Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys – David Thomas

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Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys

Guest:David Thomas

From the series:Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:May 26, 2025

David: Developmental theorists would say most girls finish adolescence somewhere around 19 to 20. They would say, for boys, it’s 22 to 25.

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. This is FamilyLife Today!

Dave: I’m sitting here with a mom of boys! You are, I think, the greatest mother of boys. Of course, I might be a little biased.

Ann: I think you’re very biased!

Dave: But you were fantastic as a mom of boys!

Ann: It’s easy to say that looking back, you know? Because when I was in the midst of it, I felt like I was failing miserably.

Dave: I’m just telling you, I’m just your husband, and I’m not biased at all. [Laughter] I mean, even this weekend, watching you with our grandsons, you walk in and light up a boy’s life! You understand boys like I’ve never seen.

Ann: Aww, thanks.

Dave: I’ve got one question for you, because we’re going to talk about raising boys today; emotionally healthy boys. What would you say is the most important advice you could give a mom?—or a dad?

Ann: I mean, the first thought—this is crazy—that comes to my mind is: “Embrace the physical chaos”; that’s the first thing. It feels like chaos with little boys, because they just don’t sit very often, and they’re physical, and they’re loud. So, as a mom, if you’re trying to get a house that’s quiet and in order, you’re going to be super frustrated! [Laughter] Because it’s pretty chaotic with little boys, in a good way, and it can be really draining physically.

Dave: After spending a weekend with three grandsons and a granddaughter, my head is still banging around in my head. It’s like my skull is like just like the whole weekend was awesome, but it was chaotic. We’ve got the expert in the studio. You’re not a boy mom; you’re a boy dad and a father of a daughter as well: David Thomas. It’s your first time ever on FamilyLife Today?

David: I am so grateful to be here with the two of you. . And I’m going to say I’m not married to your amazing wife, but I will say I get everything you’re saying from the time we’ve spent together. It makes sense to me why you would have said what you just said, and that’s been my experience so far with you.

Ann: David!

David: [You’re] a really intentional mother of boys. It’s been fun to hear you tell stories.

Ann: You’re so nice! That means a lot.

Dave: You can tell, already you’re a counselor. You can just tell by the way you—

Ann: He’s empathetic!

Dave: —you have been encouraging to us. Tell our listeners what you do sort of every single day of your life.

David: I have been the Director of Family Counseling at an amazing place in Nashville,

Tennessee, called Daystar Counseling Ministries. I work with an incredible team, the

majority of whom are human; but we have five therapy dogs on staff. I work with

great canines and humans. The whole focus for us is the pediatric population—so we

work just with kids, adolescents, and families—that’s our whole focus. I have long-said

and always believed: “If you go to work every day, and you get to hang out with kids and

dogs, what a great gig.” I have a really good day job; and out of that work, I have written

some books and had some incredible opportunities just to travel around the country and

talk about different aspects of parenting. I’m super grateful those opportunities that led

me to be with the two of you today and sharing conversations.

Ann: That’s so sweet.

David: Thank you for having me.

Dave: The book we’re going to talk about today: Raising Emotionally Strong Boys:

Tools Your Son Can Build on for Life. I got to tell you, David, when I picked this up—and

again, I’m a boy dad—I wish I’d have had daughters; we didn’t have any. And now, we

have daughters-in-law and granddaughters, which is awesome and amazing.

Ann: And let’s just let our listeners know that David had twin boys.

David: We had a shocking journey in that my firstborn, as you shared, was a girl. We went to our ultrasound for our second pregnancy—we got pregnant a year later—and we were incredibly grateful, and went for the ultrasound as you do. We walked in the door and said to the technician, “Okay, we’re really old school. We don’t want to know what we’re having. We didn’t know my daughter was a girl until the day she was born. Make a note in the chart, but don’t tell us.” Y’all, I can still remember where I was standing in that room as the technician looked up, and she said, “I see two heads.” I remember thinking, “Why are you smiling if the baby has two heads?” [Laughter] Nothing about that looked or sounded right to me! [Laughter] I was genuinely that shocked; we have no history of multiples. My wife had not gained extra weight. Her counts weren’t different. Here we are at the ultrasound, midway through, finding this out for the first time. Knowing that multiples always come early, I said to the technician at that point, “Okay, actually, change of plans, we do need to know, since we’re so far behind. I’m going to lie down next to my wife; and then, you tell us what we’re having.” [Laughter]

Ann: Did you?

