Category / Building Skills

This category houses posts having to do with things we need to learn and do well as fathers.

by Michael

Harvey Dickson on “What My Father’s Dementia Told Me”

I read this provoking and compelling piece, “What My Father’s Dementia Told Me,” by Harvey Dickson.  You can read the full post here at the NYT blog.

I was the copy editor assigned to work on Alex Witchel’s memoir about her mother’s dementia. I was fortunate because her writing is compelling and didn’t need any help from me, and also because it forced me to focus on the quality of my father’s dementia, maybe for the first time.

Alex is right: the first whispers of dementia are only obvious years later.

Sometime in 2008, I went to visit my parents, cook for them, do some shopping for them. They were already infirm: my mother in her early 80s, my father approaching 90. At the dinner table, I mentioned the Cadieux Cafe, a Belgian bar on the East Side of Detroit, where several generation of my family have lived. My father jumped in with his memories: long-distance bike races sponsored by the cafe in the 1920s, visits there as a young man in the 1930s. But at some point, he got a far-away look in his eyes, which was not his usual look. He was in his father’s car. “I was standing on the seat next to him. I was just a little guy. We stopped in front of the Cadieux Cafe.” The look on my father’s face shifted. “He went in and didn’t come out. He was in there so long. So long. I must have been crying and raising hell in the car, because a couple men in hats stopped to talk to me, and then they went in to get him.” At this point, my father slammed his fist on the table, levitating the silverware, and shouted, “I was never close to my father.” That my father would have any kind of emotional outburst not related to Notre Dame football was unimaginable. My mother and I were shocked into silence.

Those moments in which his mind left us and went somewhere else came more often, especially after he was hospitalized on Christmas Eve 2008 for a severe infection. After his release, he was in a rehabilitation facility for three months. My mother and I were visiting him one Sunday afternoon when a therapy dog bounded into the day room. My mother said, “Doesn’t that dog remind you of Bammie.”

I thought, Mom, don’t bring up Bammie.

There were several Bammies, but the first was a dog my father adopted, on Okinawa or another island as his Marine unit moved across the Pacific Ocean during World War II. Looking at the therapy dog, my father said that one day he ordered a corporal to watch Bammie while he went out on a patrol, telling the poor guy (as my father told us), “You guard that dog and make sure he’s here when I come back, or I will shoot you in the head.” (That statement was punctuated with a word common to active-duty and retired Marines.) Within a few weeks, his unit was ordered to move on to the next island. The day of the redeployment, Bammie was missing. My father wasn’t really talking to us, but he said: “We waded out to the boats. I was calling his name. The motors were already running. And then I saw him. He was running down the beach. He jumped in the water and swam out to the boat. I pulled him in. . . .” And by this point in the story, my father was sobbing. He and Bammie rode the boat out to the troop ship and, eventually, with the help of sympathetic Air Force pilots, the first Bammie ended up on the East Side of Detroit.

My father’s dementia was hardest, of course, on my mother, who was mentally sound but depleted from fighting her non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She was with him 24 hours a day, when he wasn’t hospitalized for his physical problems. She endured his mood swings, the endless repetition of the same questions, his obsessive monitoring of her whereabouts. Drugs helped. His night panics decreased and he seemed calmer, but we could see a constant and permanent decline. I did what I could when I visited once or twice a month, but each time I came back to New York feeling guilty and helpless and relieved.

To finish reading, click here.

by Michael

Similar Sounds

Bryce reminded me the other evening that the wind and the rain sound the same when listening to the leaves.  We were leaving our courtyard, where there is a narrow passageway about two hundred feet long.  Alongside the way is a building to one side and a parking lot separating townhouses.  We were looking up, following squirrels, on our way to the park for a while before dinner.

The green leaves rustled over us.  He said that it was raining.  The air was moist, and it had rained a bit earlier that day.  “No, I told him.  That’s the wind.”

