Chapter Fourteen
Being a Dad that loves Mom
At
first it seemed a strange thing to say.
Saying “I love you” or “I’m proud of you” are the things a good Dad is expected
to say to his kids. But there was
another recurring statement that was a bit random. There was no pattern to its delivery. This statement came at all times and
situations it seemed. He didn’t have any
identifiable reason for saying it. The
promise was unconnected to any problems that arose. He apparently felt that telling us that he
would never leave our mom stood all by itself.
“No
matter what happens, son, I’ll never leave your mother.” Why would he say that so frequently and with
such intensity? I wonder what prompted
all those unsystematic proclamations of his love for Mom. Maybe it was some friend of his who did lived
out the opposite of his promise. Their
betrayal may have invited his desire to reassure us. Maybe it was a recent argument he and mom
had. The tiff may have caused him to
make this statement to himself as much as his boys – to reinforce it. Maybe it was a continuing passionate love for
mom that just bubbled over from time to time.
That love may have inspired the most random acts of expressing his love
for mom to us. I suspect that all these
were true.
A
Different World?
Few
doubt that the fact that the greatest single difference in the way kids are raised
today and the way they were raised 50 years ago is the number of kids affected
by divorce. It is now common for kids to
assume their friend’s parents are divorced.
The parents that are still together are the anomaly—the exception to the
rule. The occurrence is so frequent that
we say things like “are your parents together?” when getting to know someone in
a new friendship.
Parents
should be the constant in a child’s life.
They should be the bedrock of their existence that enables a child to
feel secure and loved. A child should
never have to question their parent’s commitment to each other—because they
automatically interpret any separation as something they are a part of—and they
are right. Dads often try to justify
things to their soon-to-be left children: “Don’t worry, honey, this is just
between me and your mother. We both love
you just the same… and even though we aren’t going to live together any more,
we’re still a family.” Kids see through
this garbage so easily, and it amazes me that we’re so convinced by our
selfishness that we can’t see the truth behind their teary discerning eyes.
Mistakes
in the past are in the past, and many a divorced Dad has been able to be the
best Dad possible despite the uphill battle they face. But they invariably come to the realization
that they are starting from a mile behind the starting line. Understand this, dads, if you are married
now—stay that way until you or your wife dies.
It makes it almost impossible to be an effective and complete father
without the team that is created by a mother and father together. Love mom and you’ll be a better Dad. The kind of Dad and husband a son would want
to be when he grows up. Being Dad
means staying with Mom.
Let’s
consider our relationships with the mother of our children:
“Being
Dad means staying with Mom.”
What
can I do to stay with my wife for the sake of my children, no matter what?
Chapter Fifteen
Being a Dad that Teaches His Kid a Lesson
Most fathers have their special stuff. For some, it’s the tools in the garage that
are hung in the exact places they want them.
For others, it’s sports memorabilia that is hung in the basement. Some Dads treasure their books, computers, old
records or a favorite La-Z-Boy in the den.
Whatever the case, most Dads have some stuff that is prime property in
their minds—and when the kids get into it, the Dad either cringes to think what
will happen, or outright bans the kids from touching the stuff.
In
my family backpacking, camping, and all things outdoor-related were of utmost
importance. I don’t remember a vacation
we took in my life when we didn’t camp out in the woods or at a campground (if
we were lucky). We carried packs on our
backs shortly after learning to walk.
And before that we were carried in a backpack ourselves. We grew up amongst the trees, hills, lakes,
mountains and hiking trails.
So
you can imagine how important all our camping and backpacking equipment was in
our house. We spent far more money each
year on that equipment than we ever would on eating out and going to the movies
combined. And one year Dad was able to
buy a few tents for his office staff’s retreat.
These large tents were the newer (at the time) kind of “pop-up” tents
with lightweight poles that created a great dome and a huge space inside,
especially compared to our musty-center-poled-wet-edged tent that only a
green-beret soldier with no sense of smell would sleep in without
complaint. I begged Dad to let my buddy
and I sleep out in the tent in our yard one Friday night. He begrudgingly agreed, since they weren’t
even really his tents, but on one condition: that I would not ruin a thing and
that I would put it up properly and stake it to the ground so that it wouldn’t
blow away in the wind, as these tents could do from time to time.
My
buddy and I had the best time in the world in our new tent-turned-hideout, and
got up in the morning and ran inside to watch cartoons and eat breakfast. When we went outside to grab our things from
the tent we noticed a big bare spot with only pale and flattened grass where
the tent was supposed to be. Apparently
without the weight of two boys in it, the tent—with it’s zipper door open—acted
much like a huge roundish kite, and flew down the
street. This could of course been
prevented by staking it into the ground like I’d be told, but alas the stakes
were in a bag inside the tent, never opened, and now were having the ride of
their lives inside the tent-turned-massive-tumbleweed. We frantically searched the neighborhood for
Dad’s precious tent, and the contents of which included many other camping
possessions only purchasable in far-away hippie camping stores in
The
Hammer Drops
Dad
was ticked. The instructions were
simple. He knew he shouldn’t have let us
use the nice new tent he had just bought with his office’s retreat money. And all the stuff inside of the tent was gone
too! Camping stuff! Backpacking stuff! The most important stuff we owned (a
tell-tale sign that my parents were left-over Jesus-people hippies if there
ever was one). I was in big trouble.
But
Dad didn’t take it out on me physically.
A spanking wouldn’t make the point that needed to be made and besides, I
was getting a little old for that. I
cost him a bunch of money. He couldn’t
just take it out of my hide and break even.
So he devised a plan. We made up
a large chart where certain humiliating chores would net me small payments:
like 50 cents for shining his shoes, or a buck for washing the cars. I can’t remember much of the work I did, but
I do remember that it took me months
to build up enough credit to pay back the hundreds of dollars I owed. I learned my lesson big-time. Not only would I stake down every tent from
then on, I would follow Dad’s instructions to the letter on things—especially
when it involved his camping stuff!
Learning
Long-Term Lessons
Being
a Dad means teaching long-term lessons.
It is easy to try to teach lessons in a minute—as though corporal
punishment or one anger-filled yell-fest will sink in to a kids mind
effectively. Sometimes the best lessons
are taught when a kid is punished for a long time. Equally important, kids often forget past
punishments. Some of our strong-willed
kids seem to forget a punishment five minutes after they received it, doing the
same thing right in front of you again (if this sounds familiar to you this
week then please put down the bottle of pills and read on.) The remedy for this is a longer-term and more
creative punishment, one that fits the crime, like mine did. This makes the lesson a learned one. If a kid wrecks something expensive—she
should pay for it to be replaced. If he
vandalizes someone’s property, he should fork over four Saturdays to scrub and
paint it over. If she calls the problem
an “accident” then now is the time to teach responsibility over the results
rather than intentions. If he is two
hours late from when you said he needed to be home, then think up a way for him
to pay back those two hours in the most memorable way so that the next time he
thinks twice about being late.
Let’s
think about the way we teach our children:
“Being
Dad means teaching long-term lessons.”
How
can I teach my kids lessons that make a long-term impact ?
©2004 David Drury
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