So you're a Dad!
Once a Dad, always a Dad. Here are 3 generations of Dads and one potential Dad!
Me?
We have to admit it! Men haven't got the greatest reputation for reading or even talking about personal things like being a father. It's a bit like putting IKEA furniture together. The instructions are there for women! If it's well designed putting it together should be intuitive, and if it's not, well it's IKEA's fault, not ours!
You may be the exception. Well, at least you're reading this! Keep going. Remember: be nice to your children - they are the ones who will choose your retirement home!
You may just have had your first child, or you may be struggling with a veritable nest of 24 hour toddler trouble. You may have survived all that and are now, not so expertly, navigating you're way through the teenage years, or they may have already left home (hurrah). Doesn't matter. There are some common principles which apply all the way through.
You're not a Mum
The difference is profound. It isn't just that women can't read maps and men can't listen. Men and women are equal but very different. Mothers can read and understand their children to a depth that fathers don't seem to be able to. You will do well to take notice of the distinct abilities of your partner, and not belittle it either openly or in your mind.
Although the traditional role models for fathers and mothers are changing, often for the better, your distinctives as a father are your strengths. By playing to yours, you will allow your partner to play to hers. Incidentally, you will also find you have a motherly instinct as well, which will enable you to fill in or take over when you need to, and this will be true for your partner as well.
Yesterday's baggage
Unfortunately, both you and your partner will probably have grown up with your parents modelling a very different way of relating. And your own parents may also have done their job in a very different way to the parents of your partner.
Either way, your personal experience is likely to be just as harmful and it is helpful! There will be times when your approach to a problem will be different to your partner. Be alert to the possibility that this comes, sometimes unconsciously, from how she saw her parents deal with it.
SuperDad
Even if you think you should be able to, you cannot be everything you're children need. As well as their mother and you, they need other adults and children to provide input and other viewpoints.
They will get this at school, when you're not there. So make your mind up that you will not be able to control everything that is input to your child. It is not even desirable. Control can become manipulative. One of your roles is to live the standards that you want to pass on to your child. Once done, your child must discern, for themselves, what is right as well as what is not right.
Site published by 3 Counties Church (www.3countieschurch.org), Haslemere, England, Nov 2004