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Just two minutes! Please take this time to view this video, and if you agree the message is worthwhile, please share it. This is an issue that doesn't get enough attention for all the good it would do if brought under control. Thank you for your time and help! Mike
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 "The Power of Dadhood: How to Become the Father Your Child Needs"
This book on parenting, mainly from the point of view of the father, is about what you can do as a parent to preclude your children from having or causing trouble in their lives. If you can be the kind of father who understands the principles herein, the likelihood of your children having successful lives is enhanced immensely! What will you learn or confirm by reading this book:
Michael Byron Smith Author Published by Familius, LLC. Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.  Our two daughters and two of our grand daughters at last year's Alzheimer's Walk. I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day! I saw many homes surrounded by cars signaling a celebration. Florist trucks were busy going from one mom’s house to another, although my mom never got her flowers delivered. I hope she believes that I really did order them! I think she trusts me.
Long distance calls peaked and young moms shrieked as their preschool children proudly presented their hand impressions to their moms, and the moms were so proud! I’m not sure, however, that my wife could have had a better gift for Mother’s Day than what she got this year. Now it wasn’t the most pleasant of Mother’s Days. The weather was nice but we couldn’t relax with our family, eating, telling stories, and playing games. No, we were blessed with the unselfish help of our children, who gave up their special day for us. Kathy and I have a deadline to remove twenty-seven years of living from a home we are selling. It was a special day for moms yet my wife and two daughters put that all on hold putting in 12 plus hours of hard work cleaning, disposing, and packing. Sometimes circumstances get in the way and you have to delay a celebration. My son drove in from Ft. Campbell to help also. He is in the Army and we had not seen him in a couple of months, having just arrived back to Ft. Campbell from an assignment. Our two sons-in-law also pitched in big time, watching kids and taking on all sorts of projects. Our daughters did a bang up job finding wonderful men to marry. And not because they helped so much, but because they are great husbands and dads! Speaking of dads, Father’s Day is up next. I’m going to let my kids know that this year, my Father’s Day came on Mother’s Day. Anything thing I could ask for, they already did. I may just take them all out for dinner on me on June 19th to celebrate. The restaurants won’t be near as crowded as they are on Mother’s Day and the streets won’t be clogged with floral delivery trucks. However, I wouldn’t mind a colorful hand-print from my grandkids. That would be pretty special! Thanks for the great Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day! Don’t forget, Father’s Day is June 19th for all the other dads out there.  I am a huge advocate of parenting, obviously! I focus on dads for many reasons. I don't have much to say to moms because most moms don't need my opinion, not like a few fathers.
Moms are the best! I have been raised, lived with, helped conceive, known and been related to wonderful mothers, almost without exception. My mother may admit she wasn’t perfect, but there was no way she could have been. Raising six kids alone and working full time at minimum wage allows a parent to barely survive, provide, and give love to her children. She did that heroically! My wife has been a mom above all other things. She had a career she put on hold for 15 years to stay home with our kids. Not all moms can do that, nor should they have to. But we are happy it worked out for us. Kathy, my wife, took the kids everywhere and gave them so many experiences. Because of her, our children had a happy, carefree childhood! She made my role as dad one I could enjoy so much more because Kathy took care of so many of our kids' basic needs. My two daughters each have two beautiful children. They are both modern working moms but both have a day or two off during the week because of pre-school children. They are married to great dads and they have both learned from their mom. At their homes, I have seen numerous books on parenting. It is so wonderful to not have to worry about your grandchildren—being able to spoil them because mom and dad are in full control. It seems like moms are there for their kids 99% of the time. My sisters and some of their daughters raised their children with little or no help from the fathers. I don’t claim to know why that happens as often as it does, but I credit moms for toughing it out when parenting is more difficult than it should be, because it is never easy! I hope all mothers out there are recognized for all their sacrifices! And please know, there are sacrifices that they have made and will make that we will never know or understand. Families are the backbone of our country and mothers are the backbone of our families. HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY!  One of my personal favorites of the hundreds of articles I have written about 'dadhood' and parenting is Fathers are Rain, Mothers are Soil (click to read). I discuss some of the differences in parenting styles of, and reactions to, mothers and fathers by their children.
