Man shares the 'husbands in training curriculum' his mom used to teach her sons to be better men

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on April 15, 2022. It has since been updated.

In a TikTok video, user Doug Weaver shared the strict curriculum his mother used to train her sons to be better men. He referred to the program as the "Husbands in Training" curriculum. It included several components, such as consent, the basics of respecting women and all the things that make someone a decent human being. Once her sons completed the program, they were even awarded certificates of completion that she handed over to them on their wedding days. According to Weaver, his mother's teachings began when they were children. Nonetheless, the lessons have remained with him through to adulthood, God.dailydot.com reports.

Although Weaver and his brothers were far too young to become husbands when they were enrolled in the "husbands in training" program, he shared how the lessons he learned as a kid have influenced him his whole life. His mother's training has definitely had an impact on his marriage as well as how he raises his own children today. In fact, he plans to teach them a similar curriculum, so they are equally prepared for any of the challenges life may throw at them. In his TikTok video, he affirms to his followers, "There was a lot of really good stuff in that curriculum."

"There were things like what to do if your spouse says something and the information they give is wrong," Weaver explains. "How to handle it if they say something wrong in public versus in private, when it is appropriate to correct them and when it isn’t. We talked about consent, we talked about the basics of respecting and honoring women and listening to women and all of the things that really just make you a decent human being." By the time he was in high school, his dad was part of the program too because he had never learned some of the stuff his mom was teaching.

Weaver continues, "There are parts of this curriculum that should never see the light of day—like the porn quiz—but there are parts that I think I will revive for my son… I’m definitely raising my son to understand how consent works and that the necessity for consent doesn’t end when you get married—that things still need to be consensual. Identifying when women are in distress or in danger because of other men, when to intervene and how to appropriately intervene. Healthy conflict resolution and how to express your feelings in a healthy way and appropriate ways to respond when someone expresses their feelings to you."

His mother even went the extra mile by making their graduation from the "husbands in training" program official. Weaver shares, "My mom even made certificates of completion that she signed and gave to each of us on our wedding days." He concludes his TikTok video by noting how his wife (as well as his brothers' wives) really appreciates the takeaways from his time with his mother's thorough curriculum. "It was a lot of introspection, skills assessment [and] personality typing, which would lead to discussions about so many other topics," he said in an interview with BuzzFeed. "She wanted us to know how to be in a healthy long-term relationship, and in the meantime, we could practice treating every woman we meet with respect, starting with her. We weren’t only expected to learn it, we had to show her that we knew it."