Mothers Raising Sons – The MANual: Real Life Testimonies & Advice from Mothers & Sons (Mothers & Sons Experiences) (Volume 1)
by Lisa Norwood et al.
Available on AMAZON: http://a.co/9l9nYdv
Mothers Raising Sons ™ ―The MANual‖ book was written from life testimonies across the country about the survival techniques used in raising boys. Advice tools for single mothers that teach young men how to navigate successfully through the maze of life. The character, ethics, wisdom, integrity, and principles that is essential to the survival of our boys to men and mothers raising sons‘ sanity.
Sibling Fighting
Verbal and physical fights will happen and happen often, between siblings, especially boys. There will be quarreling that are insignificant and then some serious that require your immediate attention. There will be time you will need to be involved and times where you have to allow them to solve their own problems. They need to learn how to handle their own disagreements.
Mom, you should set ground rules for fighting, conflict or disagreements as early as two years old, such as:
| You should | Note | |
| If they are fighting over Clothes | ||
| At breakfast/dinner table | ||
| In the car | ||
| On the playground | ||
| Getting up in the morning | ||
| He/She touch me |
Your goal in their fighting is to show them the benefits. Fighting fairly. Did they gain anything? Who got hurt? Was it worth it? Teach them to resolve their differences peacefully, Biblically, spiritually….
A
Abandoned – to relinquish, to surrender, deserted; dump, ditch, thrown away
Wiley Michael Arden, 78 years old; raised in Brooklyn, NY now resides in Atlanta GA.
Mr. Arden felt abandoned because his mother and father left him with his grandmother to raise him. He felt relieved to give his story because he had deep rooted feelings within and now feels he understands his feeling better by talking about them.
I was born in 1936, Baltimore, MD. I was raised by all women I was under the age of 1 year old. My mother was 15 years old when she got pregnant. I never the name or birthplace of my father until a few years ago. I had to go the department of health because I didn’t have a birth certificate with my name on it. So I was raised with the name Arden. My mother was 15 years old when she gave birth to me. She told me just before she died; 6 months before she died, she said, you know they was going to take you away from me and they did. They meaning, my grandmother and great grandmother that lived in Virginia, where I went to school.
Thinking about this, I am getting a lot of feelings. I prayed about this for a long time and da.. it is difficult for me personally. It has been difficult not knowing who my father was and not even having his name mentioned. My great grandmother, today, you would say she was upper middle class. She owned her own home in Virginia, her own business and was a daughter of Eastern Stars.
I had no siblings until I was 13 years old when my mother got married. In the meantime, it was in my spirit, it was always a desire to find my mother. Not exactly to find her, but to be with her. My aunts in Baltimore raised me the first year or two of my life. She always was almost the same age.
As of today, I’m in my 70s and feel like I am still missing something. Since I never saw my father, I never knew who he was. My mother was my main focus to get to. I remember being alone most of my childhood. I had nobody, no male figure on my mother side. I don’t think my mother knew who her father was. So there was a lot of F- ing and emotional struggle. Not knowing who my father was, I wasn’t too concern about that, at that point in my life.
When I was a preteen, 11-12 years old, I had my great grandfather in the house. He and his brothers were half white, so I grew up in a nice house. I was taken care of, I was fed, clothed, and schooled. School was right down the road in Virginia, I went there until the sixth grade. Then we moved to New York I went to junior high school and high school where I graduated and I have about 40 college credits.
What advice can you give a young man that don’t know his father? Looking back, it’s not a one size fit all. It depends on the basic circumstances, if you’ve never heard your father’s name mention or never heard his name call, the saying “you don’t miss what you never had”. But my search was not so much for my father, it was for my mother because I felt abandoned by my mother. I had a lot of resentment for her, not realizing I had resentment because she used to come down from time to time. I remember one time she came down to visit and we was talking, I didn’t know she was leaving. I thought she came down to pick me up but she got in the car and they drove off. I remember standing in the middle of the road throwing rocks at the car, I was about 5 years old, I really felt abandoned by my mother.
There was a time I was in a federal program in Kentucky, a group for troubled adolescences. We had to go to groups for therapy, at the end of five or six months there was an evaluation. The psychiatrist came and we were talking and he gave the evaluation, his evaluation stated I hated my mother. Looking back, my internal reaction was “WHAT!” Nobody hates their mother, how can that be. As I matured and it became clear, emotionally I felt abandoned. I had excellent care keepers, but I never ever had that father figure. By the time my mother married my step-father, I resented him because …(just shakes his head).
