The Collected Wisdom of Fathers: Creating Loving Bonds That Last a Lifetime - Softcover

Glennon, Will

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573248142 ISBN 13: 9781573248143

Publisher: Conari Press, 2002

Synopsis

In The Collected Wisdom of Fathers, bestselling author Will Glennon encourages and supports men in building a bridge to their children. Based on the experiences of hundreds of fathers.

The Collected Wisdom of Fathers is an original and poignant collection of true stories and suggestions that provides fathers with the essential tools and advice they need. By passing on important lessons others fathers have learned in their own journeys, from staying connected even when physically separated, to listening in ways that allow children to know they are being heard, to simply showing deep love and respect. The Collected Wisdom of Fathers is an original and inspirational book for fathers everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Will Glennon is the author of 200 Ways to Raise a Boy's Emotional Intelligence, 200 Ways to Raise a Girl's Self-Esteem, and an editor of the bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series. He is a regular columnist for Daughters newsletter and sits on the Board of Advisors for Dads & Daughters, a national parenting organization. The father of two children, a son and a daughter, Glennon lives in Berkeley, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE COLLECTED WISDOM OF FATHERS

Creating Loving Bonds that Last a Lifetime

By Will Glennon

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 1995 Will Glennon
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-814-3

Contents

FOREWORD, Joe Kelly
INTRODUCTION
1 THE CRISIS IN FATHERING
2 CAUGHT IN THE CURRENTS OF CHANGE
3 OUTSIDE FROM THE BEGINNING
4 THE HEART OF FATHERING
5 ACCEPTING THE POWERFUL RESPONSIBILITY OF FATHERING
6 THE THRILL OF KNOWING YOUR CHILDREN DEEPLY
7 FATHERING WITH RESPECT & HONESTY
8 THE PARADOX OF CHALLENGE & ACCEPTANCE
9 FATHERING ACROSS DISTANCE
10 BEING THERE FOR THE LONG HAUL
RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

The Crisis in Fathering

My father was a very serious man. I used to make up all kinds of explanations,excuses really, for why he was the way he was. The truth is I don't care aboutthe reasons anymore. He died without ever telling me he loved me, without everhugging me, without ever saying he was proud of me. I still don't understand it.It's like there is this giant hole inside of me that can never be filled.

Fathering. It's not a word we're comfortable with. It feels awkward and soundsfunny. It isn't even in most dictionaries. While the concept exists as a logicalcounterpoint to mothering, we as a society seem at a loss for any sense of whatit really represents. That fact is at the heart of a profoundly devastatingwound for many men: We have lost our fathers, and far too many of us who arefathers are in serious danger of losing our children.

To cite just one of myriad statistics indicating the problem, a recent studyfound that only 20 percent of the fathers surveyed felt that they had a closeemotional relationship with either their fathers or their sons. That is aremarkable piece of information. In this statistically saturated world, it iseasy to let the flood of numbers simply roll on. But we as men, as fathers, mustforce ourselves to stop for a moment and look beyond the numbers to see the veryreal human suffering—ours and that of those we love—that this particularstatistic suggests: The vast majority of men in this country are emotionallydistant, disconnected from their closest male relatives.

In general, men tend to be very good at controlling their feelings. We areparticularly good at "getting on with things" in the face of hardship, danger,pain, and turmoil. It is our training, our history, and even our mythology,weaned as we were on larger-than-life heroes stoically pushing forward toovercome enormous difficulties and crippling losses.

This skill, this ability to function effectively in the face of emotionalpressure, has served us well, but it has also exacted a very dear price. It hasallowed us to create and accomplish out in the world with single-minded focus;but, largely unnoticed, it has also forced many of us to lose track of what ismost important and precious, the reasons why we work so hard and what we areworking for—our loved ones. In homes all across the country, men are "gettingon" with the business of living. But, as the statistics painfully demonstrate,in four out of five of those homes, they are doing it without the reassuringlydeep comfort of a close emotional relationship with either their father or theirchildren.

My Dad worked himself to death. He dropped out of school when he was fourteen toget a job to put food on his mother's table, and he just never stopped. It waslike he was afraid that if he ever slowed down, everything would fall apart. Hehad never known how to be a kid and he sure didn't know how to be with a kid; itwas like living with an alien. I didn't know him well but I loved him. It stillmakes me sad to think about him. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me or mybrother with this incredibly sad look on his face, like he knew something wasmissing, but it was beyond his ability to deal with it.

This book is about something that is difficult to describe—the close andpowerful emotional connection that flows like a current of electricity between afather and his children. It is a most powerful thing and a most fragile one. Itcan be lost or interrupted abruptly, or it can persist over vast distances andtime. It can make the difference between a life that is rich and full and onethat is empty and meaningless. It is one of our deepest desires as men yet, forso many of us, it has proven to be painfully elusive.