He looked at me and I wondered if he was telling himself that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.  He decided to do what he’s been doing more of lately, repeat what I said.  “That’s the wind.”

And while we walked, passing dogs and people and stopping at corners to look for cars, I thought about his perspective.  I thought about how far I am from thinking simply that many of nature’s sounds are similar.

I hadn’t pushed the issue with him, but had I been thinking, I could’ve given him a pass.  I could have said that it was raining.  I could have said it was raining leaves and that if we stayed longer that a few of them would soon fall.  I could have told him that we should stick around in the wind, continue looking up, and run around together trying our best to catch falling leaves.

by Michael

Considering Ways aka Timeouts

Bryce was thrilled by the time our company came Saturday night.  He didn’t speak to any of them as they walked down our hall or while they stepped into our unit.  He gave them—or himself—a few minutes to acquaint with his home.  He let them look around the space, see what was his.  Then he warmed up.

He jumped around.  He leaped and fell to the floor.  He got his microphone and sang.  He pulled in the little blue keyboard and played.  His voice rose with excitement.  He was fine until I told him to have a seat.  All the little wind blew from his sails.

He stared at me as if to judge whether I was serious.  I held his little eyes with my own, saying nothing for a long enough moment for his head to tilt in question form.  The image of his black hair moving, the rest of his body upright, was the image of a question mark.  I asked if he heard me.  He nodded.  I offered my predictable, “Well?”

I knew what would happen.  All those onlookers made it too interesting for him to comply.  I imagined all the questions running in his mind, all of his body’s little needs which his brain burst from left to right.  Why obey when the command from the big guy was to sit?  He can’t really expect me to sit.  There’s too much to be done.  Circles to run in, leaps to jump, people with arms to rush.  So much to be done.  My daddy must be playing.

I wasn’t.  My look was not ambiguous.  I asked better questions: would you like a time out?  Do you need a timeout?  No was his reply to these.  Again, he was predictable.  Often, when I talk about timeouts, I use the language of Bryce considering his ways.  My question may be: do you need a moment to consider your ways?  Or, would you like to sit and consider things?

So I invited him to a conversation.  Sometimes I send him to the chair to consider.  Sometimes I talk to him first.  Saturday, before sending him to the space where he could, alone, consider how soon he should respond to his father, I brought him to the other room.  We talked, together.  I explained what he knew.  He yessed in the form of several nods, his head moving up and down with the only interruption being occasional glances to the room where everything fun was happening without him.

We went back into the room.  He sat down immediately.  He had heard me.  He had understood me just like his nodding said.  But it all started again moments later.  All the same questions.  All the same answers.  Except that there was no additional consultation.  There was only high-pitched screaming as he walked away from the social climate that he loved and traded it for the lonely spot he didn’t.

by Michael

Acute Otitis Media

From the good folks at wedMD:

The typical ear infection, called otitis media, occurs when a cold or allergy causes swelling of the baby’s eustachian tube, causing blockage that allows bacteria to grow in the middle ear. Otitis media is particularly common in babies because their immune systems are immature and their eustachian tubes may not effectively drain fluid from the middle ear. There are two types of middle ear infections. Acute otitis media often causes pain, fever, and a bulging red eardrum. Otitis media with effusion (OME) occurs when the middle ear doesn’t drain properly and fluid is trapped behind the eardrum.

From our experience yesterday:

Whining, crying, and not cooperating at daycare; holding his ear during playtime and refusing comfort; parents being called twice, until parents confer to change schedules—so one can keep an appointment and the other can worry over making up work; an afternoon doctor’s appointment where the doctor said she’d be crying with this infection; ice cream from Brown Sugar Bakery mostly for the parents (somewhat unrelated); and the blessing of pain killers that taste like strawberry and a ten-days supply of grape-smelling medication (for the boy, of course).

by Michael

Raising Creative Kids

Thanks to the creative and thoughtful Jillian who sent this to me the other day.  Read the full article by clicking here.

