Printer Friendly Format
Email this to a friend

December, 2001
Printer Friendly Format
Email this to a friend

You may think I'm trying to complicate your life with all these jabs and steps. Not so. Last month I recommended that you "lavish love on your wife." If you keep her happy by honoring and revering her, you can virtually forget about everyone else, yourself included. That's why my current counsel reads:

2. Benignly neglect your children. If you're wrapped up in your wife, this recommendation should come easy. Insecure Americans tend to smother their too-few children. As someone once said, America is the only country where parents implicitly obey their kids. There's way too much parental emotional attachment and dependence on their kids' approval. Dads especially must keep their balance and perspective and deliberate detachment. All fathers should fervently pray for the gift of unflappability. If dads are to be the voice of reason (thereby letting their wives be the voice of heart), somehow they must stay above the fray. They must at least come across as disengaged and uninvolved. Otherwise it will be very difficult for them to remain objective and fair, to see and understand what's really going on beneath the surface. Dads should be quick to observe and slow to act, react and intervene. Theirs is the job to reflect and to see what steps, if any, should be taken. If anybody, dad should have a congenital preference for delay, for letting time pass and prove its curative powers.

Never forget that children compulsively conspire at all hours and in all situations to get dad (and other authority figures, such as teachers) to blow his stack, to lose his control and cool. They're always probing for chinks in the armor, for the hot buttons. But once they discover that their ploys don't and won't work, that dad isn't about to get all riled up, then they're freed up to engage in more positive pursuits. And none too soon.

Dennis Helming is the author of "The Examined Life" which can be ordered directly from Spence Publishing

Printer Friendly Format
Email this to a friend