A Wise Son
Does your teenage son grunt "hello" to you as he walks in the door from school – Find out more…
Proverbs 10:1 says “A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother.” Here we see the mother is most affected by the silliness that too many sons get up to, and as a son myself I can agree that I’ve caused my mom more distress than she deserves. Sons more than anyone else have a unique ability to do exactly the wrong thing at just the right time, to create the most frustration for their parents.
If we take a look at the list of people the average teenage boy encounters each day, in their order of appearance, it’s likely the mother back home gets the most “up-hill” from him:
Jimmy wakes up and is in a bad mood. He’s in no mood to clean his room or go to school, but he does one of those grudgingly and he certainly lets his mom know just what an injustice waking at 6am is. His mom has woken up at 5am to sort the house out, but Jimmy misses that.
When Jimmy arrives at school he is calmer and has resigned himself to the fact of education, eased somewhat by his pals who he treats well and seldom argues with. When they do disagree, it’s light-hearted fun.
Next he collides with his Maths, English and Science teachers. They are the closest thing to a parent figure at school and not surprisingly are a short second to Jimmy’s mom as recipients of bad behaviour. Yet Jimmy still listens to them more and does what they ask.
On his way home from school, Jimmy passes a complete stranger and politely greets him. But he’s so tired when he arrives home, that he breezes in, grunts a “hello” in the general direction of his mom and then plops down in front of the TV.
I and many other sons have had similar days to this. Days where we treat most people better than others and all of them better than we treat our mothers. I am not a psychologist and couldn’t for the life of me explain what goes on in our heads to cause us to react so negatively and disrespectfully towards the parents who gave us life and pocket money.
One thing is for certain – we owe our mothers so much and whether we like it or not, by obeying them and caring for their needs as much as they have for ours, we can truly make a world of difference to their day. There are so many things that we could do, in my case, just tidying my desk or helping out with the cleaning would shift weather patterns for my mom.
I just hope that even with the difficulties our mothers have to put up with, that they never think for a second that their sons don’t love them. Moms always get such a hard time from children, sometimes to them it seems that we don’t care for them. That couldn’t be further from the truth, but the male tendency to hide such emotions doesn’t help much either. So even when we don’t vocalise it, we definitely love our moms.
So, if you are a son and you are reading this, think about the feelings of your mother when you act and the things that you could do to make her a little happier. It doesn’t matter how old you are, show your mom you love her.¦
Morgan Collins is studying journalism in Kwa Zulu-Natal.