Research is demonstrating that children rapidly lose their creative thinking skills as they grow older. Moreover, by the time children reach adolescence, the way they think is largely fixed. So the more you encourage your children to use more of their minds in order to think more creatively, the more likely you are to raise exceptionally creative children.

Here are suggestions for encouraging and maintaining creativity in your children.

1. Answer Questions with Questions.

Children ask lots of questions. As parents, we tend to give them direct answers. “What does ‘invertebrate’ mean?” a child might ask while watching a television documentary. A typical parent response is: “It means an animal that does not have a backbone.” There is nothing wrong with such an answer. It is correct. It provides your child with the information she seeks. But, why not ask: “What do you think ‘invertebrate’ means?” Your child has just watched a documentary about animals and has a lot of context in her mind. Very likely she can put that context together and hazard a good guess. Indeed, she has possibly done this already and is simply seeking confirmation. If her answer is correct, reward her and ask her how why she felt it was the correct answer. If her answer is wrong, reward her and ask her why she thought this was the answer. Then, reward her thinking and explain the correct answer. If you are not sure about the correct answer, see the next suggestion. Encouraging your child to gather information and make deductions based on that information is a form of creative problem solving. Make it a habit!

2. Find Answers Together

As your children grow older, they will increasingly often ask questions that you cannot answer. As a parent, you may occasionally feel the need to cover up your ignorance. After all, your children look to you as the ultimate source of knowledge. At other times one of your children will ask a question in which you believe you know the correct answer, but are not sure.

Rather than hazard a guess at the answer, a better response is, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure. I believe the answer is….” and then add, “Let’s find out the correct answer.” Then do some research with your child in order to find that answer. That research may be a simple matter of searching on the web. But do not neglect other possibilities. Perhaps you have a book on the subject. Fetch it and look it up. Your child might be interested in reading the book. Go to the library. Before the age of the web and Google, libraries were the best information resource available. They are still wonderful places of reference with the added benefit that you often find interesting information that you were not seeking.

You might also try experiments and illustration. When my science loving son asked why, if you drive a car around a curve too fast and lose control, you should turn into the skid, I drew a sketch showing how the different forces were at work in a car accelerating around a curve. This made it very clear.

3. Reward Failure

We all talk about the importance of accepting and rewarding failure in business. Yet all too many parents punish failure directly or indirectly. Your son enters a swimming competition and comes in last. How do you respond? “Maybe swimming isn’t for you?” “I told you that you had to practice more!” “Ralph took second place and he’s two years younger than you!”. Even a caring parent is likely to say something dismissive: “It doesn’t matter. I love you the way you are.”

Sadly, all of these responses are likely to discourage your son from ever entering a swimming competition again. Worse, they might discourage him from trying other things in which he is unsure of his capability.

A far better response is, “I am so proud of you for entering the swimming competition and trying so hard.” And if your son feels badly, do not immediately tell him it doesn’t matter. Instead ask him, “Why do you think you came in last?” This gives him and you a chance to analyse the problem so he can do better next time. Maybe he became too nervous and wasn’t breathing correctly. That’s great! Now you can talk about how he can deal with nervousness and breathing next time.

4. Teach Them to Cook

Cooking and especially baking, is an incredible creative process. Think about a cake. You start with flour, eggs, sugar and a handful of other ingredients. Mix them and bake them and you have a wonderful cake. An ex-girlfriend of mine, who trained as a chemist (but is now a leading virologist), went so far as to explain to my sons some of the chemical processes that occur when cooking.

Once your kids learn the basics of baking a cook, making cookies or frying an omelet, let them experiment. And do not correct them beforehand unless they are endangering themselves, others or your kitchen. If they want to put twice as much chocolate in the cake, let them. If they want to see what happens if they use a brown sugar instead of white sugar, let them. Chances are, they will not ruin the cake. But by experimenting and seeing what happens, they learn a valuable creative process. Moreover, when things go wrong, they can often be fixed. The cake is too dry? Make a moist frosting.