Those differences are good for children because reaching them often takes different approaches. Certain things (values, respect) are best taught by parents. Other very important traits that parents can coach into their children are reading, curiosity, a desire to investigate, and a thirst for learning. I sometimes have the pleasure and privilege of writing articles for other websites. Followings one I wrote for the Changing Behavior Network. Its a simple, but very important message for parents to understand regarding learning and education. Click and read: How to Instill a Thirst for Learning in Your Children  The author at 6 years old There are certain things we learn with no help from anyone. Those are mostly the basics of survival. Even those are not done well without guidance. Most things are learned formally or informally from others. Two things are very important when someone is in a learning mode. One, from whom you are learning and secondly, how old are when you are being taught or observing. When children are raised in an unsupportive environment, they learn without nurturing or guidance. When I was a child there were many things I didn’t know about. There were things I didn’t do well. I had fears that were baseless, and ideas about things that were just wrong. Those are realities we all deal with as we grow into adults, some succeed better than others in dealing with them. When I was a child, let’s say under 10 years-of-age, I didn’t feel comfortable around strangers. I didn’t know how to properly play baseball. I knew nothing about religion. Manners were something that escaped me. Bouts of boredom revealed a lack of knowing choices. I had a lack of confidence and little belief in myself. Standing up for myself wasn’t something that came naturally, unless it was a visceral reaction. And that’s all I’ll admit to. Those are traits that do not bode well for future success. They came about, in part, because my father chose not to be involved in raising his six children, and my mother was overwhelmed with being a single parent of six, supporting us on the earnings of a waitress. There was not much time for lessons in life, reading books, going to church, or being introduced to sports. When not properly mentored, one reverts to what comes to them naturally. My nature caused me to have those traits described above while someone else may have reacted differently, possibly being bolder, but into more trouble. Many fatherless children can excel in sports, but fail in school or people skills. Other fatherless children can do well in non-social activities but fail in social situations. A real danger for father-absent children is learning from the wrong people, people that may also be lost or trying to prove themselves in the wrong way. Gang behavior is a classic example of finding acceptance or proving one’s self to others that will only serve to make their life more miserable in the long run. What you learn early in life is very difficult to undo. There is a right way to do things and a wrong way. To prevent the preventable issues children have growing up, they need all the help we can give them early in their life as caring and nurturing parents The personalities and habits of kids are basically learned in the first three years of life. Confidence is a good example. As a young boy, I learned to avoid things that made me uncomfortable instead of facing them and moving on. It took many years to stop that behavior. I caught up eventually and learned those values in life that had escaped me as a young boy. But it took oh so long. I was a slow starter in life and even though I am happy with where I am today, I wonder how things would have turned out had I had the skills I have now, much earlier. I encourage struggling parents to take advantage of any program that will help your children develop. A good example is ‘Parents as Teachers’, a wonderful free program that helps evaluate children for hearing, eyesight, etc. and teaches parents how to enrich their learning capabilities. Give all the attention you can to your children’s early development! #powerofdadhood  Photo by author A memoir is like a pool. Don’t dive in if the water is too shallow.
We all have different abilities, one of which is the vividness and extent of our memory. I have a seven-year-old granddaughter who can remember simple things we did when she was one and a half. Her memory could be described as photographic. I think she gets it from her dad who is the same way. My memory would be better described as erratic, often based on having strong feelings at the time of the memory. I also theorize that I have forgotten many incidents for the same reason. Here are some childhood memories of mine, some I’ve told to family and others I haven’t. I have one memory before turning five. It was traumatic because I was 3 or 4-years-old and I was lost at a carnival at night. My uncle found me but for a moment, looking at the whizzing lights of Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds, and looking up at people rushing by, I was really scared. I remember two things about being five. One is wetting my pants on my first day of kindergarten because I had no idea where the bathroom was and wouldn’t ask. I wore my jacket around my waist to hide my mistake. The second memory was the summer vacation between kindergarten and 1st grade. I wondered why my mom wasn’t sending me to school any longer. It lasted three months, a lifetime for a little kid, but I didn’t ask her why I wasn’t going because I was afraid she would be reminded and would send me back. I can’t remember being six. I’m sure I was--at least for a year. I think I was seven-years-of-age when I experienced one of my most vivid and wonderful memories. My dad had followed his brother to Oregon and found work as a logger there. He sent for my mom, brother, baby sister and me to join him. I had never been beyond Missouri and now we were taking a train from St. Louis to Medford, Oregon. I recall waking up on the first morning in eastern Colorado. We hadn’t reached the mountains yet and I thought, while looking at the strange landscape, that we may be on the moon. This was 1956 or 1957, computers and cell phones were science fiction. TV was in its infancy so awareness of the world around me was slim to vacuous. This made