Raising Emotionally Strong Boys – David Thomas

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Raising Emotionally Strong Boys

Guest:David Thomas

From the series:Raising Emotionally Strong Boys (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:June 6, 2025

David:Research tells us that in the face of failure, boys are more likely to point the finger outward and blame someone else; girls are more likely to blame themselves. I see evidence of that, not just with kids, but with adults. I can’t tell you how often I sit with moms in my office whose kids are struggling in some way who will say, “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Ann:This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:So I’ll never forget the day sitting in seminary, and the teacher came in and said, “Here are the kind of men that go into ministry.” And he reads this report, this study, this research had been done over decades. It basically said, “the most insecure, unhealthy emotionally men go into ministry,” because ministry provides significance. The spotlight is on you. You’re in the front of the room; everybody’s listening to what you say. And I remember thinking, “Wow! These are loser-type guys.” I don’t know if you remember it, but I came home depressed.

Ann:I do remember you coming home. You were depressed.

Dave:Well, I came home depressed, but I also said, “Man, I’m so glad I’m not that guy.” I mean, I was like, “Wow! I can’t believe that it was kind of insecure men going to ministry. Man, that’s not me.” Oops. And it wasn’t for years till I realized, “Oh my goodness, I was that guy,” and I couldn’t see it. I mean, I would’ve told you—

Ann:I didn’t think you were like that.

Dave:Well, I would’ve told you “I am one of the most emotionally healthy men I know.” I thought that in my twenties.

Ann:And now as we’ve gotten older, maybe our kids have pointed out some of our weaknesses.

Dave:Well, you see it. I mean we got married and you started saying things and I’m like, “She’s wrong.” She was right. I had a lot of unhealthy emotions that I could not process.

So with that as an introduction, I thought, “Let’s talk about a home that’s unhealthy. So we brought the wisest counselor I can think of, David Thomas, back in.

Ann:We love David.

Dave:Oh man, you are so wise. You really are.

David:I’m so happy to be back with you all. I had a professor in grad school—I will never forget this; first year of grad school—who said, “You all should know that every one of you is here because you’re trying to fix something in yourselves.”

Dave:Wow!

Ann:And what did you think? Did you think that’s true or were you offended?

David:I thought “How arrogant a declaration to make to assume you would know all of us,” and then went on to say everyone would go into this field because that’s in there somewhere. And I think “aren’t we all,” I mean even beyond the field that I’m in, I think “Aren’t we all trying to fix something,” and all the ways that I think people in the world are moving to attempt to do that as opposed to going to God. But I think there was truth in those words, and I didn’t want to hear it in that same way either that I think deeper down my professional road would start to see evidence of, yeah, that is undoubtedly true for every one of us.

Dave:Well you spent the last 25 years at Daystar Counseling in Nashville, counseling families, counseling kids. You’re still doing that.

Ann:You’re an author.

Dave:We’ve been talking about your book, Raising Emotionally Strong Boys, and the one before that, Wild Things. That’s a great way to define boys.

Ann:And the workbook too.

Dave:So you see a lot of health and unhealth in homes. So we thought today could be, “Well, let’s ask David to list the top five signs of an unhealthy home.” And you don’t even have to do all five. You can get three or four and we’ll chime in. But as you think of signs, we should be looking for that say, “Man, this is unhealthy. The emotional health in this home is not good.” What’s the first one that comes to your mind?

David:I’m going to cheat a little from leaning into three things I talk about in the book that were rooted in the very question you’re asking; of seeing evidence of what would cause kids to move in a direction of not developing emotional strength. And so I talk in the book about what I call the Three Rs, which I’ll name them and then we’ll talk about where they fit within your question. So it’s “Recognize, Regulate and Repair.”

And recognize, if I were just going to give a quick definition to each, recognize is kind of like the dashboard on a car where it will signal you if your tire is low or the tank is empty, or you might get a check engine light; that means I’ve got some bigger problems potentially.

Dave:No, it actually means nothing David. It’s just a light. It’s like, what are you talking about? It’s got to be wrong.

David:And we could even talk about the male’s response to the check engine light versus the females, which fits within all of what we’ve been discussing.

Ann:I’ve never thought of that in my life. If the light is on, it needs to be serviced now.