This is creative problem solving at its best!

5. Feed Your Children a Healthy, Balanced Diet

A healthy mind and body feel better, deliver more energy and think better. Moreover, if you get your children in the habit of eating healthy food from an early age, it will form a life-long habit. They will be far less likely to have weight problems or health problems as they grow older. They will look better, have more energy and smell better. And most importantly, in the context of creativity, they will think better.

The amazing thing is, eating a healthy diet is remarkably easy. It is a simple matter of getting a suitable balance of the key food groups while minimising the amount of sugary and fatty foods you eat. Britain’s National Health Service has a nifty diagram of a balanced diet here.

In addition to eating a balanced diet, allow kids to stop eating when they are full and restrict the amount of sweets and non-healthy snacks they can eat (though let them eat healthy snacks, such as fruit, when they are hungry between meals). Forcing children to eat all the food on their plates and rewarding them with a huge dessert if they do so only encourages overeating.

by Michael

3 Ways to Stay Engaged

I saw this here and wanted it on my blog.  What would you add to Maria Lloyd’s list?

Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult to work a full-time job and raise a family- especially as a single parent. Thanks to technology, we’re plugged into work even when we’re at home. It’s imperative to balance your life in a way that is rewarding for you and your children. Spending quality time with your children is imperative for your role as a parent and also for their growth as a child. Although I do not have children of my own, I am someone’s child, so I can relate to the need for attention from parents. Below are 3 ways you, a working single parent, can stay engaged in your child’s life:

1. Eat with them.

You have to eat. Instead of eating breakfast before your child wakes up or putting your child to bed and having dinner alone, eat with them. Children have a wealth of information to share with you about their day. Listen to them very closely. There may be some negative, external influences that you may need to remove them from.Time allotted: 30-45 minutes

2. Read with them.

Share your favorite bedtime story with your child. It is a memory that you and him/her can cherish together for the rest of your lives. It can also become a tradition in your family, so that when your child has his/her own children, they will read the same story and share the same appreciate for it with their own family. Time allotted: 20-30 minutes

3. Give them “homework” in your absence

I strongly encourage you to consider another career if spending face-to-face time with your child is impossible; however, if you’re temporarily unable to spend face-to-face time with your children due to a short-term assignment at work, give them “homework” in your absence. It can be as simple as having them journal their day or as complex as writing a book report. Whichever assignment you give them, make sure you actively check it and leave them feedback on their work. This “homework” helps them to remember that although you’re not physically in their presence, you’re still actively involved in their life. Time allotted: 10-20 minutes (checking the assignment and providing feedback)

by Michael

9 Things Never to Say to Working Moms

I saw this article on Edith’s wall and thought I’d pass these points on, leaving the explanations out.  What would you add?  I’d add dads to the picture because I’m not sure I’d want to hear any of these addressed to me either.

1. Do you really have to work?

2. Aren’t you concerned about not being there for your kids?

3. Did you hear about that study on children of working moms?

4. It must be nice to get a break from the kids.

5. You’re so lucky to work from home. But why do you need a nanny?

6. “Why have kids if someone else is going to take care of them?”

7. You have another school event? Didn’t you just leave early last week?

8. “I’d miss my kids too much if I worked.”

9. Women should be at home with their children.

Again, the article is here if you’d like to see the explanations with the main points.

by Michael

Embarrassments, Discipline, & Love

Pastors and their spouses who are parents have been in the media lately for doing nutty things.  In the last few months, I’ve listened to stories about ministers who’ve physically abused their kids.  Spouses have sexually molested their foster children.  And there have been mentionings about corporal punishment, malnutrition, and deprivation.  The latest story I’m aware of was written last week when a Georgia pastor was arrested because his daughter called the police after he hit her.

