Child development, different roles and different styles. Be who you are.

Maybe you know different but this is what I know. I have never seen a dad tell a mom how to take care of a child in his absence. I almost have never seen a mom that does not tell the dad how to take care of a child in her absence. I have met some great dads and of course great moms. I have never seen a scenario where one telling the other how to behave around a child is productive. Maybe in movies with the stupid idiot man, but not in real life. Or maybe the macho, cowboy western dad leaving on a hunt. The reason I point this out is this: Each parent handles a child differently. One parent trying to tell another parent how to parent messes things up. Moms need to be themselves and Dads themselves. We do not want both acting the same or one trying to be like the other.

Love the gifts you have

Respect Differences

Love the one your with

Be yourself

I sat a few moments and recollected. And reckon I have coached, taught or preached to several thousand children. I know there are at least seven children out there that remember me in a father figure role. I know each one that is adult and they are all wonderful wonderful human beings, I do have one still in early stages, and he seems just dandy.

Oh I have had a child ski into a tree and a few smoking dope and some traffic tickets, but they got past it and learned from it. Long hours in ER rooms and so many sleepless nights are all just happy reflections now.

But one thing I have learned is that boys need a mom and a dad. Someone just filling the role maybe good enough. But you cannot blend the two into each other. You must have a delineation betweenx the two. It has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with what each can give to the boy.

Just because you do not like it

Does not mean it is not good for your child

Mommies give a thing I cannot give. I just do not have it in my old heterosexual body. It is kind of a thing that transcends thinking. It is an innate quality that teaches above all else, unconditional love. No matter how hard I try I cannot give it. I want to, I strive to and I really want to. I can intellectualize it. I can believe in it, but for some darn reason I cannot exude it. Oh I feel it in my heart and I feel the Lord gives it to me. I am all about giving unconditional love, but I just can’t exude it. It is not my job to give him hugs and kisses and make it better when he skins a knee or loses a game or a thing. It is my job to evaluate what went wrong and correct the behavior so it does not happen again.

I watch my boy and my wife in the yard, just doing stuff, cleaning toys and busy together. No matter what that boy does his mother hugs him, no darned respect for teaching him God’s and the world’s different way.

I am not saying that such is right or wrong. There are debates going in all directions. I just know that without his mother he would not stand so secure, he would not know how to love unconditionally. Even if like me, he cannot exude it.

One of you likes music more

The other cooking

One likes tools and dirt

One likes TV shows

And the other books

Oh do not get me wrong, I do love him no matter what, but I am just not built to let it be known, in daily conduct. He has to know that I am there for him, but it is not my job to make him feel better it is my job to show him that it is his job to feel better.

I do not mean that am a mean old school man without ability to say I love you or to hug or to have his children as best friends. I am fluent in all those activities and language of the heart. I am speaking of the nurture element mom’s have. The comfort the child knows when she is near. The sharing of even the smallest obstacle in the young boy’s life. The commiserating, the innate power to know what will make things better. It is a bond that is miraculous in scope and mysterious in a divine sort of way.

As for me, I just got plain too much of it. Being adopted way back when, I was wet nursed. I had a 4 a 6 and 8 year old sisters, and on top of that a Mom that just loved me to death. I am just goofy filled up with that nurturing stuff. My wife declares that I would do just fine as both Mom and Dad. But that is a rarity. Most men just do not have the nurturing engrained and I say “Thank God”. Because little boys need both mommies and daddies and we should never try to change the important roles of both.

Perhaps if we do it right our children will get all the positive.

Let me make something perfectly clear. I have no doubt that same sex couples can fulfill the roles I speak of. And I never heard of a child confused about roles because of sex identification with the roles – except maybe in some hetero households. The difference is in styles of loving the boy.

I know plenty of children whose single mom’s went out of their way to foster nurturing relationships with positive male role models for their young children to associate with. Except on TV I never heard of that not working well.

On corporal punishment. Really? There is a point of time and space to relate consequences by way of a physical exclamation point. I have 4 natural children and they have received 6 spanks, not spankings, between them. Totally done with an understanding why, after a cool down period for both and a conscience decision that it was the right thing to do. No anger involved until the child realized that he/she got spanked – then they had plenty of anger. And that works out ok.

So what I am getting at is that to be well rounded and happy, we need to have a feminine side and a masculine side. In order to get that as a youth you need someone different playing the roles. It is just too complicated for little ones to compartmentalize. Happiness is almost always a balance and for them to learn balance we must make the distinction between two sides, easily recognizable and appreciated.

What I mean here is "raising up" and I do not mean that little child with diapers on in the next room. I am talking about your inner child. That one with diapers on in your heart. You. Pure, simple and needing love.

Any child you can be around should allow you to let go and be free and "develop" not just that child you hold, but the one that you hold back inside of you.

This great spiritual leader kept saying: "and the child shall set you free, and the child shall lead you". Wait was that Buddha or Christ or Ghandi or Dalai Lama or Chochise? Oops I think they all said it in their own way.

I do not ask you to come to God as a child. I ask you to come to you as a child. And raise it up along with your own.