The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Be a father to your child

Re: Be a father to your child

Juba — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:00:18 -0000

Thats a fine little man you and Kenyatta are raising Tah. Congrats as usual.

My theory on why dudes bail on their kids isn't responsibility vs. reward. I assume those cats (or women, to be fair) are psychologically expressing indifference, apathy or bitterness about their own futures. Children are a living breathing symbol of our future, but if folks dont put much stock, hope or faith in their futures, we cant be surprised when they dont put much stock, hope or faith in their children.

Re: Be a father to your child

John Stevens — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:06:35 -0000

>too many of us think of fatherhood as a responsibility and not an investment

A fucking *investment*????

How about a JOY?

Here's the question I want to ask every parent:

Has your kid hugged you today?

Re: Be a father to your child

Melissa — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:25:33 -0000

Thanks for this story. I am always amazed and gratified when, an hour after disciplining my kids, they tell me I am the best mom in the world. Somewhere deep inside, they know they need boundaries.

I really enjoy your blogging. Thanks for sharing your life with us.

Re: Be a father to your child

zydrate — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:57:09 -0000

@DeliciousPundit:

Whiteness in hockey? I guess that's true - I grew up in North Dakota's premier hockey city - but have you ever been to a swim meet?

Re: Be a father to your child

Delicious Pundit — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:51:56 -0000

But keep your kid into hockey -- I hate going to hockey games and seeing the whiteness. At least when I go to Kings games, L.A. being what it is, it's a little brown. My sport could use a little more of what Nelson George used to call the black athletic aesthetic.

Re: Be a father to your child

sv — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:37:47 -0000

aww... AWWWWW......

But no, you are blessed, man. Genuinely this is so sweet. Keep up the good parenting. A father who is strict but understanding is very important to a boy, very important - but you already knew that.

-sv

Re: Be a father to your child

wickerman — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:18:33 -0000

Beautiful, Ta-Nehisi.

I am a father to two daughters, and although that means it's not an exact reliving of my youth (they like dolls, dressing up like princesses, etc.), something that has blown me away is that they love to read. I don't even have to convince them. They just pick up a book and are immersed. And it almost brings tears to my eyes, because when my Dad wasn't around, and when my Mom disappeared, and when my brothers treated me like shit, that's how I coped.

(Maybe this shouldn't matter or be left unsaid, but I'm white, just to let you know.)

So now I get the pleasure of reading with them the books that made life worth living when I was their age. That is a joy of fatherhood I never could have imagined.

Re: Be a father to your child

Hill Rat — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:17:05 -0000

@MPresto

It's only going to get better. Today was school picture day and my little girl was awake early and fired up to wear her dress uniform to school. There's something so infectious about the enthusiasm of a little kid that I got hyped about picture day too.

Everything I put into raising my child, I get back tenfold in love, wisdom, and patience.

Re: Be a father to your child

lebecka — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:09:25 -0000

I have made some interesting observations about dads in the time since my siblings and i have all started families-- the main one is that dads find it hard to be involved until the kids are bigger, and let's face it, more interesting. When they are little infants, they are almost all work with little reward. The best reward you get at that time is being with them. if a dad is not with the mother at that time, then he misses out on the "being with" reward. But really, that time is critical for developing the "parent" vibe. You can't just waltz in when the kid is, say, 2 years old, and start to have a good time. It's not gonna happen easily, and then I think dads might give up. Also, if you don't hang out until the kid is 2, you are dealing with one pissed off mother. Those first two years are slave labor-- That mother is not gonna let dad get the fun with out the work as well.

My best advice to men-- stick with your women. If you do nothing else, be there to help and pick up and do dishes and run to the store and do the many, many loads of laundry and bring chocolate and smile and say "what a good job you are doing!" and "what a great kid!" and "he/she's fantastic!". Be at every single doctor appointment. Do this even if you don't like the mother very much. You can do this as a friend, you know, not only as a boyfriend/husband. Remember these important words-- "if mama ain't happy, ain't no one gonna be happy".

The most important part of parenting is being willing to spend the bulk of your time on the child, not on yourself. TNC's idea of "investment" is right.

Re: Be a father to your child

Lucas — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:41:03 -0000

As a swimmer I was about to post something along the lines of how great swimming is, but most everything is pretty well covered here. The only thing I would add is that there are only a few teams that most of the better swimmers compete for; if you stay at it long enough and end up swimming in college then all the friends you swam with while you were younger end up going to other teams and suddenly you know all the swimmers in your part of the country. Swimmers usually come from pretty upper class, Mad Men watching families...so it's good for getting a career later.

Also, you get to meet some Olympians.

Re: Be a father to your child

Randy — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:18:40 -0000

I didn't know how to be a son until I became a father.

Re: Be a father to your child

Clotilde — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:36:36 -0000

You made the right call on swimming vs. hockey. Not that hockey isn't good, but swimming has benefits no other sport has. In addition to the potentially life-saving skills, the cardiovascular benefits can save your ass later in life - and you can keep doing it almost forever without screwing up your joints. If you're a competitive swimmer, you can't mess around with smoking or drugs, because it will mess with your times. Swimmers work harder than anybody, and they know it, so they aren’t likely to be overly impressed with the jock-worship cult of football and b-ball players. Plus, nobody (at least among guys) looks better naked than a swimmer.

