The Complete Parenting Collection. Steve Biddulph

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      FIVE FATHERING ESSENTIALS

      All fathers have one thing in common: they would like to be good dads. The problem is, if we weren’t given great fathering ourselves, and many of us weren’t, how do you turn good intentions into action? What if you just never got the ‘software’? The best way is to hang around other men and learn from what they do, see what you would copy and what you would never repeat! From talking to hundreds of men, here are five basic clues …

      1. Start early. Be involved in the pregnancy – talk with your partner about your hopes for the child, your plans and dreams for how you want your family to be. Plan to be at the birth – and stick to the plan! Go to some birth classes, especially those just for fathers, which are being offered more and more. Once your baby is born, get involved in baby care right from the start. Have a specialty. Bathing is good: they are slippy little suckers, but it’s a fun time and a big help. This is the key time for relationship-building. Caring for a baby ‘primes’ you hormonally and alters your life priorities. So beware! Fathers who care for babies physically start to get fascinated and very in tune with them – it’s called ‘engrossment’. Men can become the expert at getting babies back to sleep in the middle of the night – walking them, bouncing, singing gently, or whatever works for you! Don’t settle for being awkward around babies – keep at it, get support and advice from the baby’s mother and other experienced friends. And take pride in your ability.

      If you have a demanding career, use your weekends or holidays to get immersed in your child. From when your child is two, encourage your partner to go away for the weekend with her girlfriends and leave you and your toddler alone – so both you and she know you are capable and can ‘do it all’. Try to clean up before she gets home – this really impresses spouses.

      2. Make time. This is the bottom line, so listen closely. For fathers, this may be the most important sentence in this whole book: if you routinely work a fifty-five- or sixty-hour week, including commute times, you just won’t cut it as a dad. Your sons will have problems in life, your daughters will have self-esteem issues, and it will be down to you. Fathers need to get home in time to play, laugh, teach and tickle their children. Corporate life, and also small business, can be enemies of the family. Often fathers find the answer is to accept a lower income and be around their family more. Next time you’re offered a promotion involving longer hours and more nights away from home, seriously consider telling your boss, ‘Sorry, my kids come first’.

      3. Show your love. Hugging, holding and playing tickling and wrestling games can take place right through to adulthood! Do gentler things, too – kids respond to quiet storytelling, sitting together, singing or playing music. Tell your kids how great, beautiful, creative and intelligent they are (often, and with feeling). If your parents were not demonstrative, you will just have to learn.

      Some dads fear that cuddling their son will turn him into a ‘sissy’. In fact, the reverse is probably true. Sons whose dads are affectionate and playful with them will be closer to their fathers, want to emulate them more, and be comfortable in the company of men. For both sons and daughters, a dad’s affection is vital. A child can’t understand that you work long hours, worry over tax forms or scrimp and save for his future, because that’s not something he can see or touch. Kids know they are loved through touch and eye contact and laughter and fun. Affection is reassuring – it conveys love in a way that words cannot. Children who are hugged and kissed feel safer in the world, and when Dad does it too, they are doubly secure.

      4. Lighten up. Enjoy your kids. Being with them out of guilt or obligation is second-rate – they sense you are not really there in spirit. Experiment to find those activities that you both enjoy. Take the ‘pressure to achieve’ off your kids: when you play a sport or game, don’t get into too much heavy coaching or competition. Remember to laugh and muck about. Only enrol them in one, or at most two organised sports or activities, so they have time to just ‘be’. Reduce ‘racing-around’ time, and devote it instead to walks, games and conversations. Avoid over-competitiveness in any activity beyond what is good fun. Teach your kids, continuously, everything you know.

      5. Heavy down. Some fathers today are lightweight ‘good-time’ dads who leave all the hard stuff to their partners. After a while of this, these partners start to say, ‘I have three kids, and one of them is my husband’. There is an unmistakable indicator for this – when your sex life declines badly!

      Get involved in the decisions and discussions in the kitchen, help to supervise homework and housework. Develop ways of discipline that are calm but definite. Don’t hit – although with young children you may have to gently hold and restrain them from time to time. Don’t shout if you can help it. Aim to be the person who stays calm, keeps things on track, and pushes the discussion on about how to solve behaviour problems. You are in charge through your clarity, focus and experience, not through being bigger and meaner. Do listen to your kids, and take their feelings into account. You are on a gradient, from being totally in charge of a baby or toddler, through to being on an equal footing with a 21-year-old who pays for dinner.

      Talk with your partner about the big picture: ‘How are we going overall? What changes are needed?’ Parenting as a team can add a new bond between you and your partner. Check with your partner if you are stuck or don’t know how to react. You don’t have to have all the answers – no-one does. Parenthood is about making mistakes, fixing them, and moving right along.

      In short

      All through the primary school years and into early secondary school, boys should spend a lot of time with their fathers and mothers, gaining their help, learning how to do things, and enjoying their company. From an emotional viewpoint, the father is now more significant. The boy is ready to learn from his dad, and listens to what he has to say. Often he will take more notice of his father. It’s enough to drive a mother wild!

      This window of time – from about age six to the fourteenth birthday – is the major opportunity for a father to have an influence on (and build the foundations of masculinity in) his son. Now is the time to ‘make time’. Little things count: playing in the backyard on summer evenings; going for walks and talking about life and telling him about your own childhood; working on hobbies or sports together, just for the enjoyment of doing it. This is when good memories are laid down, which will nourish your son, and you, for decades to come.

      Don’t be deterred if your son acts ‘cool’, as he has learnt to do this from his schoolmates. Persist and you will find a laughing, playful boy just under the surface. Enjoy this time when he really is wanting to be with you. By mid-adolescence his interests will pull him more and more into the wider world beyond. All I can do here is plead with you – don’t leave it too late!

       PRACTICAL HELP

      WHEN BOYS ARE SHORT

      Parents sometimes worry if their son is not growing as tall as other boys. Indications are that this worry is needless. A study of 180 boys aged eight to fourteen found that short children are no more likely to be maladjusted than taller children.

      Earlier research suggested shorter youngsters were more likely to be shy, anxious or depressed, but times have changed, and more recent studies have not found this to be so. If a child is praised and valued, and has good communication within the family, then being different will cause much less stress.

      In the study, short boys described themselves as less socially active, but did not have more behaviour problems than boys of average height. Girls in the study СКАЧАТЬ