David: Yes! I laid down on the bed next to her in the middle of this ultrasound. [Laughter] And she said, “Two boys.” We are still recovering from that news, 20 years later. [Laughter] So, [I’m the] father of a daughter and twin sons. I don’t know if the two of you would say this has been true in your life—but I’m sure, for me—that those three human beings have been the greatest teachers of my life.

Ann: Yes!

David: I’ve had some incredible teachers and mentors in my life that I’m thankful for, but I have learned more from being a student of those three people than I have in any other relationship.

Ann: I think though, David, what you said is true: I used to think, “Oh, I can’t wait! God has chosen me to be their parent, because I’m going to instill this knowledge and this wealth of spiritual maturity to my children.” And then, I got along the road, and thought, “Oh! This isn’t about my kids—changing them—as much as it is this whole process is changing me!”

David: Yes.

Ann: It’s making me see my flaws; it’s making me see my weaknesses; it’s making me depend on God.

David: Yes.

Ann: Having boys, and having had a girl first, were they different?

David: Oh, my goodness, were they different! [Laughter] And not even just having a girl, but a first-born girl. And that is not to say that every first-born girl meets the criteria of a first-born, but it is to say a lot do, which is to mean that my daughter, like a lot of first-born girls, is conscientious; she’s a rule-follower. I could run down a long list of things that are true about her that stay true; that were not as true [for our boys].

In fact, you know ,maybe my best example of this would be, when she was a senior in high school, she was in the middle of applying for scholarships to college—applying to colleges and applying for scholarships—she would come home, repeatedly, and say things to my wife and me like, “Hey, I just want to let you both know that I applied for this scholarship today. I’ll hear back in two weeks.” We didn’t even know that scholarship existed. [Laughter] We certainly didn’t know the deadlines. She applied to more colleges than I knew. We sat down with a college counselor; and I was like, “Oh, I actually wasn’t aware she had applied to that school as well,”—she was so on top of things, on her game, had a spreadsheet—all those things.

I remember looking at my wife, at one point, and saying, “Let’s just enjoy this, okay? Because it will not go down the same next time. We may drag those two through the process.” And my sons are amazing—they brought very incredible strengths to that process—but it looked different, as you both know. It looks vastly different; their strengths are different. And they were maybe even greater because of her “first-bornness”—I’ll make up that word—that has made the entire journey look different.

The other thing we laugh about is we were given one of those kits at a baby shower when my daughter was born, where you plug in the sockets and you lock the cabinet shut. And we moved in that process and we somehow forgot to put all those things up in the kitchen, and in the socket/in the outlets. And we found it like a year later, and I said to my wife, “Oh my goodness, we never even used this; how embarrassing.” But we didn’t need it. She would find things on the floor and bring it to us. They [the twins] would find things on the floor and put it in their mouth or up their nose. So we couldn’t lock down enough of the kitchen cabinets with those boys. My daughter—just the way she operated in the world—it was such a different experience.

It was such a learning curve, not only to jump from girls to boys; but obviously, one to three.

Ann: Oh, yes!

Dave: Yes.

David: My daughter was not two when my sons were born, so we had three children

under three. We had three in diapers. I was driving a Nissan Sentra; my wife was

driving a Toyota Camry. We didn’t even own a car big enough to put three seats in.

People would just come by our house and drop off diapers on the front porch, say,

“Bless you. We hope this is helpful in some way”; because we were overwhelmed with

parenting three children under the age of two.

Ann: Were you a therapist at that time?

David: I was.

Ann: And so, you had tools, going in.

David: In my head, I had those tools. [Laughter] Every therapist, who’s transparent and honest, will say to you, “All of what you know”—and my wife’s a teacher; she’d say the same—“All of what works with other kids”—in terms of our vocations—

Ann: Yes.

David: —“does not always work with your own.” You get humbled in a remarkable way to learn that this book knowledge—this thing I’m communicating to parents—doesn’t always work exactly the way I’d like it to work in my own home. So it’s part of where they’ve been these great teachers of humbling me, and I think, even allowing me, hopefully, over the course of my work, to be present with parents in a different way; because I understand the reality that the three of us know—you can do so many of the right things; and you can read all the right books and listen to the right podcasts—

Dave: Yes.

David: —and things [can] just be really hard and not go as planned. Knowing that God is creating opportunities, as you beautifully said, for our growth/for our transformation as much as for our kids.