David:Exactly. And how that fits, I think with all of what we’ve been talking about along the way and that we are less likely as males to pay attention to some of those signs and signals. And I talk about how the dashboard on the car is the same as our bodies. Our bodies will signal us when we are carrying more stress than we need to be caring for extended periods of time. And how I think for every one of us as people, if I carry high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, that may show up in some ways like headaches or migraines or digestive issues or I carry a lot of tension in my back and neck, my body is going to cue me in the way my car will cue me.

And if I pay attention to those signs and signals and do what the car needs, the car keeps running. If I ignore those, I’m going to end up on the side of the road, and it turns out the same is true. Think about the classic work: the body keeps the score. It turns out that’s a hundred percent true. Our bodies do keep score.

And so the first benchmark of an unhealthy home would be you don’t pay attention to what you’re feeling or what the people around you are feeling. We dismiss; we disconnect. There are all different directions that I think we move. And I think even back to our earlier conversations, that happened for generations and generations. We didn’t name the hard things that were happening in families believing “If we don’t talk about it, it’s not really happening,” when in reality it made it worse because we didn’t give it a name.

And what we know happens with kids in those moments is that if no one names what’s going on, kids internalize that and often move toward a sense of responsibility. Which is why often in the case of addiction, for example, kids will work hard when no one names the problem of addiction to believe “I need to be”—fill in the blank: a better student, more compliant, less loud. All the directions that kids go to try and keep a parent who is medicating with a substance from taking hold of the substance.

And I’ve even known kids who set alarms in the middle of the night and would go into the refrigerator and dump out alcohol believing that would stop it. You see that sense of responsibility because we aren’t naming what’s going on, which starts with that first R of recognizing.

Ann:I’m thinking, Dave, of you when you were seven and your little brother died—who was five and a half, so you were a year and a half apart. He died around Halloween and let’s just say this, your family never talked about it.

Dave:Oh, never.

Ann:Never talked about it; you just ignored everything. And because your family, like your mom and dad were both alcoholics, you never talked about anything. But I remember your mom saying every single Halloween after Craig died, you got sick.

Dave:Physically, literally got sick.

Ann:—physically sick.

David:There it is.

Ann:But instead of recognizing that and thinking, “We should probably get help,” nothing was ever done.

Dave:Yeah, and that was my question when you were saying “Unhealthy homes don’t recognize…” How do you recognize what you can’t recognize? When I heard that study in seminary, I thought “I’m good.” I couldn’t even see it, yet I had—and everybody else with any kind of insight would’ve been able to go, “Dude, can you see it?” I’m going to think one of your answers may be what helped me is my wife was able to speak into me. Other men would say, “Hey dude,” and you have to listen and go “Really?” Is that part of the answer?

David:Absolutely, that is.

Dave:I know you write about mentors and friends and mom and dad in your book, but it’s other people helping you.

David:Yeah. One of the questions I ask early in the book is “Who are your five people you go to, to ask for support?” And I think there’s two layers to that. One, I need to know my five people and two, I need to know how to ask for help. It’s one thing if I have people available to me, but I don’t know how to be transparent and honest and say, “What a powerful story you shared. Your body remembered what no one was naming.” And it’s important to go back to—I love what you said in an earlier episode of “All we knew was what we knew at that point.”

And so I don’t want any grandparent listening to feel shame as you hear us tell that story. We believed that we were helping kids when we didn’t acknowledge those things, when in reality it was hurting that we weren’t naming the hard things happening around us.

And so I think it really does start with the understanding of how vital that is and that, kind of back to what we talked about earlier, that internal pain always has an external presentation. I’m fascinated by how much—we talked a little bit earlier about overachieving happens as a way of covering, and how many men I see in this world who are just knocking it out of the park vocationally that I think is “a running from” or “a racing away” from some pain.

Ann:That was what a counselor said to Dave like, “Oh wait, you’re the quarterback, the point guard, the short stop. You’ve won every award. You played college football. You had a scholarship,” and didn’t he say, “What are you running from?”

Dave:Yeah, we don’t need to go there. But he literally was looking at my life now and saying, “Every job you have the spotlight is on you, whether it’s on a stage or leading a Bible study or even…” He goes, “Go home and answer this question: what are you running from?” And I laughed, “What am I running from?”

I came home and Ann goes, “Oh my goodness! I’ve been saying that for 20 years.” So it was that not recognizing. Okay, so that’s one sign.

Ann:Well let’s—

Dave:We got to keep going.

