They're Mama's Boys Until Junior High

My sister-in-law and I were having a conversation about our boys this evening. Actually, we weren't discussing them specifically; we were just talking...when her son, my nephew, mentioned that he looked like a Mama's Boy in one of his old pictures. She replied, "You were!"

He was completely offended by this statement.

He wouldn't have been years ago. Probably not even last year. But now, he's in Junior High. We decided that Junior High is the beginning of the end of the Mama's Boy.

Not because they're too macho to admit that they have a close relationship with their mothers, but because they turn into these rude, crude, disrespectful, know-it-all sons-of-satan. They are no longer ours; they belong to Junior High. Gone are the Please and Thank You’s we used to hear. They speak only in short, snide sentences and rolling eyes. "Yeah right, whatever." (I swear, I'm going to write a book one day called "Yeah Right, Whatever: the teen’s response to EVERY statement".)

My nephew is not my first experience with this conversion. My son is now a Junior in High School and has totally MASTERED the Junior High mentality. Oh, he's gotten more sophisticated about it. His arguments are more like interrogations by a defense attorney. But it's obviously still the same situation… our sons creating separation from their mothers and their childhood in an effort to assert their independence.

It has to happen. But it’s painful for the mom’s. And even though we truly want our boys to grow up strong and independent, we’re still going to blame it on Junior High.