Dave: Talk about, you know, as a therapist and as a dad, the differences between a daughter and a son. And I know they’re unique to every—there are generalities that don’t cross over; you know that better than anybody—but there are differences.

David: There are.

Dave: I mean, Ann just mentioned even the physicality.

Ann: I have a sister and two brothers, and all of us had boys. So my parents had

12 grandsons.

Dave: So when we would get together—

Ann: Oh!

David: —chaos, to use your word.

Dave: It was. Yes, beyond—things flying, and you had to wear a helmet to walk

through the family room—some nephews get it. It was crazy. And I’m not saying

daughters don’t do that as well, but there are differences.

David: There are.

Dave: And you wrote about raising emotionally strong boys. So, I want to get there in a second: why emotionally strong, because a lot of people would think, “Just raise strong boys.”

David: Yes.

Dave: But talk a little bit about differences.

David: Well, I think one is the very thing you’re pointing to, which is just so wise to highlight on the front side, is their energy is different. We know that, early on, girls have advanced abilities to regulate themselves differently than boys. It’s why—to the great point you made earlier—they have more physicality to who they are as people in this world, and even to their emotional experience.

That’s something I talk about in the book: that research would show us that toddler-aged boys are more prone, in a classroom, biting, hitting, kicking, screaming, throwing. It’s that need for release that exists in them that is different in a lot of girls. It’s why a lot of adolescent boys are prone to punching holes in drywall. I don’t hear that story about girls as often. It’s not to say it can’t happen, but it is to say that energy—that physicality, that intensity—is something that we have to work to create—in the book I call it—“healthy outward movement.” Otherwise, it will come out, but it may not be healthy; or boys will turn inward on themselves, and neither of those is a helpful, healthy direction. To your great question: I think it starts with understanding their energy; and then, kind of placing that in the context of their emotionality.

The other thing that I would say is, you know, pediatricians would report that at 16/18-month well visits, most girls are saying around 100 words; most boys are saying around 30. If her general vocabulary is larger, it makes sense that her emotional vocabulary would be larger as well; so we’re going to have to labor longer with boys to help them develop a more full, expansive, emotional vocabulary.

I love that you asked that question, right out of the gate, because it simply means we always want to be thinking about these unique, God-given strengths that exist, that make their hardwiring different, or we could simply miss a lot of opportunities. We could simply place expectations on our sons that aren’t helpful for them.

Can I throw out one last one?

Dave: Sure!

David: Developmental theorists would say most girls finish adolescence somewhere around 19 to 20. They would say, for boys, it’s 22 to 25. That’s significant! [Laughter]

Ann: It’s significant.

Dave: Do you know why Ann’s laughing right now? Because she married me at 22. I know that laugh; it was like, “I married an adolescent.”

David: Absolutely.

Dave: And it was sort of like I was not mature yet.

Ann: I’m laughing though, because we had one of our sons say, “I don’t think I was emotionally mature until I was 25.” For him to say that now, as a 30-some-year-old; he’s like, “I don’t think I even knew who I was!” It felt like he said, “My wife knew exactly who she was and how to respond emotionally.”

David: I love his transparency. I think a lot of adult males can’t say that. Your reality was my reality. I was 24 when we got engaged; 25 when we got married. I remember my wife came to a class I taught on boy development. At one point, I shared that reality that I just shared. On the drive home, I said, “Sweetheart, you married an adolescent.” She said, “I know.” [Laughter] It’s no surprise to her!

Dave: They knew long before we did.

David: Long before we did; absolutely. I think, if we are embracing that kind of wisdom, and knowing that to be true—that God designed us to finish out adolescence in different times—then it allows us to accurately place the finish line at 25 for boys. He might get there a little bit earlier—but somewhere in that 22-25 space—as opposed to, you know, I think we launch boys out into the world sometimes around 17, 18, 19, saying, “Go be a grownup.” He could have a good eight years of adolescence left.

It’s where—in some previous work I’ve written on boys—I talk about how intentional I want to encourage parents to be with the summers of a boy’s college years. I think there’s so much learning that happens in the classroom between 18 and 22; but I think the summers of those years: I want boys working—I want them doing internships, and practicums, and missions experiences—where there is so much growth and learning happening to honor their development and all of the growth that still needs to be taking place in that time that I think is as pivotal as whatever kind of learning that’s happening in the classroom as well.

Dave: Wow!

Ann: That’s really wise. And you want them doing those kinds of things in the summer versus what?

David: Nothing, which is where I think a lot of boys, sadly—this day and age more than ever—are going to land. I have a section in the new book about how often I sit with boys who say, “I just want to chill summer.”

