There are many hats that parents wear these days. Chaffeur, medic, counselor, coach, teacher, friend-and those hats are only a few of the ones worn within the household. Parents also wear hats for their roles outside the household-supervisor, employer, employee, co-worker. We also wear our own personal hats-daughter/son, caretaker of aging parents, niece/nephew, brother/sister. Each of these hats effect the way we parent. This fact requires us to take a look inward in order to find a sense of balance and to use these hats as tools in parenting.
Fathers need to examine eight different aspects of their lives and make the most of their current skills and abilities in each one as it relates to parenting. The eight areas are: own developmental history, own personality/mental health, child’s personality/mental health, father’s job, marriage, social network/support, spirituality/religion, and child’s stage of development[i]. In this article, we’ll examine the first four areas and examine the last four areas in the next article.
Own Developmental History
Common sense tells us that the way we were parented affects the way we parent. While this may be common sense, unless we are willing to do some self-exploration, we may not really be able to identify the patterns that we learned from our parents. There are most likely some patterns we would like to repeat (things we liked about what our parents did while we were growing up) and patterns we would prefer not to repeat (things we didn’t like about what our parents did while we were growing up). If we don’t engage in some sort of self-evaluation of our own patterns in our parenting, we are likely to make the same mistakes our parents made (no matter how well-intentioned they were).
Own Personality/Mental Health
Our personalities are genetically coded in our DNA. That DNA helps to determine our activity level, rhythmicity, approach or withdrawal, adaptability, threshold of responsiveness, energy level of response, quality of mood, distractibility, and attention span and persistence[ii]. If your personality is such that you have a laid back approach to life, with a low threshold of responsiveness and distractibility, and a low energy level of response, it will influence the way we interact with our children. We also must examine our own level of mental health. We know that when we don’t feel well physically (laid low due to a cold or the flu), we don’t often operate well in the various roles we play in our lives. The same is true for mental health and wellness. If a father struggles with depression, his ability to parent effectively and respond to the needs of his children is diminished.
Child’s Personality/Mental Health
Our children’s personalities and mental health and wellness has a direct pull on how we parent them. Ever wondered how it is that our children know exactly which of our buttons to push at just the wrong time? Our children draw behaviors from us based on their personalities (activity level, rhythmicity, etc;) and their personalities interact with our personalities. If a father has a laid back personality and his son has a more “high-strung” style, this can lead to a natural conflict and difficulty relating to one another. However, if we know the type of approach that best works with our children’s personalities, it can be a match made in Heaven. We must also consider the mental health and wellness of our children when determining how we parent them. If a child has ADHD, he/she requires certain methods and attitudes to respond to a parents’ leadership. If you pair a child with some form of mental illness with a parent who has a mental illness, a higher level of attunement to those issues in order to abate the possible difficulties that come with such a situation.
Father’s Job
It is common knowledge that a man’s self-esteem often rises and falls on his career, his ability to provide for his family, and his belief that he can climb the corporate ladder. If we have a bad day at the office, it is often very difficult to leave the baggage at the office, especially if it hammers our self-esteem. Frequently, when we are struggling at work and are taking personal blows to our confidence, it is difficult to feel good at home, which often leads to not putting our best foot forward when we walk through our front door. We have to be willing to attempt to separate the negatives of our jobs from the work we do at home with our own families. Realizing that success doesn’t stop with our paychecks or promotions and that the true definition of success lies in the job we do with our kids is crucial to our success.
Is this juggling act easy? Absolutely not. Is it possible? Definitely. Sometimes just being aware of our patterns and make small changes in our direction can change our entire family’s trajectory. If we can make a commitment to some self-exploration in these areas, we can have a deeper impact on the lives and development of our kids.
[i] Mills, B. (2006). Faithful Fatherhood: A Training Program Based on Eight Determinants of Parenting. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, Vol 66(12-B) 6972.
[ii] Thomas, A. & Chess, S. (1977). Temperament and Development. New York: Bruner/Mazel.