Being a good father...

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For a few reasons.. this subject has touched my mind right now. Before I launch into this, I 'll say that I've been out to the pool hall tonight and I'm pretty drunk so I'm sorry if I don't make much sense, and I hope that this isn't just a pointless topic.

What do you think makes a good father? What attributes must a person have, or pass onto a son/daughter to make him a good father?

I believe that a true 'good father' is flexible in most things that he passes onto his son. Basic discipline is the only thing that he should maintain strictness in.

Teach your child what is WRONG and make them know of that. A quick clip around the ear is good, or a solid, unmoving, definite discussion about it. Whatever. Just make sure your kid knows EXACTLY what he/she should not do. They have then decide what is 'right' by themselves, from their interactions with people. I believe, and have always believes that each person must make their own mistakes in life. People have always tried to tell me this, that and the other and I have always ignored it. I've done my own thing, made my own mistakes and learned from them. This life we get, we get once and once only and it is one for experience, not learning. Learning is boring and pointless, experience is exciting, insightful and interesting, no matter what experience you receive. In my mind, that is ALWAYS true, regardless of what you do.

Agree? Disagree? Whatever you do, don't tell me that I make stupid topics and I'm a dumbass prick (which I know most of you think of me as! I'm not, at all really).

 

Well, you ARE rambling a wee bit, but I think I get the gist of what you are trying to get at.

I guess the big thing is that none of us (even us fathers) are perfect so all we can do is do our best for what we think is right for our kids.

There is no one right way of doing that. I think you have to find the right way that suits your and your child's personality and circumstances.

Main thing is to love them unconditionally and to do what ever you can to help them grow up into happy, responsible, and independent people.

 

Hey, I've done that a few times on this board myself. I've looked at my posts the next morning, after a night of drinking, and thought, "someone else must have posted that nonsense."

Parenting is hard business. I don't have a son, but I have two daughters. I have never spanked or struck either of them. I'm really close to them and they know when I am disappointed in them, and it seems to be enough to get their attention when they misbehave.

I was talking to a parent the other night, who claimed that she had taken her 5 year old son to see the movie Saw 3. Now, I have never seen any of the Saw movies, but I know enough about them to know that I would never, ever, take my 5 year old daughter to see such a thing. When I asked her why should would do such a thing, she claimed that she wanted her son, "to have no fear of anything." I thought she was a complete, uneducated fool, but that is just my opinion (which is probably what most other people would think of her as well).

There are so many aspects of parenting and hardly enough time to post all the things that a parent strives for here, but I will say this: I would never want to live my own dreams through my kids, that would be unfair to them. They have to find out for themselves who they want to be. But regardless, they will always be "my girls" and the most important thing is that they always know it.

 

I agree with what Harb posted. Taking care of a child requires lots of love, patience and understanding but mainly love.

My father told me once that a child is like a sapling, it needs support to grow into a beautiful tree. The metaphor is apt because a tree can't fully grow in the shade of another tree and there comes a time when a parent has to let the child grow on his own. But that part shouldn't come too early.

@Chandos: the example you gave is shocking. Watching the news can be traumatic, how can somebody expect a child to discriminate between what's real and what's not when they are shown such movies. The result is bound to be some trauma for the child. Kids nowadays are so used to violence on TV that it's likely that it has consequences on their behaviour. But showing "Saw" to a child, that is madness.

 

I've never seen any of the Saw movies either, and I can't say I ever want to - I really don't go for gratuitous violence. I also cannot believe a parent would take such a young child to see a movie like that. If you "don't want them to be afraid of anything", then I do not think taking them to see gory horror films is a good way to accomplish that. I mean, isn't the point of a horror film to scare the audience? A very counter-intuitive way to accomplish the stated goal at the very least...

Anyway, I too, as an expecting father, have been thinking a lot about this with Mini-Fop on the way. It has occurred to me that it is quite likely we're going to bring this little baby home from the hospital, I'm going to sit him (well, it's likely a him) on my lap, and have a, "Gee, WTF do we do now?" moment. I don't think you can really draw up a firm plan in advance of how you are going to raise your child. Life, and children in particular, are unpredictable things, so I do not think it is possible to setup contingency plans for every conceivable scenario.

Babies don't come with instruction manuals. I would like to think that I am a little better prepared than most first-time parents, given that I am the oldest in my family, and my youngest brother is 14 years younger than me. I have seen and helped in raising a baby before. While I cannot call myself an subject matter expert in any stretch of the imagination, I think the one thing that I have learned is you have to roll with it as best you can.

I also think, from both growing up myself and seeing my younger siblings be raised, is that the most effective means of teaching them right from wrong is by example. If you show them how you do right things, they are more likely to follow your lead.

