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In too many families, there's no father in the picture and when a boy starts to hit a certain age, he becomes acutely aware of that absence.

I'm John Fuller along with Danny Werta and Danny that awareness that dad isn't there

can really be expressed by a boy in a variety of ways and it can be really hard to navigate those times.

It can be and like we've mentioned before in the show that a mom doesn't need to become a dad

and she needs to continue to be a mom and surround this boy with men that can speak truth

into this young boy's life or young man's life and that what I've seen manifest through my counseling practice, counseling boys in this very situation,

is that they've either clung too much to their mom and they're very insecure about what they can do as young men and are

afraid of failure, afraid of adversity, and then there's the other side where

they become overly aggressive and really wanting to assert their masculinity.

They want to get affirmation that, yeah, I'm a man, I'm masculine, and they want to show it,

and they want to show it and they want to show dominance and power.

What I see is a lack of balance in who they are where they can learn from a mom and a dad.

The balance of warmth and sensitivity and also the idea of power and

demandingness and going to get things in the pursuit.

And so a mom can talk about this balance do observations with her son

about who God is creating them to be reassuring them that it's okay to fail and also

getting input from other men for this young man.

That's important and we're going to hear more about this now from Dr. Meg Meeker with advice

about how to talk with sons about the fact that dad isn't in the picture.

She talked about this with focus president Jim Daly and me.

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