It seems that the teenage daughter disrespected her father and probably hit him.  It seems that the father responded by hitting her.  There are probably many details.  I’ve read a few responses to what happened.  It’s unavoidable on the pages of some of the things I peruse.

My conflict has been over the fact that the father hit his daughter.  My double standard’s coming up there, sure.  But I just can’t wrap my head around a man hitting a woman, a girl.  My conflict hasn’t exactly been over the hitting itself.  I keep wondering about the mother’s proximity to the escalating situation that landed the father in jail.

I guess the current question is, is this an embarrassing moment for the pastor.  He told his congregation that he should have never been arrested.  He relied on that long historical parental practice of physically disciplining your child.  People feel a lot of things about physical discipline.  Me among them.

Yesterday in this article on Essence, Demetrius Lucas wrote

Our collective cultural acceptance of beating our kids is not for their benefit or in their best interest. It’s primitive, a symptom of our own inability to handle frustration constructively. It is not okay to treat our children this way, nor should we sweep it under the rug when others allegedly do it too.

I agree with much of the article and all of the spirit beneath and around it, my disagreements being apparent in this post.  The last thing I want to do is enter the discussion on the merits of physical discipline.  My flat answer is of course there’s merit.  I happily tell people, if I’m asked, that I’m raising a black child and that I am using every possible way to parent him.  I am loving him with everything available to me, and if that child of mine requires me putting my hands on him to restrain, spank, check, or correct him, I will.  I did it this week when he pinched a little girl in a birthday party pool.  The physical discipline was me pulling him to me, holding his arms, opening his hands, and telling him not to pinch the girl again.

Of course, I will respect the laws around physical discipline (though I don’t stay up on them).  Indeed, I will even read beyond the language of the laws because in the collective experience of the people from whom I come, laws are tricky.  Laws enabled my forebears to be physically punished in a gross assortment of ways.  So the idea of someone saying what black parents should do needs some room in my approach.  I’m first among them who say that that history complicates the practice of punishment.  It does, but our history doesn’t require dispensing with it as a good option either.

I think the general wisdom in scripture is like all the proverbs; they are general principles that can be practiced in general.  That’s the mistake we make with quoting proverbs and basing our entire parental philosophy on one reading of this or that.  We go too far.  I don’t want too go to far.

I want to parent in a way that my practices aren’t hidden.  In a way that my ways are seen.  Like my love for the boy, I have little issue with my closest people, those who watch my life, telling me what they think, pressing me with hard questions that make me change.  They will know my love for the kid.  They will recognize my familiar refrain from time to time, when I tell my son that he will obey his parents, that he will not go to prison, that he will be a good person.  I tell him that he is great and that great people listen to the folks who love him.  I tell him these and other things.  I pronounce them over him, often.

I suppose it would be embarrassing to you, if we were eating together in a restaurant, and you heard me go into this for Bryce.  Chewing your chicken, I go on telling him to stop doing something silly like throwing a fork, and I say, you will obey me little boy.  You will not go to prison.  But, alas, that’s a part of the potential picture, isn’t it?

I usually don’t need to touch my son to restrain him.  He responds mostly to what I say.  But the objective of my life concerning him is to love him well.  And love brings results.  When my words don’t, I improvise and do what’s next.  That’s not always punishment; sometimes it’s doing something with him.  We may have to put our forks down together.  We may have to sip water instead.  But sometimes the next thing is punishment.  And sometimes that punishment gets physical.  I may need to snatch the fork he’s gripped inside his little hand.  That may hurt him, but it may also be necessary.  I may need to restrict him when he’s running from me on the sidewalk by clenching (in his physical experience it would be that) his hand while explaining that cars are big and he is small.  None of these options would be an embarrassment for me to engage in because all of them would be done with love.

You have anything to say on the matter?  I really do have thick skin.

by Michael

The Gift of Secondhand Gifts

I am fond of telling my son that he owns nothing.  “Everything you have is a gift,” I tell him.  This is a standard response to the boy when he grasps something to claim it, when a fellow small person has taken a toy from Bryce even when he’s not playing with it, or when Bryce claims that something is “mine” while he’s taking it off his mother’s plate.

