Summertme 2015 epiphany: "I`ve got it"

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I was home at my Mothers  for all of July with my two girls age 6 and 3 at time of writing.  We have a cottage right near where the star is on the map I have included here.    I asked my Mother several times throughout our visit if it was OK?  Were the kids difficult?  Did they tire her out?  Should we take a shorter vacation next year?  Should we go away?  My Mother is getting on in years and I know that boisterous, little ones can really tire you out.  But always she said, "no no no, I m fine, I love them.  I`m so glad you are all here"

So I found it strange that on our last day when our vacation overlapped with other visitors there, my sister`s friend said something to me between, "They certainly have a lot of energy, you are a great Dad to be able to handle them" and "Wow, how do you handle their noise and running around and incessant screaming?" with exasperation.  She had only been with them for less than 24 hours and half of that was spent on sleep.  My Mother had been with them a full month.

I just shrugged and said nothing to her, but I had several answers in my head.  One was, "Oh you can get the app download.  Just wire your computer to your brain and download the `nerves of steel resistance to toddler boisterousness` app.  Works quite well."  Another answer was, "it doesn't bother me at all.  What`s the problem?"  And yet a third, variation and a bit snarky, "What?  I don't know what you are talking about.  Is there some problem?  I don`t hear or see any problems.  Can you explain yourself?".  Realistically I would have answered, "Oh, they aren't so bad and I can handle it."

But suddenly it occurred to me this morning two weeks later (well, for me that IS suddenly.  I`m a bit slow with reactions) that, hey! maybe I am wired to handle it.  Maybe I was equipped with the natural app even before I was born!  Don`t get me wrong, I`m not saying it is in my DNA, cough, cough, hack, yes, cough, I , cough, am, excuse me, some rhubarb bread caught in my throat.  As I mentioned in my last post we lay people get things wrong by saying DNA is accountable for about 50 per cent of our actions.  There is no such theory out there of that sort (except mine, cough).  So I won`t spread bad science.

However, I would like to theorize that maybe there is some God given gift  (whoops now I have even strayed out of science and into creationism) of being able to parent.  Not everyone has it, an ability to be a parent,  to "put up with it".  It can be inside of women or men.  And likewise either gender may be lacking in the quality.  I`m reminded of three females right off the bat who obviously were deficient:  Yoko Ono, the Mother in a short story of Annie Proulx who throws her small baby in a river because it is crying a lot, and said friend of my sister.  I am sure there are many others.  

Uh, granted, my sister`s friend has never had kids and has never had to deal with them.  And she is a bit older than I am.  She could be a grandma herself if she had had kids, so she probably likes a more calm life by now.  And... she likes turtles.  But that is beside the point.  Which came first the chicken or the egg?  Did she not have kids because she didn`t have "it".  Or does she not have "it" and probably can`t stand my kids even for a day because she didn`t have kids?  Born with or without this necessary trait?  Or developed after you had kids?  Nature or nurture?  I would go with the nature because many mothers who have kids are still really bad mothers.  Obviously they did not develop "it" or were not even born with "it". They have no chance of getting "it".

I, on the other hand, pat pat, congratulations dude, have... "it".     Please please, no applause.  Or even applesauce.

The point being either way, if "it" comes from nature or nurture women OR men can have it.  The point being that for pretty much most of humankind's history men have been stifled and their talent wasted if they had the trait to become a good father and help, nay even do everything in bringing up the kids.  The point being that NOW lets turn this ship around and realize that men can be just as good with kids and can be the primary care givers just as much as women.  The point being... lets do it.  If you `ve got "it"  use "it".  You know, flaunt what you got, baby.

I would like to finish with a quote from Trump.   No no, not that Trump, but in fact his daughter Ivanka Trump.  She is 33 years old with two young kids, husband, and works in her fathers real estate business.   She said in an interview in magazine `Business Insider` January 26, 2015:
  
Ivanka Trump: We live in an interesting time. Work is changing for men as much as it is for women. Men expect and want to be part of their children's lives. They're living in a different way than their fathers did.
(Read more) 

And it brings me to a final conclusion which I brought up last year at this time in a post called Universal Mommy.  It was also a post from summer vacation.  Not many people read the post so I will just repeat that I came to the conclusion that the traits of the "mother" were universal across both genders.  Both my friend, a father of a girl close to my daughter`s age, and I were acting just like "mothers" in taking care of our kids.  So, it`s just the way you act, it is the process and work of parenting and doesn`t matter if it is employed by male or female.  But you have to know how.  You have to have "it"  in the first place.     