my experience later that day all the more fascinating. We were still on the train heading into the Rocky Mountains. Of course, we were in the cattle car but I decided to explore the train having been on it for many hours. You may remember the special railcars that passenger trains once had that looked like butter dishes. There were stairs leading to the passenger area where huge overhead windows allowed a panoramic view of the passing scenery from the comfort of your seat. Good fortune allowed me to be walking through the butter-dish observation car just as we were traveling on the top of the world, where a light snow was blowing on the mountainsides and in valleys below. I recall a purple hue over the entire scene of rugged cliffs and evergreens. Never had I even seen a mountain, and here I was in the vaulted majesty of one the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world. We only lived in Oregon for a few months. We never stayed anywhere very long, but I did have a few memories there. In one memory I had a chance to be a substitute bat boy for my uncle’s semi-pro baseball team. There actually were people in the stands and I could feel the eyes of all 200 or so on me as I picked up a bat and dropped it three times on the way back to the dugout. I may have only been sent out to retrieve a bat that one time. Bad audition I guess. There was a big forest fire near Medford the short time we lived there. We could see it from our house, the huge billowing clouds of smoke that made everything else seem small. I wondered how the fire started and when it would end. It lasted many days. A few weeks later, and I don’t know why it stuck with me, but I was agonizingly bored! I turned on the TV for something to do, but Medford only had one channel back then and it was broadcasting a horse race. I picked a horse, decked out in green with yellow polka dots, to win. He lost and I turned off the TV. I’ve never been that painfully bored since, except maybe in a few meetings at work. Oregon did not work out after my mom had to drive us home, without a license at that time, because dad was passed out. Things went downhill. We moved to Caseyville, Illinois, a St. Louis suburb. I was eight and it was the happiest year of my life as a kid until my dad, who was an alcoholic, had a relapse. I’ll get to that later. In Caseyville, we were like a 1950’s TV family for about eight months. My dad had stopped drinking and he had a steady job. We had a nice car (for us) and a small but adequate house. I had a pet dog, Frisky, and friends with whom to play. Every morning in the summer I would wake up hearing kids outside. I jumped up out of bed, put a cap on my disheveled hair, and ran directly outside to play, only coming inside when I had to eat. There was a store at the end of our dead-end street where my mom would send me for bread, milk, or whatever. I would tell the man, “Put it on our bill” because we kept a charge account with the market. I was deliriously happy for those few months. My “Leave It To Beaver”, Caseyville life ended violently one night after my parents had a vicious argument. My father got very drunk and tore up the house. We left that home that week, maybe the next day. I don’t remember where my mother, siblings, and I went that year. I do remember my father was no longer with us. I asked my mom about our bill at the market. It was never paid. My dad was in and out of our lives from then on, mostly out. My next clear memory is watching my five siblings at home one day while my mom worked. I was only 10 years old and my youngest brother was under a year old. My mom had to work and there was no one available to watch us. I didn’t watch them every day--only when my mom couldn’t get anyone else. I was told by my brothers and sisters that I would chase them around the house with a broom when they wouldn’t listen to me. I’m sure I did. They were wild and I was not someone they wanted to listen to. We moved three or four times a year almost every year when I was a kid. I know that is difficult to believe but it is true. Changing schools so many times was very difficult for all of us. It was terrifying to be the new kid so often. It wasn’t that kids treated me badly. I was just very shy and awkward. Often, I was ahead certain school topics, and just as often I was behind the rest of my class. Being placed in the middle of a geometry class, mid-semester, when I had never studied geometry before was very confusing. I have a few other childhood memories, some are in my Dadhood book where I discuss my dealing with bullies. There were other memories like those mentioned but they aren’t necessary to make my point. That point being much of my childhood is lost to me. I had happy memories and sad ones, just like everyone, but there is no thread tying them together-- no childhood neighborhood to go back to or lifelong friends prior to high school. I have fleeting memories of people or events with huge gaps in between. If my childhood was a 16 story building, I missed a few floors. On a more tragic side, I watched my mother-in-law slowly lose her memory to dementia. It was heartbreaking to watch her confusion and not know her family or history. When you’ve lost your memory, you’ve lost your life. I lost a portion of my life, not to dementia but simply an inability to string things together. We all forget important episodes of our life, some of which helps us to move on. But when we forget chunks of our life, we can be confused about how we got to where we are, or why we are the way we are. I didn’t know where I would end up when I started writing, but I think I have a final point now and it comes back to parenting. Children shouldn’t be given too much, but if you give your kids anything, give them life-lessons, good memories, and a stable home life to remember them.  My wife Kathy and me with our four grandchildren. I spent this weekend on a project for my grandchildren. In fact, I spend quite a bit of time on projects for my grandkids. I do it out of love and because I want them to have great memories of their childhood. We all live longer than in days past and, therefore, have many years after retirement to enjoy our families. I, myself, am retired and choose to spend much of my time helping my family. I think I’m doing it for many reasons.