Nothing is yours, I’ll say.  That was a gift to you.  Somebody shared that with you.  And when someone shares something, it means that thing belongs to more than you.

I used to tell my son that everything he had belonged to me.  I used to fuss about Dawn telling him to go to his room and not to the room we loaned him.  “That’s mine.  That’s your mom’s.”  Sometimes I still invoke that almighty parental ownership language.

More often, though, I’m reminding Bryce that when he looks around, he is almost always seeing something that was a gift.  A gift is something that once was held in the hands of another and then (hopefully) freely given to the receiver.  In that way, all gifts are secondhand.  A gift is a reminder that what we need shows up in the hands of people.

In my life as a parent, gifts have been a long-standing reminder of how God blesses our family, even before the boy was born.  People were giving stuff we needed.  When we didn’t know what we’d need, these secondhand gifts were coming in the mail room.

Another example comes in bed clothes.  Most of Bryce’s pajamas belonged to his cousin Eliot at one time.  I have no idea how Eliot got them.  But, after bathing, when we dress the boy in these secondhand garments, he usually says, “Eliot’s.”  It took me a few weeks to find something else to say.  My reply was “Yes, that was Eliot’s.”  Then the reply became “Yes, Eliot gave these to you.”  That morphed into, “Eliot wanted you to have them” and “Eliot shared them with you, so they’re yours now.”

I hope these reminders, the ones all over our home, the ones in my kid’s laundry pile, become steady ways we learn how to give and how to receive.  I hope they teach us in implicit and explicit way to recall all our family’s gifts.

by Michael

Doctor’s Appointments & Other Milestones

His doctor stood his unclothed self on the scale.  She took his weight the way my doctor took mine.  She pulled the long “big boy” ruler out and told us how tall he was.  They were at the table.  He sat there, watching that light, tracking his doctor’s movement.  Her voice was soft and light, filled with some playful tone all the kids must love.  He took her in through the entire exam.  I told Dr. Jenny that he was trying to convince her not to make him take any vaccines.  He was smiling, occasionally singing, even though he wouldn’t sing his doctors doctors song.

She bent down and talked to him.  She asked him questions, in between talking to me and Dawn about his last few weeks and how he hadn’t really slept well in the last week.  She gave him that wood thing they stick on your tongue that always makes me think of manicures.  Bryce took it and smiled.  She asked his permission to look for monkeys in his ears.  He said yes, and I was silently surprised because he really hates for us to look in his ears.  He must have known she was only looking and not cleaning.  He must have believed allowing the doctor to do these things would prevent an upcoming needle meeting.

He would need two needle sticks, she told us.  I think me and Dawn looked at one another; we took deep breaths.  She goodbyed to our boy because the doctor didn’t have the hardest job.  The nurse did.

She entered with the tray.  The tray was what Bryce saw first.  He learned what the tray was early on, well before his memory structures formed.  He doesn’t remember everything yet, but he remembers the tray.  He kept silent when the nurse spoke to him.  She asked him if he was ready.  He didn’t answer.  She told Dawn to sit on the exam table and hold him.  Bryce was still cool.  He stared at the nurse, followed her movements, listened as she told him exactly what was about to happen.

Every other shot came back before me during moments like this.  The same nurse from last night was the first person responsible for making my boy scream during those first months.  There was a woman in dark navy scrubs and gym shoes.  Another wore a blue coat.  I remembered all of their gloves, flapping at their wrists right before they held that blasted point.  Bryce didn’t know what that point meant, but I did.  I’d flash back without fail to that time in Dr. Parsons’ office, as a boy, when I yelled for my mama to save me and he told her to “tell him okay, tell him okay.”