Turtles reading the comics and doing a crossword puzzle.

I Neanderthal part 3: control your impatience and even worse your violence

This story came out in June of this year and I don't know why I have to dwell on it because it just saddens me no end every time I look at it.


That is the other reason men can not become good fathers.  What is it?  Why so much violence?  Maybe it is still from the hunter

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gatherer days of battling woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers for food before we settled on the farm.  The violence in men is certainly Neanderthal.  (Now someone will come to tell me that actually Homo Sapiens are much more violent than Neanderthals.  Well, it could be)

 While no doubt, women can also be violent, probably more so with verbal violence rather than physical violence, make no mistake about it, the overwhelming amount of violent crimes, homicides, rapes and abuse are committed by men.  I could take time to research and present you some numbers, but... I think it`s a no brainer, everybody pretty much knows that men are more physically violent. Prove me wrong!   But where does this violence come from?  That is the more necessary question to research as it could help in the settling and calming of men`s temper.

These days I am hooked up on the question of DNA quite a bit, so I am apt to say it is some sequence in our DNA which triggers violence.  But I have been warned by geneticists not to place too much emphasis on DNA as a a causation for what happens in our life.  In other words you don't become a writer or mathematician because you have some sort of DNA.  Beethoven did not write his heavenly 9th symphony because he had some DNA which caused him to do it.  I disagree at this point in time, but I will have to give it more thought and research and not stress DNA as I am not a molecular biologist and I was sent  a lengthy article on the pit falls of pinning too much to DNA.  If you are a good reader here is the article.  Basically it says that lay people (that would be me) mistakenly and sometimes detrimentally attribute too much to DNA when there is in fact no connections.  People like me say this and this is caused by DNA when it in fact can not be proven.  So....  Admittedly I have fallen in that trap, but I should at least warn you about it.

Where was I? Oh yes the violence of men.

While I have always thought men (and women) can become good or even great parents with little or no training, this is one area in which I would in fact espouse a training camp to become a better parent.  That is, a class to control your violence and  promote and nurture PATIENCE.  I have said it from the beginning that the three P s of parenting are essential.  Patience Patience and more Patience.  In so many stories or interviews I read about Stay at Home Dads, there always comes a point where the Dad says something to the effect that he wished he had more patience.   It is always there.  It must be in every man.  Realize that.  Your patience can snap or dissipate or disappear and then ...

The extreme is what happened here.  This poor beautiful girl lost her life.  Look how happy and bubbling with life she was in some of the other pictures.  (Crap, here come the tears again).  As much as I am devastated by this violence, I know exactly how it happened and what was going through the perpetrator`s mind when he basically beat the sh.. out of her (a two year old!!) and broke most of her internal organs along with her ribs.  I don't think he was an abuser or violent person, he just snapped.  She was crying incessantly, and yes while I did not have thoughts of beating or even hitting my child, I have been there too.  When the crying gets going and goes and doesn't stop it can just make you lose it.  You want it to stop, you have lost control and you want the control back, but it is not happening and then it is possible at this moment that you can break in a very bad way.  That is when we need training on how to deal with it. 

For this reason, and in this case I would recommend a class being set up to help parents, Fathers AND Mothers deal with a potential violence, or the loss of patience.  I guess there are anger management classes, but its not the same, and its for a different type of person.

At the very least Dads out there, see it in yourself and realize that the worst CAN happen and try to educate yourself and know a little about how to control it and know when it is coming.  Learn Patience.  I am sure there is a better way to say this... I hope you get the idea.  But also, look into the kids who you might get to babysit your toddlers or kids.  Do they have training?  Do they know how to control their violence?  Are they patient?  You don't want to leave your most precious things in life in the hands of the Tasmanian Devil. (I`m referring to the cartoon character from Bugs Bunny, just so you know I have nothing against Tasmanians)

OK, I will say a prayer for this girl for the next several nights and hope I can get it out of my brain, or at least hope she is in a better place.  Perhaps she was spared much sadness and all the travails that life can be.  I will leave you with a picture of my daughter`s Tai Chi class because she wanted to learn it and I want her to be able to protect herself.