I felt betrayed and abandoned because (laughs) … it was a big struggle. It was on my part a lot of deception to get to my mother. I remember the day I got there, I asked my grandmother where my mother lives. She told me down the block on 133rd and Lenox Avenue. I remember I was so happy, I went to the building and knocked on the door. A man answered the door and my mother was sitting on the couch, she was pregnant.
At that moment, it felt like my whole world had crashed. I was about 12 years old, then again, hmm, I felt betrayed and abandoned. One day I came home from school, I asked my neighbor from down stairs, the one that watched over the children in the building. I said, oh, have you seen my mother? She said “boy you know that your mother is at work, you know Louise is working.” I said, no – I’m talking about my mother. So she said, “What? Fanny is not your mother, Louise is your mother.” So, I was really a mess! I was really a mess.
I know that my situation is not unique. There are a lot of young men and girls, and women who go through emotional struggles searching for something that they cannot find. Hoping against hope that something good will come out of their lives. Look at their history, because history can follow a person to their grave. The search for me ended when I surrendered the search. I found something that was far greater than a mother or a father, fulfilling that emotional need.
In this world, mothers abandon sons and fathers abandon sons and daughters, and we fall into emotional distress and psychological problems – issues of abandonment. But there is a friend that is closer than any mother, father, sister, or brother and that is Jesus. With all my searching, all the pain, all the lying, all the manipulations, all the stealing, all of the drugs, sex, those didn’t satisfy me it satisfied my flesh but not my spirit.
I had to heal and I couldn’t heal myself, even though there’s a thing about healing thyself. Well I found out that talking about it, admitting that it happened, and knowing that I wasn’t the first one in the world that have been emotionally abandoned by a mother, father, relative or a spouse. I began to heal as I prayed and asking God to help me. I remember I use to walk the streets at night, aimlessly walking, just walking, no destination, just walking. In the darkness, I felt so alone at times, even around people, I felt alone. I felt I didn’t belong, I felt unworthy, but Jesus is worthy. When you need a friend, a true friend in the world, there is none; there are users and abusers, liars, thieves, fornicators, adulterers, we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But the greatest gift that one can give themselves is surrender to the will of God. Because man will say I forgive you and then turn around and stab you in the back. Your mother or father can say I love you and they are on crack. So how can they love you? How can they love you materially, psychologically, emotionally, or physically when they need help. One that can give full support that will never leave you nor forsake you. He will say son come to me; cast your burdens and loads on me; cast your cares on me. For I care for you and I never change. For I change not, call upon me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you not. Lift up your eyes to hills which your help cometh from. I know help comes from the Lord. Your help comes from search in the word; physical, mental, psychological, and financial.
If you were face to face with your father, and there was something you could say to your father what would it be?
You know what I would say to my dad? I would say dad, I love you. You know you didn’t create the circumstance. You fell prey with the same thing that men and women fall prey to everyday . . . lust. Lust and the lack of knowledge because in the Word, Jesus says my people perish because for the lack of knowledge. The basic thing is Spiritual knowledge. In the beginning, the Word and the Word was God.
On a closing note, what can you tell a mother that has abandoned her son?
Pray for forgiveness because no one know the circumstances except Jesus. For He knows all things. The root cause of all the emotional and psychological and financial ills in the world is spiritual stupidity, spiritual ignorance denying that there is a spiritual realm that operates in this world. There is Satan, devil some people call him Beelzebub and there is God.
Can you give me a final word for a young man feeling abandoned?
If I had known then what I know now (laughs). I would have saved myself from a lot of agony, pain and distress, if I had known the Lord, Jesus. My great grandma had taken me to church, church was the babysitter. I didn’t learn anything, I didn’t know anything and I was a smart alec and knew everything you couldn’t tell me anything.
Surrender because the struggle, the fight is not a flesh and blood fight, it is a spiritual flight.
Advice: Talk about your feelings instead of holding them within because it can cause emotional damage to your relationships and attitude about life.
He called me a few days after giving his testimony and thanked me for allowing him to release those feelings. He really never talked about the rooted emotional damage he still carried, but now feels better. Thank You, Sincerely!
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Anonymous, 54 years old, 3 sons, Jersey City, NJ
As a mother feels when the father(s) of their sons leave and he’s often absent, going out and never returning or for some booty and maybe giving her a few dollars for their sons. I felt abandoned because I was left alone to raise our boys to be men. I reached out to his family and friends to assist me with the task. Now I am not saying that he was never there, but at times it felt like that. I knew God was with me and always available to assist me with His Word.