Bryce has lungs like mine.  I heard the clink of the implements on the shiny tray.  I thought about those early days when he was so small, when he didn’t react until a second and a half later because his head and neck muscles weren’t listening to him quite then.  They weren’t following sharp points.  Life was so much more innocent.

I readied myself.  Dawn held him lovingly, her arm bracing his other one so he wouldn’t snap.  The nurse cleaned the area of impact as Bryce volunteered his hand.  She explained it to my son.  He heard her, probably nodded as if to say he understood.  She cotton ball dried the finger.  I sat there and tried to close my ears.

He gave no sound when the finger prick ended.  The nurse talked to him about his fingers.  She placed the long thin tube at his small spot of blood to collect the redness.  She told him and us that sometimes it took effort to get blood from babies.  When she prepped the next spot, there was more worry.  Surely two pricks in one sitting invited disastrous wailing.  There was a baby in another room, down the hall, still yelling from when we first arrived.

Bryce took the needle into his arm without a sound.  His eyes bulged, his head steadied, but he didn’t flinch as the kind woman ushered that familiar stick into his forearm.  Imagine our collective shock when he sat and took the next needle with as much quiet as the first.

After she pulled the needle, he turned to look at me.  The clouds of disappointment, the tenderness of his skin, came up to his brain.  His brows furrowed, and I touched his arm and rubbed it and told him he was great and strong and brave.  He didn’t go into that common place of frightful yelling.  Dawn was yaying and congratulating him the way she does when he says that he’s gone to the potty.  Even though he says it sometimes when he hasn’t actually gone.  The nurse voiced her pleasant surprise.  Those words—all of our words—distracted him.  I thought about it later and asked myself what I would’ve said if he did, in fact, cry.  Would I have called him strong?  Would I have said he was still great?  Would I have held him like his mother was holding him and said nothing at all, choosing instead to comfort him wordlessly?

The nurse missed no beats.  She flipped through her pockets.  Her hand was filled with little paper pieces.  I looked up at my boy’s eyes as she went from one sticker to another.  She asked him which one he wanted.  She gave him two stickers, and when he saw Elmo, he brightened and sang Elmo’s name the way a friend would when seeing another friend walking toward them.  And all of us lifted and sighed with joy because Bryce liked Elmo so much that the momentary pain of getting tested for lead and stuck for TB was so far away from the red friendly face smiling at our growing child.

by Michael

Prepared For Manhood

I saw this post by Earl Hipp.  I think you’ll be interested in the work he’s discussing, in the film and follow up.  It may help you think of creative ways to heal your hurts or the wounds of folks you touch.

An engaged and loving father is the most powerful man-making force on the planet. The opposite is also true. When fathers are absent, physically or emotionally, the wound that results is profound. It touches a man to his core and forever leaves him with the question, “Am I good enough as a person and a man?” All men long to hear the biblical pronouncement from a father, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” The truth is that too many men and young males did not and do not hear it, and we are all paying the price as a result.

In my research for the Man-Making book, countless men offered up clear statements of their sense of masculine insufficiency as one of the barriers keeping them from being involved with and supporting young males. Too many men said they had been poorly prepared for manhood, their fathers had been unavailable, and as a result, they felt, as men, they didn’t have anything to offer boys. In the most tragic stories, some men felt such low masculine-esteem they believed their involvement with a boy would be damaging or hurtful to the young man. You can be certain that behind many of those stories is an invisible but still-open father wound.

In the Rite of Passage and group-mentoring work men are now doing with young males, an all too common story is about pathologically disengaged or abusive fathers or dads who were simply never part of a boy’s life. In the emotionally safe and supportive place that’s created, if it’s time, young males have the emotional room and permission to give up their deeply shielded and buried grief about their father wound. Often this shows up as powerful anger or deep sobbing. The tears in the eyes of so many of the men who hear these boy-stories are damp testimony to the pervasiveness of this father wound, and the core emptiness of the men that carry it. I have my own story about a present, but unavailable, shaming and emotionally terrorizing, alcoholic father.

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