Dave: Yes.

David: And if I drill down on that, I know what that always means: “I don’t want a bedtime; I don’t want a wake time; I don’t want any expectations; I don’t want any chores; I don’t want a summer job; I don’t want a schedule. I want unlimited screen time.” There’s a lot of ways that I think boys would define a “chill summer.”

Ann: Yes.

David: Because they aren’t self-actualized enough to structure that time well for themselves, they need us to help them structure it. Again, honoring development; my sons need that differently than my daughter needed that. They’re 20; where she was at 20 looked very different—because I understand development—than where they are right now.

All of the ways that I think that might help us think; for example, you know, I sit with a lot of families who would say to me, “David, I think my son might benefit from a gap year. I think it could be helpful for him to do some work for a year before he goes to college and have a better understanding of the value of money, a better understanding of the value of education, and so many things.” And that’s not a right decision for every boy, but I’m not surprised when it’s a right decision for more boys than girls. I don’t sit with as many parents of girls who would see evidence. That’s not to say girls don’t benefit from that; there are some who do. But again, we are really looking at all of what’s true about growth and development and these differences we’re discussing, I think it would mean we would make some different decisions on behalf of the amazing sons that we love, to honor their development.

Dave: Yes; well, let’s talk “emotionally strong.”

David: I would love to.

Dave: Because, even in your title, as I picked up your book, I thought, “What does that look like? How does that work?” I remember—I’ve shared this here before—you know I have three sons. Steve, with whom we started a church together, had three daughters.

Ann: I can’t believe you’re sharing this.

Dave: Well, this was fascinating. [Laughter]

David: I can’t wait for this.

Ann: Fascinating or bad?

Dave: We’ll see! Maybe it’ll get edited out; Steve knows this story. They were visiting, and we were jumping in our minivan. I remember two of their daughters—probably, middle school age—would you say?

Ann: No, elementary, for sure.

Dave: Elementary—10/11 years old; probably, 9, 10, 11—started talking about who wants to sit in the captain’s seats behind me. I’m in the driver’s seat, getting ready to drive out of our driveway. They were arguing about: “No, I want the seat,” “I want the seat!” They keep going back and forth. There’s this conversation going on; I’m sitting there, like I want to get going. I got frustrated. I’m embarrassed to say this; I, literally, turned around, and I said, “Just punch her in the arm, and take the seat!” [Laughter] Because I had never in my life heard two boys communicate; they just pushed each other out of the way and grabbed a seat, and that’s how life went; and we’re off.

Ann: This is why God gave us sons and not daughters. [Laughter]

Dave: Well, there are two questions there: one is, there’s a sense that they were more emotionally healthy than boys were at that time. But I’m setting you up for a later question: here’s a dad who’s not emotionally healthy; how is an immature, emotionally unhealthy dad going to raise emotionally healthy boys or daughters? We’ll save that one.

But talk about this: what do you mean by “emotionally strong”? Help us, as parents, understand: “That’s what we’re were trying to do. What does that look like?”

David: If I were going to give the Cliff Notes version of what I think emotional strength is, it would be this: I think it’s a boy’s ability—a male’s ability—to name and navigate his experience; to understand what I’m feeling and what to do with it. As simple as that sounds, the three of us know we’re living in a world where, I would argue, the higher percentage of males don’t know how to name and navigate their experience.

Dave: I one hundred percent agree.

David: Yes.

Dave: When you said that, I was thinking, “Most men, even now— 40, 50, 60 years old—I think it’s really difficult. I’m not saying I know if women can or not; but I know, as a guy, that’s not easy.

David: It’s not; and I think it’s a part of why adult men in this world lead some of the scariest statistics that are out there. We, as males, lead the stats for infidelity, internet pornography, substance abuse, and suicide. If you think about just those four, the common denominator being—it is a male’s attempt to try to numb out or avoid whatever it is that he’s feeling: ‘I can’t name it,’ ‘I can’t navigate it’; so I want to figure out how to shut it down in some way.” It’s why, interestingly enough, the stats are higher—for girls, adolescent females, and adult women—to struggle with anxiety and depression; and yet, more males die by suicide. It’s connected to that reality that we don’t know how to recognize the struggle, and we don’t know how to ask well for help.

I came across this fascinating data as I was doing the research for this book, even on the number of women—adult women—who go every year for their well visit with their doctor versus men. It’s like we just don’t attend to our health: our physical health, our emotional health, and often our spiritual health. We don’t know how to ask for help when we’re struggling in any of those categories; whereas you, as women, generally-speaking do.