For too long we have been silent about our love for our children, about thehappiness and sorrow that being a father brings. Fathering: StrengtheningConnection with Your Children No Matter Where You Are seeks to break the silenceby weaving together men's stories about the joy and pain of being a father.These stories, told by fathers whose collective wisdom and experience isrepresented on these pages, appear as italicized sections. They are anonymousbecause the cloak of anonymity gave men the freedom to fully explore thesedeeply emotional issues. These stories—heart-wrenching, impassioned, and honest—representthe collective voice of today's father. The narrative that flows fromtheir stories is my attempt to record what I have learned from these men, fromtheir efforts and their anguish.

I don't remember very much about my childhood—there are so many reasons toforget. My father was never home. Sometimes when I was already in bed andsupposed to be asleep, I'd stay awake just to hear his voice when he came in.Even on weekends, I hardly ever saw him, except for when we would all dress upand go to church on Sunday. My parents broke up when I was twelve, and he justsort of faded away. My mother still tells me he is a good man, but how would Iknow?

The emotional distance that has increasingly come to characterize men's liveshas begun to reverberate out into the world. A second set of statistics tellsus that nearly 49.8 percent of our children live outside traditional two-parenthomes; that fathers in the United States spend less time with their childrenthan in any other country; and that among those fathers who do live with theirchildren, the average amount of time spent with them is twelve minutes per day.

These are frightening signposts proclaiming a crisis of monumental proportions.We have allowed ourselves and our children to drift, like untethered astronauts,farther and farther away from the heartbeat of our humanity. We have sentencedour children to the bewildering experience of growing up with a desperate needto feel loved by a father who all too often is simply not there, eitherphysically or emotionally.

There are even more statistics—ones that reveal the devastating ripple effectson society of absent fathers who fail to forge strong emotional ties to theirchildren. These statistics are the most frightening of all, because they are, bydefinition, so impersonal and, tragically, so irrevocable: Nearly 80 percent ofthose who end up in our juvenile justice system lived in homes without a father;the overwhelming majority of our adult prison population grew up withoutfathers; the single strongest predictor of violent juvenile crime, specificallyrobbery and murder, is that the child grew up without a close relationship tohis father.

The statistics don't lie. We are in a crisis of major proportions, and thecasualties—both parents and children—are increasing at an alarming rate. We findourselves at a juncture in time, where a staggering proportion of men feeldistant and alone, each of us, like the boy in the hermetically sealed bubble,moving through life separated from everyone else by some inexplicable, invisiblebarrier. It begins when we are just boys, too often boys without the fathers weneed, and it persists when we grow up, becoming fathers ourselves and, out ofignorance, re-creating the cycle of distance with our own children. And we'vereached this place despite the fact that none of us ever wanted to be here.

My children are all grown and have families of their own. I rarely see them andwhen I do, it is usually strained and awkward. I know that it is mostly my faultbecause I was never there when they were young, but that doesn't make it anyeasier.

I just wish I knew back when I was a young father what I know now. When Ifinally realized what was really important to me—my kids—I had to face thereality that I had done this to myself.

It is the absence of the father—physically and, much more important,emotionally—that is at the heart of the crisis. Paradoxically, however, it isthe miracle of becoming a father that opens up for us the most inviting, mostsurprising, and most promising avenue for finding our way back to our hearts andsouls. Fatherhood is a precious opportunity, and we know it, even if we cannotcomprehend or articulate why. It is something we feel in our bones. We want tounderstand it, to face the challenge and be found worthy; we know that there issomething to it that can transform us if only we do it right, but often we don'teven know how to begin.

Out of fear, out of ignorance, it is easiest to gravitate toward the patterns offathering in which we were raised. From the birth of our first child, we tend toconcede the role of comforter and nurturer to our wives and find ourselvesremoved from our child. The family dynamic becomes established, and we findourselves somehow inexplicably "outside." For most of us it is not a good placeto be, but we feel powerless to change it; we don't even have a vocabulary forhow to talk about it. It is just a feeling, a very deep and painful feeling, buttalking about our feelings is not something with which men are terriblycomfortable.

This distance, which has been created slowly and silently, can no longer betolerated. Somehow now, not tomorrow, not next year, we need to begin to forge apath back to ourselves and our children, to discover how to create and maintaindeep and strong emotional connections with them.

Inretrospect, it is astounding that we could have allowed things to deteriorateso dramatically without noticing. As painful as it might be to admit, sometimeslife must deliver us a solid blow to the solar plexus before we get the point.For many men that blow comes with divorce, when distance becomes an inescapableresult, and they are suddenly faced with the bleak probability that the strengthof their connection to their children will be severely tested.

The pain I was feeling and that of my ex-wife, I reckoned, were our justdesserts for the situation we had conspired to land ourselves in. But the boys,then just three and five, could scarcely be expected to understand what wasgoing on. I wept loudly each evening as I drove to a strange apartment with thegrief and bewilderment of these two innocents fore-most in my mind. I had noidea what to do—no road map, little guidance, and precious few positive storiesto tell myself about what was happening. Instead I could count on only an act offaith, a fool's promise perhaps. I could hear the song going round in my head,"Everything's gonna be all right, everything's gonna be all right."

