not see it that way. She saw an angel who was confused in his feelings and in his language. An angel who had to be protected from “devils” like me (and his father). 

Do boys really get hate and love mixed up? And if so, is the solution to teach them the difference by coddling them, and, thereby, affirming the behavior? I propose that Mother herself, seeing the coalition of father and Teacher as one of men against her little boy, saw an opportunity to make herself indispensable to her little boy by siding with him. However, the cost of such intervention was his absolute love and appreciation. She got her way. For a while.

Another young man I worked with years ago had issues with his mother. He hated her, too, but for different reasons. He hated her because she did not protect him from his father who fell into routine rages, physically taking it out on him. Both mother and son had a stormy relationship where days were either “amazing” or “terrible.” I had many talks with both to ascertain what the problem might be. What I concluded (much to her dismay) was that she had such a poor relationship with her husband whom she could not control that she poured overwhelming attention upon her son whom she could control. 

While she seemed open to my disciplinary suggestions, I found out from her son that she was not following my advice at all. She was actually provoking negative behavior from him. She needed her son to explode, and to follow up with a sincere apology, because his apology was the only sympathetic word she ever got from anyone in the house. By being the trigger to her son’s anger problem, she was able to keep him on a short leash, emotionally hampered, and in an open loop. He ended up going to jail for a short time. His mother was there to bail him out and to plead for him before the judge. That bond got tighter and the boy more despairing. He eventually ran away. For good.

Another mother had a son with learning “issues.” The father could not be bothered with the boy, because it was really the mother who wanted to have him and not the father (which, in my estimation, was the “issue”). The father was also an important business man who had a very extensive travel schedule. The mother explained, however, that the issues her boy had were a combination of learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and mood swings. She put her son in my school to get him “caught up” with his studies which, by the way, he bombed the entire time at my school

“What about these other problems? The learning disabilities? The ADD? The anger problems?” That is one reason why boys come to my school.

“Oh, I will take are of those. You just take care of his academics. I have him on this special point system where if he has a good day, then I give him something.” I looked at her, almost with scorn. Her boy was a teenager.

“So you want him to do a good job in order to win a prize of some sort?” Oh, no, she laughed. I got her all wrong.

“You don’t understand my son. He has to be motivated in order to stay focused. I have to give him a carrot of some sort.” I cocked my head to the side and nodded slowly.

“Have you ever given him a carrot not to wet his pants?” She laughed at me.

“I heard you were funny! He doesn’t wet his pants because he doesn’t want to wet his pants.” I smiled.

“Then why can’t he do his school work because he wants to do his school work?” 

Now, I was challenging her, and her disposition changed. So she pulled out her credentials about how she has worked in education longer than I had and maybe if I was reasonable about children’s needs then I would have more students in my school. Then she criticized the textbooks I was using. Then she started crying because another mother had just come into the school building and they privately were at odds with each other. Then she talked about how she needed to go home and rest. It is no wonder her boy has been in and out of the psych ward since then.

Today I used the word balls twice and gonads once. Both balls references were in a conversation with two mothers, and the gonads reference was in a conversation with a minister. Interestingly, both recipients of my word choice agreed that those were the right words. As I recall, the balls reference went something like “If he doesn’t have the balls to make that phone call, then he does not deserve sympathy.” The gonads reference went something like “In order to transition from talking about a product to selling it, you have to have the gonads to insist on the sell.”

The coddle monster likes her little boy with little balls but despises the same child when she wants him to perform at a mature, competent level... only to find he is unable to do so. I've got to stop talking about this for now or I'm going to throw up all over my laptop.

Have you been coddling your boy?

If so, click here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

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