Ann:But maybe we should even talk about: take an assessment, ask your kids, think through “How are they doing physically? Are they saying their stomachs are upset or they have headaches? Are they clenching their teeth so bad they break their teeth,” like I’ve done several times? Maybe I should take an assessment. Okay, that’s the first one.

David:Well, and I know to your great point that you all likely talk when my dear friend Sissy Goff about that, that’s so often how we identify anxiety early on with kids is they’re having tummy aches. That’s one of the first ways that we can usually see an indicator light going off of some kind to that first R of recognize is that their body is presenting the worry in some way that they can’t name.

Dave:So the first sign is, don’t recognize. The second one is “regulate.”

David:Yes.

Ann:An unhealthy family would not regulate.

David:Exactly. So back to even the anger that we’ve talked some about, it’s so present. It’s either under the surface boiling at all times, or it’s flying all around the room. Or it’s showing up, back to the internal/external, through let’s say substance abuse. Or maybe it is a dad who is using internet pornography as a way to try to manage and tame the anger in some way. So they haven’t learned healthy coping skills.

That’s kind of my definition for “regulate” is employing calming and coping strategies when the nervous system goes into a heightened state of arousal. So I have these signs and signals going off and I’ve got to figure out “What do I need to employ to bring myself from stressed to settled or from chaos to calm?”

Where that even connects back to kids taking responsibility is that when parents are dysregulating, kids can move into that exact same posture. Even if they never say it out loud, that it is in some way their job to help the grownups around them feel less, “fill in the blank”: stress, anger, sadness.

Since the Nashville shooting happened, I have never had so many kids in my office talk about how their parents are doing than any other time in 25 years of doing this work. They’re so attuned and aware because understandably every parent, whether you had a child in that school or just a child in another school in Nashville, parents in our city are carrying more fear, more worry right now than any other time because it’s not just a story on the news somewhere else in the world. It happened in our city, in a school that we all know and love.

And so I’ve had more kids say, “My mom feels really worried. My mom is not usually this sad.” I had a little boy even say to me, “My dad never sleeps past eight o’clock, but he has been sleeping past eight a lot lately, which makes me think he’s not sleeping much in the middle of the night.”—all the ways that I think kids have their thumb on the pulse of a family in ways we don’t give them credit for.

When parents don’t know how to do the work of regulation, I think one, kids don’t get an opportunity to sit front row and see what regulation looks like on the grownups they trust the most in this world. And two, they can start to take on some responsibility around that in ways that’s not theirs to carry.

Ann:So how would we recognize that in our kids if they are taking on that responsibility? I’m guessing you’re busy as parents. You’ve got a lot of demands on your life with work and school and activities. So how would they start looking to see if their kids are doing that?

David:I would first look for some of the physical signs. Are they reporting more tummy aches? Are they reporting more headaches? Are they having difficulty with sleep? Or the other extreme, are they overachieving? Are they overperforming?

Even kids who I feel like when their parents are really sad will over entertain. I had a parent tell me one time they had lost a child, and they noticed their firstborn child trying to be extra funny. It was almost like, “I need to lift the heaviness by becoming a little bit of a comedian at the dinner table by making sure I make my parents laugh enough during the day.”

So I would watch for some of those indicator lights of where kids might be carrying more. Because we talk a lot in my work about how all behavior is communication of some kind. So even things that kids can’t say or don’t say, often we will see evidence of what’s being said through their behavior in some way. And those will be some things to watch for.

Ann:That’s good.

Dave:We’ve only got two done so far and I’m like, “Wow!

Ann:I know those are so good.

Dave:I feel like there’s so much to work on. So the third R—

David:The third R is “repair,” and that is taking ownership and doing any needed relational work. And I would say the sign of an unhealthy home is when you can’t take ownership; you can’t clean up your side of the street; you can’t do the work of apologizing.

That’s something that I have heard both of you talk about doing with your adult sons at different points, which I think is a necessary ingredient for all families because we are going to fumble the ball. We’re going to lose our temper. We are not going to be present with our kids in the ways we want. We’re not going to show up as to all of who we want to be.

And in those moments, we need to learn what it looks like to ask our kids for forgiveness if we expect them to be people in relationship with their own kids who know how to do that.

Dave:Yeah, it’s interesting when you were talking, I thought, “Oh, I got a fourth one and it starts with a letter R, but as you said “repair,” I’m like, “Oh, it’s the same thing.” I was going to say, “Refusal to repent,” but it’s really what you just said. It’s unhealthy home or unhealthy person doesn’t apologize, doesn’t own their sin, doesn’t own their mistakes. There’s too much pride for them to ever go to their sons or daughters or their wife or their husband and say, “I was wrong.”