That last reason is not to fill a void of mine, but to ensure they have no voids--at least as grandchildren. But let me be quick to say all my grandchildren have great parents, meeting all their children’s needs including love and discipline. My grandchildren don’t need me or their grandmother, and that is a good thing. We want them to want us. We are icing on their cake and that is how it should be. Speaking of their grandmother, she spoils them in her own loving ways. She makes them special pillow cases, buys them cute outfits, makes sure we add to their education savings on every special occasion, and so much more. We watch our three toddler grandkids two days a week because childcare is so expensive. It is quite a bit of work, but in return we have close personal relationships with all of them. There is no doubt that there are grandparents all over the country who are much like us, but there are also many complications that many grandparents face making grand-parenting an often tough situation.
Grandparents also have rights. After the responsibilities of raising children of our own, we are free to live our lives as we wish. If we want to retire away from family to Florida, we can. If we don’t want to take care of kids any longer, we are not required to do so. We don’t even have to go to birthday parties. If fact, I’m not aware of anything that is required of a grandparent. We are who we want to be in the world of grand-parenting. So what is the role of a grandparent? It is whatever we want it to be when we have the blessing and cooperation of the parents of our grandchildren. I’ve mentioned the roles my wife and I choose to have. Understandably, our choices don’t work for everyone. But I do hope that all grandparents can have positive relationships, beneficial to everyone in the family. There is never enough love to go around. Grandparents can provide a special brand of love--and hopefully be the icing on the cakes of their grandkids.  A book for all fathers! All dads are fathers, but not all fathers are dads. You can’t tell if a man is a dad or just a father just by looking at him. That is, unless, he is with his children. You see more sparkle in the eyes of a dad. A dad puts more effort into spending quality time with his kids than a father does.
Sometimes a father may be around his kids more often than some dads, but dads are always there in body or spirit. Fatherhood, plus mentoring, love, and nurturing equals-- “The Power of Dadhood”! Here are a few examples of how and why one man is only father while another man is also a dad.
It’s true. A father doesn’t come with guarantees of being a good parent, (neither for that matter, does a mother). A man can be a father and never see his child for reasons that may or may not be his doing. A man can be a father and be a provider but not much more. A man can be a father and be blocked from being as involved as much as he wants to be. A man can be a father, but not be familiar with how to be involved as a dad. In other words, not all fathers can be the dad they want to be and a few don’t want to be involved as a parent. The number of men who don’t want to be involved, dedicated fathers are few. Many men just need encouragement and help with the challenges of fatherhood, just as their kids need encouragement and help with childhood. This weekend was my granddaughter, Juliette’s first birthday and Christening. It was a wonderful two days with family and friends. Juliette was on her best behavior, being cute beyond words and smiling at everyone. She was certainly the star of the weekend and everyone was so loving towards her. Juliette has it all, loving parents, adoring big brother, grandparents who spoil her, and aunts, uncles, and cousins who are fully involved in her life. She, indeed, is a very lucky young lady!
Our celebrations this weekend are duplicated over and over in families all over the nation and are a symbol of what is good in the world. Families are the building blocks of any society! And when families do well, the societies in which they live do well. Now the bad news. Scenes like this weekend are much too uncommon. I’m not talking just about the birthday or the Christening celebrations. I’m talking about the scenes of families being together, of unconditional love and encouragement being demonstrated with honest emotion. As normal as it is to some of us, it is a story in a book to many others. Our Juliette will have a good start in life. The rest will be mostly up to her and I pray she chooses well. Of course, she’ll be armed with encouragement, an education, support, and maybe even a little push if needed. This will not be the situation for many children. Something or someone will be missing. More often than not, the ‘someone’ missing is a father. More often than not, the ‘something’ missing is the right kind of attention. Certainly, many children succeed who have grown up without one or both parents. They also can succeed without the guidance or support of their parents. But while these challenges can be an inspiration to some, it is an enormous burden for most of them to overcome—and many do not. See two people running a race with everything equal except one is dragging a twenty-pound weight. The one dragging the weight can win, but he or she has to exert so much more energy. Even a win doesn’t tell the entire story. A single could have been a double, a double could have been a home run—if only they had the mentoring that would have made them better! Sadly, the larger percentage of kids without a solid foundation at home will not overcome those burdens. It is not because they incapable, but only because they don’t know they are capable. I have not told you anything you don’t already know. But hopefully I have brought it into your consciousness because there is something each of us can do to help a struggling child.
If it takes a village to raise a child, so be it. Hopefully, it will be done for the benefit of all. But a village full of good families will not be required to take time away from their duties to do the work a parent is supposed to do. Be there for your children for you, for society, and mostly for them. |
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