For many men, divorce is a defining moment. Standing amid the rubble ofshattered illusions, broken promises, and best intentions gone awry, it can be atime of painful clarity if faced courageously and honestly. Over and over inthese pages, the one issue that surfaces with overwhelming power for men is theabsolute terror at the prospect of losing their children through divorce. It isfrom this battered emotional outpost that the crisis looms clear andthreatening, and it is largely from these men, struggling to come to grips withhow to maintain and nurture a connection to their children, and from the growingranks of full-time fathers, often treated as an oddity rather than the pioneersthey are, that the alarm is being sounded.

This book is a report from men on the front line. The original inspiration camefrom Denys Candy, a friend and father who has grappled with maintaining strongbonds with his children despite the distance imposed by divorce. Since this hasbeen my experience also-I was divorced when my children were very young and, forthe past sixteen years, I too have searched for ways to remain connected-Denys'sidea struck a cord. I began to search out other fathers—eventually interviewingmore than a hundred—young, old, and in between, and in all kinds ofcircumstances: still married and living with their children, divorced, single,remarried with stepchildren, even some grandfathers. I wanted to find out whatthey had learned about how to be a good father. More important and somewhatsurprising, I also learned how they felt about their own fathers and the processof fathering itself.

What I found initially was alarming. Although one of the most important goals ofalmost every father I spoke with was to have a close relationship with hischildren, when it came to knowing how to get there, far too many men admittedbeing at a painful loss. But I also found something quite hopeful that makes upthe heart of this book: a depth of feeling and openness that was powerful andconsistent. The answers may not always be clear, but the commitment to findingthem was unwavering.

I've also come to see that when discussing fathering there are no experts. Thereare only men who have tried to do their best and are willing to share theirexperience-their accomplishments and their failures, their heartaches and theirjoys, their confusion and their clarity.

There are no secret answers. Building and nurturing a father-child relationshiprequires the knowledge that it can be done, the commitment that it will be done,the persistence to keep on trying, and the courage to do whatever is necessaryto make sure it does get done.

The next two chapters explore how we got here, first from a social and then amore personal level, with the belief that this understanding is important onlyin that it can help us ease our way back out. This is not a time or a place toassess fault–and it would a heartless and futile undertaking. What we need isnot the paralysis of guilt or the distraction of assigning blame, but rather thecommitment to not let ourselves and our children continue to drift apart,encouragement and support from those who are finding their way back, and boldsignposts to help us on our way.

With this book, the one hundred of us hope to at least make a start: to explorethe problems that fathers face, and to identify the things we need to do, thefeelings we need to become more comfortable with, the parts of our role asfathers that we need to have a deeper understanding of, and the mistakes we needto avoid in order to nurture our relationship with our children.

We can make fathering a word that is as comfortable as mothering, one thatevokes warmth, strength, security, and a deep unbreakable bond of love. But itwill take understanding and courage.

CHAPTER 2

Caught in the Currents of Change

I was working out of town for nearly two full months last year, living at ahotel where a lot of other men working on the same project were staying. It waskind of an unusual situation because we were all strangers, from very differentbackgrounds, but we would work together all day and then see each other at thehotel restaurant and bar each night. For the most part, they were men thatnormally I would probably never say more than a few words to, but because of thecircumstances I ended up getting to know quite a few of them pretty well.

When the conversations finally got around to their children—which was only longafter we had exhausted all the sports conversations we could come up with, andusually after a fair number of drinks-I can't tell you how many of these guywere just baffled, almost shell-shocked. They loved their kids, they would swellup with pride just talking about them, but at the same time there was this hugeempty space. They'd joke about not being able to understand babies or teenagers,or about not knowing how to play with little kids. They'd tell me how "good" thewife was with their daughter, or their son, or their kids. They'd complain aboutnot having more time to take the kid out to the ballpark. But underneath it allwas this very sad sense of loss. It's like they knew something was missing butcouldn't put their finger on just what it was or how to find it.

Something unusual has been going on recently—people are starting to talk aboutfathers. Unfortunately, as is so often the case when the bright lights ofattention are suddenly turned on, much of the commentary is decisively negative.As noted in chapter 1, a flood of studies have been released, documenting instark detail the absence of fathers, physically and emotionally, and bringinginto sharp focus the increasingly long list of ugly consequences.

Mothers, who have traditionally taken the rap for screwing up the kids because,after all, they were there, are suddenly being afforded a little relief. Thefocus of blame is shifting to fathers because so often they are not there. Eventhe politicians are jumping into the debate, decrying "dead-beat dads" as theroot of virtually all social ills, and calling for a "return" to family values.

Unfortunately, our first instinct when confronted with a problem—particularlyone of the magnitude and with the implications as this—is to rush to assignblame. But if we look with our hearts instead of our fear, if we seek a path outof the suffering instead of simply a scapegoat, what we must face is that theabsent father—both the one who is not physically there as well as the one who isnot present emotionally—is a tragic consequence of the times we live in.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE COLLECTED WISDOM OF FATHERS by Will Glennon. Copyright © 1995 Will Glennon. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573248142
• ISBN 13: 9781573248143
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244