So that’s really what you’re talking about in repair. It’s just this repentant humility that says, “I need to do this.” Probably is it like something weekly, daily? It all depends I guess. But it’s regular.

David:It’s regular.

Dave:That’s another R, I guess.

David:It is. And I think it’s worth building on because I think it is of such importance. I talk about how boys do a lot of swinging between blame and shame as opposed to getting to that healthy middle ground of ownership. Blame—think about all the different ways this could show up with boys. Blame could look like, “My teacher didn’t teach it the right way,” “My sister made me mad,” “My coach didn’t give me enough playing time.”—pointing the finger outward.

In fact, I’ll back up one step and say this: research tells us that in the face of failure, boys are more likely to point the finger outward and blame someone else; girls are more likely to blame themselves.

Ann:Wow! I see that.

Dave:That’s a male/female difference.

David:That is, and I see evidence of that, not just with kids, but with adults. I can’t tell you how often I sit with moms in my office whose kids are struggling in some way who will say, “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

Ann:Absolutely.

David:It’s this assumption that “If my kids are struggling in any way, it must be something I’m either doing or not doing enough of,” where it just may be your kids are needing to do more skill development and it’s not something you haven’t done or aren’t doing enough of. There just needs to be more practice. But I think that instinct can stay in place. I think for adult men, as well.

I tell a story in the book of a dad whose son caught him in infidelity. He saw a picture on his dad’s phone of his dad kissing another woman. He asked his dad about it. Listen to the blame within his dad’s response. It’s so subtle but it’s important. He said, “I wish you hadn’t found that.” You hear that? Not, “I wish I hadn’t done that.” “I wish you hadn’t found that picture.”

And so I think that tendency can carry on throughout growth and development unless we’re developing that third R, and where I think it is impossible for kids to develop any of those three Rs unless they can see it again in the grownups around them. So where I think kids have to see repentance modeled in order to know how to do that and to believe how foundational it is to all their relationships.

Dave:Alright, you got one?

Ann:I come from a very performance-oriented family. Everything was competitive. We’re the best. We have to be the best at everything. So I carry that into my parenting. I didn’t even know that I was doing it when our kids were really little, but I would compare them to other kids. I would say things to them out loud. It’s on video. Now they all watch it like, “Mom, how could you do this?”

I remember one of our sons was trying to dribble and what do I say, “Your cousin Jess can already dribble.” Who says that as a parent?! I already carry that myself. I’m comparing myself because that’s just what we did as a family. But not only comparing our kids, I think we are in a culture right now where we’re comparing ourselves to so many people that are invisible even on social media and so often, we come up short.

I don’t think I compare my kids to other kids outwardly, but I can still do that inwardly of thinking, “Why aren’t my kids progressing? Why aren’t my kids acting like these other kids? It must be me.” I always turn it inward. I don’t as much as I used to, but it still can be that tendency where it feels to me sometimes like Satan whispers in my ear, “It must be you,” and God’s just doing a work in all of us.

So I think an unhealthy family is in constant comparison with their kids, themselves, the culture and that healthy side—and I feel like we’ve learned to do that later in life—is we’re seeing the beauty and the uniqueness of each one of our kids and then we’re speaking that to them. And if they’re not measuring up to anyone else, it doesn’t matter because we don’t want them to be anyone other than who God created them to be. Does that make sense?

David:Oh, it not only makes sense; it’s brilliant.

Ann:I love you. He’s so nice.

David:Well, I think how often I’m saying to myself the wisdom of those words. We all know “Comparison is the thief of joy. Comparison is the thief of joy.” I can feel myself getting more discontent, more sad, more, all these things, the longer I camp out in that space.

I love that you mentioned social media because I think we talk all the time with kids and adolescents about, “Remember that it’s just a highlight reel. It’s just a highlight reel.” And we can lose that ourselves. We are needing to say to ourselves out loud, “Whatever I’m seeing is about ten percent of what’s going on.”

Ann:Yes.

David:That’s it. And yet we forget and then we slide right into that place of comparison.