And even the way you do relationships: I have a whole section in the book on the strength of connection. The way you build relationships; the ways you are transparent, often, in relationships. And again, hear me say, there are women who don’t know how to do that well, and there are men who do; but generally-speaking, I come across more men who don’t. In 25 years of doing this work, I commonly sit with families, unfortunately, who are in the middle of one of those categories I named: husbands who’ve been unfaithful in their marriage, husbands who are in the throes of addiction. I have, for over two decades, sat in the residual of what that looks like in marriages and in kids.

This book felt connected to that old quote, Desmond Tutu said, “At some point we’ve got to just stop fishing people out of the river, and we need to go upstream and figure out why they’re falling in.” That, for me, was really the passion of this book: “I want to, on my watch, just say that I knew to do everything I could possibly think to do to be a preventionist in this work.” I spend a lot of my days as an interventionist, helping families on the other side of these struggles; and it’s like, “Okay, how much more could I be talking about what we could be doing with boys, on the front-side of development; and be doing with adolescent boys in the middle of development; and be doing with adult men, even farther down the road in development, to be developing in these ways to change those statistics?”

I laugh about this—a mom I met a couple of weeks ago—I wrote a workbook for elementary-aged boys to go with this book, Raising Emotionally Strong Boys.

Dave: It’s sitting right here.

David: And it’s called Strong and Smart. The mom said to me, “David, I bought your workbook for my seven-year-old son, but I’m mostly using it with my thirty-seven-year-old husband.” [Laughter] I said, “That’s fair! That’s fair! You use it with whatever age male is in your household.”

The thing that I say in the front of the book—and that I want folks to hear me say so strongly right now is—it’s never too late. It’s never too late! It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. It turns out we can learn new things. I have another seven-year-old boy who’s doing the workbook with his grandfather. When he told me that story, y’all, I almost wept. The thought of a little seven-year-old boy doing this with his grandfather in his sixties—and that they’re learning these things together—it overwhelms me. It overwhelms me on so many levels:

One, I think about what that grandfather’s last seasons of marriage might look like differently if he could name and navigate his experience.

Two, the gift of this little boy getting to sit, front row, to one of the adult men he trusts the most in this world, doing this work in front of him. I just think that’s what I hope can happen for so many dads is that they can allow the boys they love to be sitting, front row, and watching what it looks like to learn new skills, and how that impacts relationships.

Ann: Oh, we have so much more to talk about! We do! But David, I wish I had had this book with our young boys. Don’t you, Dave?

Dave: Oh, yes.

Ann: And Dave, I thought it was so humble of you to say, “I wasn’t an emotionally strong man.” That is so humble of you to even say that.

Dave: Can we [redact] that from the broadcast?

Ann: No.

Dave: No, it’s definitely true. And the sad thing is: I didn’t know it. I think most men—and women—if they’re there, don’t know it when they’re in it. What you just said: I’m in my 60s, and you know what? It’s not over! I can continue to grow emotionally strong.

David: Yes!

Dave: Even with grown men now, who are my sons; and with my daughters-in-law) I hope that’s an encouragement—to any man, and mom, listening right now, wherever you are—what you just said, David, it’s like: “You’re still alive; you can still grow.”

Ann: And God—

Dave: You may need to go back and say, “I’m sorry!”—

Ann: Yes.

David: Yes.

Dave: —to your sons, who are grown men now—I’ve had to do [it] and say, “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

David: Yes.

Dave: “I didn’t do it with malicious intent, but I failed in many ways. I’m sorry. Can we go forward from here?” And hopefully, there’s forgiveness there, and you can move forward.

Ann: This is FamilyLife Today. We’re Ann and Dave Wilson; and we’ve been talking

with David Thomas, who is pretty great. We’ve been talking about his book, Raising

Emotionally Healthy Boys.

Dave: It’s a book you got to get.

Ann: And Dave, I’m really glad that you shared that about your relationship with our

boys, because nobody does it perfectly.

Dave: Oh, no. We still have conversations, and we always will; but we didn’t have

David’s book when we’re raising our sons. But you can have it: Raising Emotional

Healthy Boys. You want to have this. You’ve got little boys in the house, or even

teenagers, get it wherever you buy your books—just go to Amazon or wherever—get

that book. It’s going to, literally, help you and, maybe, change your legacy.

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