Some of my friends also have children, and one thing that always amazes me about small children is that empathy is one of the last things to develop. I don't know when it happens, and it probably is somewhat variable, but small children only think about themselves. One of our friends has a four-year old daughter, and it is clear in talking to her that she lacks the cognitive ability to understand what other people are feeling based on the situation. However, I don't remember seeing that in my little brother, so maybe it does not occur as frequently as I think...

[ March 29, 2007, 16:52: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

I think being a good friend to the person, whom in this case is a child, is a good stance from which to begin. Care about their feelings. Appreciate the uniqueness of the other person. Let their own subjective feelings blossom. Trust in their ability to become a good person. Lead by example. Walk your talk.

Of course, the specifics are the hard part...

 

@LNT - You see, I don't agree that you should be a friend. You have to first be a parent, and sometimes your responsibilities as a parent will conflict with the responsibilities of being a friend. I think that you certainly should be on good terms with your children, but a true "friendship" should really not develop until your children are close to adulthood.

 

It is possible we are not using the word 'friend' in the same manner. There is definitely an aspect of the friendship between a child and parent that is different than that between two adults. I think it is based upon knowing how the other person can be made happy better than that person knows for themselves.

But---and this may be something more particular to me than others---I only really learn what a mistake is when I have made it myself and felt the pain. I think it is important to let kids hurt themselves. I don't know...that sounded entirely too general.

I think being a 'good parent' is a self-defined thing.

I guess what I meant by 'friendship' is having an understanding of the other person. When I hear a parent speak of Billy or Suzy as "The Child", I know they are not a friend to the kid. "The Child" is an object the parent has defined in his own head. Billy is going to define himself. Suzy is going to define herself. By being a friend, I guess I mean trying to understand what that definition is, rather than seeing your own definition covering their face, and then squashing any self-definition which creeps beyond the parently-placed mask.

OK, that got crazy-analogous.

@ Barmy

I like you. You make my laugh. I'm big on people who make me laugh.

[ March 29, 2007, 18:14: Message edited by: Late-Night Thinker ]

 

@LNT - I think I see your point more clearly.

While I don't think children should be allowed to hurt themselves, I will quickly agree that there are some things one can only learn through personal experience.

A good example of this is the self-perpetuating idiocy of moving from a teen to a young adult, and eventually into your 30s, where I now place my age. Hmmm... This is going to be a fairly long-winded explanation, so bear with me here...

When I was 15, I thought I had the world figured out. I knew everything. I was young and invincible. By the time I got to 18, I looked back at my time when I was 15, and realized who freakin dumb I was to think that at 18. I realized I how much I had grown and matured as a person, and how pompous I must have sounded thinking that a few years earlier. However, that's where the self-perpetuating part fits in. Because I had learned so much more in those three years, I wrongly concluded at 18 that now I had everything figured out. So, at around the age of 21, that process repeated itself, with me realizing how dumb I was, but again concluding that now I knew. And it happened again at 24. When I reached 27, for the first time, I realized that just because I was dumb at 24, doesn't necessarily mean I'm appreciably smarter now, just that I'm not as dumb as I used to be. That turned out to be a good idea, because when I hit 30, I looked back at my life at 27 and concluded I was stupid and just didn't realize it at the time. Now, at the age of 33, for the first time, I can look back at my life of a few years ago, and conclude that back then, I was not so dumb. I'm not saying I haven't grown any as a person in the last three years, but rather that my life experiences at this point have covered most of what I need to know to pretty much figure things out. I'll continue to learn and grow, but I doubt that there will be a point that I will be able to look back a few years and say, "I was really dumb then."

So what does all this have to do with raising children? Well, basically that it is a process that you undertake for the rest of your life. Barring the unlikely possibility of your child(ren) dying before you do, once you are a parent, you remain a parent for the rest of your life. And just because your kid goes away to college at 18, or moves out of the house at 23, or gets married at 27, or whatever, it does not necessarily mean that they have everything figured out, or that you can stop worrying about them, or stop being a parent.

This is something I've only realized about my own parents in the past few years. My Mom and Dad are always going to be my Mom and Dad. No matter what I do or where I go, they are always going to have a greater breadth of life experiences to draw upon than I do (being 23 and 24 years older than me respectively), and with life experiences come wisdom. In that sense, the service you can be to your children never ends, no matter how old they get - not when they move out, not when they get married, not even when they have children of their own.

 

I reckon it develops earlier than that. Our two and a half year old can easily identify Happy, Sad, Scared, and Angry expressions and he knows when they apply. If he does something good, he asks us if we are happy and if we hurt ourselves he asks if we are sad.

 

As the father of an eleven year old boy I can chime in.

Probaby the most important thing you can teach your child is that you love them and will always be there for them. They will believe the former, but the later they will not until they need you.