Ann:It’s a tool of the enemy because God’s celebrating the uniqueness and the beauty of each of us all the time. Even as parents when we fail, He’s still cheering us on. It’s the gospel. It’s grace that covers a multitude of sin. It’s the goodness of Jesus giving us new life. What’s yours Dave? What’s the fifth one?

Dave:Here’s one that we have mentioned that I think is definitely a sign of an unhealthy home. Unhealthy families don’t talk. They hide, they stuff, they push down, they overachieve, they cope, but they don’t talk. Healthy families talk.

I don’t know what to say. It would be—if you want to use an R word—it would be release. Say out loud what you’re feeling, what you’re hiding, maybe the pain you’ve gone through.

Ann mentioned it earlier. I grew up in a home where there’s actually, there was physical abuse. There was emotional abuse. Dad had girlfriends, left Mom, both parents drank, and then my brother died all in a period of about 18 months, and we move. I’m a little boy and we move from my home of origin to a whole other state just because that’s where my mom’s parents were, and now she’s a single mom in the sixties.

Again, all that to say, the day my brother dies—my sister told me—she’s in high school—she said, “I came home from high school. A priest is walking out of our driveway and says to me, ‘Your brother’s dead,’ and he leaves.” And Pam said—my sister—she said, “I walked in the house. Mom never mentioned it. We never talked about it.” And that’s the home I grew up in. And so I thought it was normal. When you have pain, you stuff it away and you move on. And that’s how we dealt with it.

When my dad came to visit Ann and I in our first year of marriage—this is funny. It’s tragic, but it’s funny. He sits down after dinner and Ann says to him—because she comes from a different home, and a different, more healthy environment—she says, “Hey, Ralph, I never heard your side of the divorce. Let’s talk about—I’d like to hear your—” I grab her under the table, “What are you doing?”

Ann:He’s squeezing my leg.

Dave:I’m grabbing her like, “You can’t do that. We don’t talk about that stuff.” So I was freaking out. I mean my heart rate went over a hundred, I’m sure. I’m like, and I’m like, “My dad is going to be so mad. He is going to look at her and just—” And I’ll never forget, my dad looks and goes, “You want to hear my side? Nobody’s ever asked me.” And we had this conversation and I’m sitting there going, “I knew none of this.” And again, I was being exposed to “Healthy families talk.” True?

David:So true. Can I say two things to that, that I’m so struck by? To hear you name all of those ingredients that were a part of the earliest chapters of your life, and to think about who you are and what you do, what a beautiful picture of what the enemy intended for harm. God intended for good. That this should not have been your story. And the redemptive rescue, that’s extraordinary to think about who you are as a man and the work you are doing in this world. That’s just incredible.

And to think, to hear you tell that story that God would call you into relationship with this remarkable woman who that would be her instinct to ask that question in the earliest moments, to think all the healing that would come through that relationship, too. I’m so struck by the kindness of God when I sit with people in their stories and when I sit in my own story. There is no other explanation, no other explanation, but the kindness and the goodness and the faithfulness of God. I just feel it so strongly as you were sharing that, and I just wanted to reflect that back to you.

Dave:No, and I would just add when you say that. I think there’s some listening that think “That’s your story. It can never be my story.” Yes, it can. Because even David, when you say that, you know what I’m thinking, I’m thinking, “But God.” This does not happen. “But while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And then we receive that, and we repent.

We’ve already used that word when we say, “I can’t do this on my own. Jesus, I’m surrendering my life to you.” He meets you there and He turns these tragic stories into something. It isn’t just that He meets us in our pain. He then says, “I want to transform your pain and then I want to use you to meet others in their pain.”

Ann:And I would add, Dave, if you haven’t talked to God lately, I would just encourage you, just tell Him the things that you’ve struggled with, your pain that you’re feeling, the feelings that you’re having about your family or your kids. Tell Him everything, because He cares about you. He loves you. He loves your kids, and He wants to make a difference in your life. He’s right there; just talk to Him.

Dave:This is FamilyLife Today. We’re Dave and Ann Wilson and been talking with David Thomas, but you just heard my wife talk about the most important thing in your life. Prayer

Ann:It is. That’s just talking to Jesus about everything.

Dave:You do it all the time. You,

Ann:Because I’m needy, Dave. I’m needy. But I love David Thomas and the encouragement that he gives us as parents, as we raise our boys. His book is called Raising Emotionally Strong Boys. And I think it’s just really good and practical.

Dave:So wherever you go buy your books, go get one now. Maybe get a couple.

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