Raising boys is, above all, being present

I have two sons and a daughter. And the more they grow, the more convinced I am of something simple: raising a boy is, in large part, a problem of presence.

I started working at 14. Looking back, what shaped me wasn't advice — it was having, nearby, people who let me try, fail, and try again. My father pushed me out of my comfort zone early; other people, along the way, lent me a bit of their experience at a moment when I didn't yet have my own. They were mentors, even without the name.

That's what I try to offer my children, and what I think every boy needs at some stage: someone older, beyond his parents, whom he admires and who takes him seriously. Without that, he builds the idea of what it is to be a man from whoever is around — often other boys as lost as he is, or whatever the internet decides to show him.

Presence, to me, isn't surveillance. It's being close enough to be sought out, and firm enough to set a limit with affection. [FILL IN before publishing: a concrete example of your own — a routine with them, a conversation that repeats, something you do on purpose.]

I have no manual. I have the conviction that, with boys, we teach far less by what we say and far more by what we are, every day, in front of them.