Boy Mom Shares Why She Refuses To Ask Her 9-Year-Old Son Who He Has A Crush On At School
She explained that she doesn't want her son to get the wrong idea about friendships with young girls.
fizkes | Shutterstock Being a parent means taking an interest in the lives that your kids are leading. However, a boy mom named Payal admitted that when it comes to romance, she refuses to ask her son any prying questions, including who he may or may not have a crush on.
In a TikTok video, Payal insisted that as a parent, especially of young boys, she wants to instill in them the importance of being friends with different kinds of people while they are growing up. Part of that means she tries not to become too inquisitive when her son is talking about girls that he hangs out with at school.
A mom explained why she refuses to ask her 9-year-old son who he has a crush on at school.
In Payal's video, she explained that she had to catch herself the other day during a conversation with her sons after picking them up from school recently. She had been asking them who they were sitting with at lunch, pointing out that it's always an important social part of a child's day and can tell a lot about a kid.
"It warms them up to sharing and chatting because it's fun to talk about," she said. "As my nine-year-old was listing off the group of friends he sits with at his table, he rattled off four to five girls' names, and he was sort of smirking when he shared this."
The mom admitted that her instinct was to find out all the details she could when her son mentioned hanging out with girls at school.
Upon hearing that her son was sitting with girls and seemingly might be interested in them, Payal became quite intrigued but managed to talk herself down from questioning him about it further. She wanted to ask if he had a crush on anybody that he had mentioned, especially since there were rumors swirling following his Valentine's Day school dance just a few months ago.
However, Payal held back. She explained that this was because, for boys especially, it's incredibly important that they learn not to romanticize friendships they have with girls. Because down the line, that ends up being something that follows boys as they eventually become men. They start to view women as people they can only be attracted to instead of actual human beings worthy of friendship and platonic relationships.
"How are men supposed to value friendship with women if all they've ever been taught is that girls are capable of assuming the role of a crush or a girlfriend?" Payal questioned. "If I reacted with a high-pitched, 'Ooh, you eat lunch with girls? Do you like any of them?' it signals to him that his friendship with boys at the table is not the same as his friendship with the girls."
Men are not socialized to have friends.
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As it stands, men aren't really brought up to put a lot of importance and value into their friendships. According to the Survey on American Life, 15% of men claim to have no close friends and, as a result, are experiencing a loneliness epidemic because they don't have close social circles for support.
A lot of men aren't able to be friends with women because they simply don't see women as anything other than potential partners. But there's great value in having a varied group of friends because you're surrounding yourself with not only different kinds of people, but also learning about their different experiences.
Men learning that friendships with women should be valued in the same way that friendships with other men should be starts in childhood, and Payal is making sure that as she raises young boys, they know that there's nothing embarrassing about sitting with girls at lunch and being friends with them. "Some might say this is overthinking," Payal said. "But our views of gender are formulated at such a young age, and so many different factors contribute to them."
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