Best of all for the parents of a young swimmer: at the end of the day, they're clean, tired, and ready for bed.

Re: Be a father to your child

Andrew Fly — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:29:43 -0000

Love the Ed OG joint, that album was on heavy rotation during my junior high years.

Being a former single-parented child, and getting a little older, I'm actually starting to get pangs for parenthood. but i'm an educated elite who's always wanted the two income not children lifestyle. Posts like this don't help

Re: Be a father to your child

von — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:43:52 -0000

My son's 2 1/2, so whadda I know, but: seems like the right choice. The reasoning certainly resonates with me.

If he sticks with both, it will also open up two different worlds for him. I played football and swam in HS. Aside from me, those were two non-overlapping groups of kids. Definitely broadened the people who I knew. Also, I was in damn good shape by springtime: pack on the muscle during the summer & football season, shed the fat in the pool.

Re: Be a father to your child

henl0017 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:59:35 -0000

As a DM, swimmer, and (adult) son - hey, good on you.

Swimming can be great fun if you've got a good team, and there's nothing better in the world for staying fit, but I have to tell you - the three-hour practices swimming back and forth on a closed circuit can get really repetitive and dull.

That said the learning part is fun and useful, and breaking out my badass fly form at social events never gets old.

Re: Be a father to your child

canuckistani — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:47:44 -0000

Good choice. Even if he never swims competitively, it will save his life if he falls into deep water. I hear of a lot more kids who drown than I hear about kids who die because they couldn't play hockey.

Re: Be a father to your child

mistress_scorpio — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:36:44 -0000

That's a great moment... thanks for sharing it. It reminded me of this PSA I saw on television last week... it was so cute, I had to find it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2Ap3DyvLg

Re: Be a father to your child

Jonathan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:35:10 -0000

As a father with two kids 9 & 6 - and as a son whose dad left when he was 8, I can understand how you felt when your son hugged you. That feel will never be surpassed. Oh, and you made the right call on the life skill thing. (to say nothing of safety)

Re: Be a father to your child

Green — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:31:07 -0000

My own "father made me learn to swim" story.

When I was about 8 or 9 my dad made me join a swim team. I hated it from the begginning. The team practiced at a high school in Baltimore-Lake Cliftonhe- that at the time had a pool where the heat didnt work probably half the time. And as you know it's a winter sport. Plus like your kid practices overlapped some other things that I would've much rather been doing...I complained every time we went to practice but he wouldn't let me quit. Finally we reached a compromise: If I won a race I could quit. For me it was game on after that. I wasn't particularly good at the time, but I busted my butt and within the month I was off of that squad. I'm still a pretty good swimmer to this day, and it was, at the very least, worth a few summers as lifeguard later on. I'm sure there was a life lesson in there somewhere, but in any event that's my story.

Re: Be a father to your child

shani-o — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:26:06 -0000

Your kid is awesome. I came to the same realization that my parents were always looking out for my best interests when I was pretty young. It's a blessing to know that no matter what, there are two people who have your back.

Re: Be a father to your child

Zak — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:17:36 -0000

Passing up the chance to be a Hockey Dad shows how much you hate freedom.

Re: Be a father to your child

e. — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:17:20 -0000

This was great. I wish you could have taped that moment. :) far too often we hear about absent fathers, we rarely hear about the ones that are doing what they are supposed to. this just made me smile.

Re: Be a father to your child

anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:05:21 -0000

LOL -- parenting. No offense to the childless, but that's what it's all about. (And yeah, no matter who you are, you HAVE to know how to swim. Knowing how to raise a kid, now...) It's not on the 'the older I get, the better I was' theme that lots of parents, dads especially, run on their kids in sports and such, but...

Do you know the Bill Russell's mom story?

(forgive me, Bill, if I get this wrong -- and who knows but you read TNC? -- it's YOUR story, but....)

Story goes that Bill Russell, the great Celtic, was naturally a very large child so he often wound up playing basketball with kids much older than he was. I think he was about 9 or 10, playing with 15 year olds, and they first pushed him around, and then beat him up -- so he ran home crying, like a little kid intimidated by older boys would.

Mrs. Russell put him in a car, and drove him back to the playground. They got out, and she marched him up to the 15 year olds who had beat Bill up, still there shooting around. She lined 'em up, and told her son: Now, you fight each of these guys, one at a time. They may beat you up -- but YOU WILL NOT RUN.

He did; they did; he didn't.

Dayum -- who among us wouldn't be not only scared of Mrs. Russell, not only motivated to never, ever disappoint her, but most of all, proud to be her kid?

Re: Be a father to your child

Mike T — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:56:07 -0000

I'm wanting to make a global warming joke about hockey vs. swimming, but can't quite pull it together.

For your correspondent whose son is going through a Batman phase, I heartily recommend the new Lego Batman game. The Lego video games are easy enough to be fun for young kids and parents both, and have really good team play.

Re: Be a father to your child

Caroline — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:53:42 -0000

My dad's single mother sent him to their neighborhood pool here in Chicago when he was 11, where he learned to swim competitively, made a lot of new neighborhood friends, and found something to occupy his time as a latchkey kid. It was probably the best decision she ever made. And it gave him a chance to be around a lot of male peers and role models when he didn't have a dad.