We had this situation with little snook this year. He got into a situation that was beyond his ability to handle. He didn't know what to do and did what everyone does when they don't know what to do. He panicked, did nothing, and hoped it would go away. Instead it blew up into a bit of a fiasco. Mrs. Snook was furious at him, but she was more mad that he didn't come to her or me for help in the first place. I had a long talk with him, and I believe he actually got it, only time will tell.

It is very important to let them develop on their own. Parents always want the best for their kid, and live in fear of the kid making the same mistake, but mistakes are a part of the learning process.

It is a very hard job.

 

Well, obvious things like that she can do too. I'm talking something when it is not as obvious. Plus, by the fact that he is asking suggests he doesn't know for sure.

I would agree with that. I think that every parent desires that his kid does at least as well in his/her life as they have done in their life, and preferably better.

 

Experience. I think that a man needs to be in his late 20's, early 30's before he is ready to be a good father, an effective father. Of course, there are so many other things, most importantly, how well he was fathered/parented.

 

I get frightened by the "don't be a friend, be a parent" idea of child rearing because most of the people who I've heard say it take it to mean that you should be cool and distant from your kids. Their kids usually see them as stern disciplinarians who don't understand their wants, needs and feelings. Don't get me wrong...a parent plays many important roles, depending on what is needed at the moment: teacher, disciplinarian, therapist, defender, provider...but none of those roles preclude the parent from also being a friend. Sometimes, your child needs you to be a friend, too.

 

The stern disciplinarian approach will ensure your kid grows up with personality flaws. I think it's especially important that your child can view you as a friend.

 

I have no idea what current experts say but I do remember a study of a few years back that stated that consistency was important. Which seems logical to me. Mixed messages will only confuse anyone much less a child. Rules should be consistent though there may be reasons to change them. The reasons for the change should be explained based on the child's ability to understand the explanation.

 

Fair warning: I'm not a parent. But I had parents, I am surrounded by parents and by lots of other people who had parents. So here's my

I agree with Nakia about consistency. As a friend of mine whom I believe to be a very good parent said to me: You can't be moving target. Your kids need to know who you are, all the time, and it needs to be the same person, with the same expectations, all the time.

Next: you're the grownup. That's bad news, good news, I guess. I have seen too many disasters in families where the parent doesn't want to be the grownup - one of my real roll-the-eyes stories from a few years back is a man whose six-year-old daughter got frostbitten toes because she didn't want to wear socks in subfreezing weather when she went outside, and his excuse was just that SHE didn't want to put them on. Bad news, fella: you're the grownup. Six year olds don't get to decide on whether to wear socks when it's fifteen degrees F outside.

Next: you're the unconditionally loving grownup. Whatever happens, you love your children all the time. You set the boundaries and gradually hand over more decision making to them, and when they botch their decisions you love them anyway.

And regarding decisions, one of my parent friends advocates natural consequences. That is, if you decide to ride your bike off the porch, she'll take you to the emergency room and get that broken arm treated, but she's not going to tell you it's OK, it's not your fault. It is your fault. You need to learn when it's your fault.

And, one last thing, I greatly agree with the danger of being too distant. This has been a great problem for fathers in the U.S. in the past, who accepted a social role that kept them distant. Both boys and girls need to know that their parents love them and need to feel close to their parents. And based on my own good fortune in having a very good father, I would point out how important it is for a teenaged girl to know her father loves her and values her as a maturing person and therefore can help her resist the relentless onset of peer pressure to be pretty, be sexy, be naughty, put out, lose weight . . . see what I mean? Yes, there is complicated sexual tension there - you get to be the grownup again, surprise, surprise - but she will come out of adolescence much happier and healthier if she had a loving, consistent, grownup father to help her through it.

Whew. For not being a parent I've got lots of ideas. Hope I'm not disqualified for that reason.

 

One thing to remember is that millions of people are parents and half of them have no idea what they're doing, but most kids turn out reasonably OK, so you're unlikely to do much that is too badly wrong.

 

Oh, yes remember that just as there is no perfect child there is no perfect parent. So listen to Harbourboy, chances are good both you and your children will survive their childhood.

 

I don't like the sense of the "don't be a friend, be a parent" mentality myself at all, but, that being said, you definitely want to be a parent first, and a friend next. Let's face it, being a parent will probably, occasionally mean that you can't be your kid's friend at the same time.

Other than that, teach him what's wrong and teach him responsability. ESPECIALLY if you don't teach him what you think is right, teach him to take responsability for the results of his actions.

This is such a complex issue. I've heard so many things on this, like "Experience is the best teacher" and "Experience is the worst teacher, it gives the test before teaching the lesson". I'd say, however, that we are designed to learn from each other, and it is a good thing. There's no good reason your children need to make the same dumb mistakes you did, when they can learn from your dumb mistakes and make their own, different dumb mistakes. Learning is not always boring and pointless, it can be fun, exciting, and incredibly useful, if you teach the right things the right ways. Good luck on figuring that one out.