A late Father’s Day thought

I wrote this a few years ago but it still rings true to me. Sorry I am not posting much. Life keeps intervening.

Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans.
– John Lennon

With all deference and respect to the mothers of the world, I wanted to talk about Dad’s for a minute. Moms are incredibly important and wonderful parts of children’s lives and society does a very good job of pointing this out on a daily basis and with good reason. Children who do not have mothers have much to overcome as they learn a lot of what makes us human in our early years in the home (Empathy, loving care, how to receive love). My reasoning is that we tend to ignore the dad in our daily social diet. Watch 10 minutes of any teen or tween TV show and you will see what I mean. The dads are usually laughable oafs who can barely add 2 +2. Mom runs everything and just manages to keep the lovable lug from harming himself while teaching the children all the lessons they need. Commercials are worse. Fathers are seen as overly macho, beer swilling goofballs who are either overly authoritarian or so dim that the wife and children just stand and laugh at them behind their back. It’s so important that we not undervalue the contributions of the father to our children’s lives. Years of working with young people and their parents has shown me that dads teach us to keep trying, fight on and work hard, not to mention how we treat people in our everyday lives. These are important lessons in today’s society, especially the way we treat people who work around us.

I am not espousing one parent above another, as both are equally important. My point is that we need to make sure our young, impressionable children and students know that what they see in movies, tv and other media about fathers is not necessarily true and that all men do not need to be closed to culture, overtly manly and unable to express themselves. I know I would not be the man I am without the influence of my father, who happened to be a 6’3” former Marine Pilot with 8 children who sewed dresses for my sisters, cooks like a premier chef and can be caught wiping tears from his eyes at a Broadway musical or opera (Never judge a book by its cover). Without his steady, disciplined presence in my life, I would not have learned who I am, what I could do and how to be a good man. Thanks Dad!

If you are a dad, take some time to enjoy being with your children. It does not have to cost money or be elaborate. Play catch, go for a walk, play a board game, or just sit together at dinner and discuss something important to you. My own personal experiences lead to fishing. I cannot tell you what the hours fishing with my father mean to me and I hope my children feel the same way. We don’t have to talk or catch tons of fish. We just enjoy being there in the moment together as father and son and now father and son and daughters. Quietly watching the water and waiting hopefully for a bite, we are creating bonds that hopefully will last a lifetime. To quote Dennis Miller, “It’s not quality time, it’s quantity time. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be there!”

Limits to our lives

So this is a long way from my last post but life got in the way in a huge way. Two deaths in the immediate family and multiple children being sick( another part of parenthood) kept me from my one every week to two weeks goal. Oh well.
All that aside, I wanted to talk about limits. I meet parents all the time who say they don’t want to “limit” their child. As if telling them me no or guiding them to proper decisions is somehow stunting their growth. I have worked with young people for more than 20 years and have 4 of my own and I have never met a happy, comfortable child who’s parents did not put some limits on their lives. I’m not talking about telling them what to do all of the time or trying to control them. I am talking about gentle but firm guidance grounded in love. Some are easy. Don’t touch that stove it will hurt. Some may touch it but that’s what we call a natural lesson and you can follow up the drying of tears with a lesson about listening to the voice of someone wi more experience. The tougher ones are when maybe other friends get to do something your family does not believe in. Say dating before the age you and the child’s other parent agreed on. In our family that is 16. Many of my daughters friends were dating at 12 or 13. I was told I was mean to not let her do some of those things by people we knew but never heard a word from my daughter. She was glad and relieved and told me so. She was safe. That is the best word for it. When I have dealt with angry young people it’s just about always the same. They are uncomfortable in their lives because they are given too much freedom with choices they are not equipped for. Parents thing they are giving them a gift. The freedom they remember yearning for as young people. What they are not remembering is the relief they felt when their friends got in trouble and they were not allowed to participate in whatever the source of the trouble was. They are not remembering that the only reason they did not have those troubles was that mom and dad would not let them participate. In those simple loving disciplines we teach control and give the children a bigger gift. The gift of a safe environment to learn in.

It starts….I hope

I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a blog for ages so I might as well get going. What will I write on?  That’s easy.  In my professional life I work with a lot of parents and get asked for advice a lot. Being a father of four kids myself over the last 15 years and being an uncle since I was 4 gives me a unique perspective into the world of parenting as I have seen and been the good, the bad and of course the ugly.  That’s the what. Parenting in a busy and challenging world and we can only benefit from sharing information. The why is so I can organize my thoughts, maybe help a parent or two and provide proof to my grown children one day that yes, their suspicions were correct, Dad was certifiably crazy. They may have pushed me there but still, at least they can rest easy knowing all of my weird eccentricities were not the norm.

I plan on writing when the mood strikes me and may include notes from my wife who works with young children and is far more patient with the world of shoe tying, nose wiping and uncontrollable tears.  I myself have always felt more at home with slightly older kids. My heavy use of sarcasm and humor plays more into the personalities of children who are old enough to understand humor and take a joke. While I adore my children and have since birth, I feel more comfortable with them as they grow older and feel like we are finally speaking the same language as they enter their teen years. This blog should give some advice. Share some funny stories (at least funny to us) and give me a place to share some hard earned wisdom born of late nights, multiple ruined shirts covered in vomit or worse and now sleepless nights worrying about how to keep my young family together as society actively tries to tear us apart. 

After reading my meandering post it may shock you to know at I am not a professional writer.  In my work I have people who take wonderful care of me by checking everything I write for grammar but this is just my musings.  In my many years of undergraduate and graduate work I have learned to write my thoughts out in a coherent fashion but please forgive any bending or out and out breaking of the rules of language. I will also allow my faith to bleed through from time to time. I am Catholic and that is a big part of our family dynamic but that alone does not create good or bad families. I know some excellent parents who have no faith in God whatsoever. Just know going in it will come up. 

So that’s it. Until next time remember that you are your child’s best example of how to behave in this world and it’s up to you to teach them how to treat everyone they meet. Good luck and hang in there.  We are all in this together.