Dear Dads, it’s back to school season. You, your kids, and your whole family are deep into the first quarter of the 2023-24 school year. Each of you faces similar yet nuanced challenges throughout the school year. There are bedtimes and wake-up times to negotiate. Meals to be made. Lunches to be bagged or paled. There may be parent-teacher meetings as well as extra-curricular activities. It’s a lot. I know. I’m a step-father who is dancing with schedules for a 17-year-old and a 9-year-old. And, like you, I’m dancing with more than just scheduled activities, but I’m also working on being a present and engaged adult in their lives to help shape them into age-appropriate maturity and to embody love and care with, to and for them (part of my WTF model for loving).
If you’re a conscientious dad or stepdad willing to take on the mantle of fatherhood, you carry more on your mind and heart. You’re not just interested in keeping your kids alive until their eighteenth birthday, only to release them into the wild of life. You’re shaping souls and character; you’re raising human beings, not animals.
If you’re like many dads, and it’s OK if you are, you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the demands of family life. You may even feel crowded out of certain speheres of family life, particularly in direct childrearing, especially in the early years of your child’s life. It is a time marked by an intense bond between child and mother and when many men feel lonely or left out. A few years later, it is more typical for dads to begin to enjoy more direct relating with their children in play and discipline and feel more integrated into the family circle.
Even as men become daddish and more involved with their children, they are often confronted with stark realities. They often suddenly experience distress and disorientation as multiple family demands and the collective emotions of the family (wife, kids, self) wash over them. For many men, maybe even for you, there is a realization that family life is hard and that the demands of shoveling ditches, turning wrenches, or constructing spreadsheets seem much more appealing. Why is this?
You, me, and other men want to feel competent. We want to operate in theatres of life where we know the rules and we understand how things work. And by extension, we enjoy the praise for a job well done. Our value is frequently apparent and reinforced by our crews, co-workers, and supervisors. That feels good. It just does. And that’s just how fine as that’s just how it works.
On the other hand, family life requires skills mostly acquired through on-the-job training. Whatever insights, willingness, and skills we have as we enter into family life are greatly influenced by our histories as children raised by men of various temperaments and skill sets, or perhaps our fathers were absent. Whatever our histories, our early lives become a template for life, including our ideas about masculinity, responsibility, and fathering.
The topic of family life and fathering is enormous. So, for that reason, I’m turning toward a few small elements of fathering and family life, which I want to offer to you here, with tips on becoming a skillful father, with hopes that you will be encouraged to embrace the mantle of fatherhood and an ever-progressing path of your own continued maturation in wisdom and your fatherly life.
Start with willingness. If you’re reading this, you’re likely open to learning from a place of humility, neither underestimating nor overestimating yourself. Many men don’t flourish in fatherhood and, incidentally, in marriage and life because they have made up their minds about how they think things should be and stunt their growth potential. Willingness is a stance of yes and flexibility toward life and learning. It’s a way of being that opens you to connect with full participation in your life, whether at work or within your family. Pay attention to what works in fathering and what doesn’t, keeping it all in the service of love and relationship between you and your kids. These are foundational and important.
Embrace the Mantle of Fatherhood. Don’t Fear Maturity. Embrace the mantle of fatherhood, understanding that you are a father by biology or, like me, by marriage and that you matter very much to your family. You matter to your kids in ways you can’t always perceive. Yes, the same kids who throw tantrums, resist bedtime, and thwart your best intentions to be a good parent bask in your presence, whether elegant or oafish. Your mere presence influences creating safety and social connection for your kids. Your willingness to show up, to breathe deeply, and to intentionally move through the mornings and evenings with your kids, cultivating love and connection, fosters deep and lasting trust. Keep in mind that you’re growing up, too. Your maturity is emerging naturally due to your willing participation in your family.
Beware of Distractions. Perhaps the greatest threats to your taking up the mantle of fatherhood and embracing a wise path into maturity are the manifold distractions of our time, which blind relational awareness, confound your sense of time, and fetter your spontaneity. Distractions present themselves in the guise of faux leisure as false downtime. Gambling, gaming, investing, pornography, shopping, and doom-scrolling hook you by “pinging” your dopaminergic neurons, prompting mind-altering pleasure that provides low-effort, high-reward activities that become increasingly compelling, even necessary as you veer into risk for addiction.
Too many men are being robbed of time among their kids due to these distractions, robbing children of that precious and rare gift of attentive presence. Rather than turning toward these distractions at the end of your day or evening, turn toward your kids. Practice true leisure with them. Color and craft with them. Go to a park. Read to them. Share mutual lounging. Let them be part of your recreation and true rest as you connect with the million hidden joys mingled with the thousand little irritations.
With the disposition of willingness, you can guard your life with your family through mindful attention, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance skills to help you to first of all, connect with your values to love and to be loved, and next, embody your values so that you can practice what your heart preaches.
Your kids are pining for you, dads. And if you cultivate mindful attention, you will, over time, grow away from your foolishness and into a wise father.