How to Be a Good Father to Your Child
In order to understand what I mean by a good father, I first need to awaken you a bit by bringing up some negative things, in hopes of illustrating what we’re faced with. In other words, to tell what a good father is, I believe I must first pursue the bad direction in which our fatherly images have traveled in the past few decades.
Parenting Style
One could argue that the alarmists have focused blame on what’s wrong with our youth and pointed to the parental figures in the home as the culprits, in many cases. Yes, this has been done many times in various parts of the world and during a great many different time periods.
Ask anyone on the street today what a good father is, and unless you’re only polling a group of people who have a similar world view on the need for strong parent figures, you may be shocked by some of the responses. The group might tell you that fathers usually try to get the sympathy of other family members, including their wives. He may do this with some type of childish action or even some form of hypochondriac procedure. This I imagine has been drilled into our population by the one-eyed monster, we call television, that graces most all our homes.
Of course, we can’t blame everything on TV. Over the years, our culture has become so liberal that strength and leadership is shunned by many and avoided by most. Very seldom do we see a person who is reflecting real, strong, positive leadership ability being elected to a public office. This goes for the father image as well. If we see a strong-charactered, God-fearing head of a household reflected in real life or in fiction, we will immediately come to the conclusion: he is going to scar his children by his domineering personality and make the some type of servile individuals for the rest of their lives.
I say this is not so! The only way one learns true leadership and strength early in life is by example. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one to perpetuate this image as we have lost almost all of our examples as fatherly leadership is concerned. How is a young man to know what a real man is if he grows up with a weak father? He may see his mother taking on an overwhelming amount of responsibility, as his father grossly neglects both his family and his responsibilities.
Youth Home
By now, you’re wondering if I’m ever going to describe what I think makes up a good father. No doubt, by describing the deficiencies of a bad father, I am telling you what a good father is. He should certainly be just the opposite of a weak, poor father. I would much rather see a strong-character, righteous man walk by his children, and in doing so, observe them somewhat flinching as they became fearful that he might just swat them, then see the reaction of most children to their father today. Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned, but I really feel children of all ages should have a type of fearful respect for their fathers: not because he is going to harm them physically, but because they have been brought up to the point that they dread him giving them even a glance of disdain.
Protecting your child in a seductive world
A good father does the things we traditionally picture a father doing with their child. That is, play ball with his son, take him fishing, have a close father daughter relationship with his girls, and all in all, be a kind and sympathetic person. He should do all these things, yes, but he must first and foremost be the family leader. He takes helm of leading the household; providing guidance and direction through the storms the family faces as the years go by.
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October 14th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
As a father of 2 daughters, ages 17 & 18, I appreciate this article. Both of my girls are drug-free, alcohol-free and abstinent. They are both very respectful of others, have hearts of gold and, now this is really weird, still love hanging out with mom and dad sometimes. We’re very close and have enjoyed a very good relationship throughout their lives. That’s not to say there haven’t been moments but I’m glad to say those moments were just that – moments. They did not turn into crises or strained relationships. There are many reasons but I think they can all be boiled down to a couple of things: 1) Their mother (my wife) and I have always worked together with regards to discipline, freedoms, expectations, etc. pertaining to our children and 2) we have stayed involved in their lives. The second one is sometimes hard to do – it requires sacrifice of time and sometimes giving up what we might have wanted to do for ourselves in order to do things with our children. We’ve made it a point to stand our ground even when it was not popular as well as to invest a huge amount of our time in their lives. As a result, we have children that seek out our advice, listen to our counsel and, generally, make good decisions.
I suppose it’s obvious that I’m a proud father but I am also blessed to have such wonderful girls. There is nothing, in my opinion, more rewarding than to watch my children grow into well-adjusted, wonderful young adults.