To start: no, there are no “trusted male figures” in our lives. My brothers & father are all conservative, and I DO NOT trust them to properly explain things without shame and/or religious context.
My son knows the basics of reproduction, but I’ve never really explained what’s “normal” things for a teenage boy to go through… mainly because I don’t know!
I’ve definitely put it off, so he’s almost 14 and is much more physically mature than most of his peers (he’s got hair in places, shaves his face regularly, etc.)… but I’m embarrassed to admit that I know next to nothing about anything else…
Could y’all help me out? What did you go through that he should know about? What should I know about?
Many thanks to anyone who can help. Please don’t be unkind. Much appreciated.
EDIT: Thank you so much for all the advice so far!! Please keep it up!!
My son & I have very open communication & a very good relationship.
Male puberty happens a bit later than female puberty; at almost 14 he’s either in the thick of it or just about done.
I don’t think male puberty is quite as “what the Lovecraftian fuck is happening to me right now” as female puberty. His voice either has or will drop, this isn’t physically painful but it’s not fun how people react to it sometimes.
He is going to GROW. When I was 15 I outgrew a pair of shoes overnight. Came home from school one day, took my shoes off, went to bed. Woke up the next morning, those same shoes didn’t fit. In the next couple years he’s probably going to have some joint or bone aches just from growing so much. My parents fed me Tylenol which did basically nothing, I’m not convinced Tylenol works. It’ll slow down by the time he’s out of high school but where girls are pretty much at adult size at 18 boys will keep growing a bit into their early 20s.
He’s gonna get stronger. Sometimes it’s going to sneak up on him; prepare for the occasional moments of didn’t know his own strength style clumsiness.
Physical activity is a good idea; sports, marching band, shop class, if you can get him up and moving during the day and not packed into a classroom it’ll be good for his brain. Boys don’t really do well sitting in a classroom all day.
For the above three reasons he is going to have a VORACIOUS appetite. I ate 5,000 calories a day and struggled to gain weight in high school. Let the kid eat. A hungry teen is an angry teen. Somewhere around 19 or 20, either in college or in the get a job part of life, that growth spurt is tapering off and there’s less physical activity inherent in life, so the need for calories is going to decrease but his ordering habits won’t. 19 years old is about time to start ordering medium combo meals.
You can expect a certain amount of teenage moodiness; his brain is rewiring itself. He’ll have feelings. Society isn’t okay with this. He’ll learn how to express nothing but anger or amusement. This is ultimately for the best; once he’s an adult he will be expected to do two things: Work and die. Having feelings is accomplishing neither of those so he is expected to…never do that. Some people will ask him for displays of emotions; he will quickly learn that they are not interested in his actual feelings because those would require, like, dealing with or whatever. They want to see an impromptu rom-com performance.
Unexplained genital pain is never normal in males; “it hurts, and it has hurt for awhile now” is reason to see a doctor.
Really off topic, but can you tell what happened with the shoe situation afterwards? What did you do then?
Puberty ends at about 21-23 for women and 23-25 in men. The brain does some crazy af pruning of neurons between 13 and 23. While the actual hormone flood starts early, the entire process takes much longer to complete on a brain function level.