No Respect for Daddy

Good Times

Last post,  ages and ages ago, I talked about the summertime and just me taking care of my daughters.  Me responsible for everything, but me reaping all the rewards of being a good father having a great time with his daughters.  That time was very favorable.  Now the times have been a changing, and not in my favor.  

In this very very difficult time during the Corona Virus

Bad Times

pandemic, everyone in our family is staying at home.  We live in a European country (not Italy) and most of the governments in Europe (besides the UK) have very strict, draconian rules in place now.  Most businesses are shut, including mine.  My wife is working from home.  Masks are necessary to have to go outside.  They are really trying hard to contain this virus and then shut it down.  I am being hurt, but I accept what they are doing.  If we did nothing the death count could spiral into a major catastrophy and destroy the economy anyway.  Seriously.

You know I ve had my share

Well, anyway, we are all at home.  Tempers are going to go bad and fly off (probably more on that subject in my next post).  We still get out some, but we spend a good deal of time in the house and dont see anyone else.

The connection with my last post is that now I have absolutely no clout with my kids.  In the summer time I was the man and they listened to me and mostly we got along and if I said something, most of the time they listened to me and did what I wanted.  I didnt have to yell. 

No such thing here and now.  Mommy has all the clout.  Daddy gets no respect.  Its frustrating and I gave a sigh just as I was writing that.  Now I  yell at them and tell them to do things and it amounts to hot air blowing out of my lungs.  In fact they talk back to me and throw stupid questions in my face which only get me angrier.  I asked my daugther from the morning to practice her guitar.  It didnt happen until 9pm and of course after Mommy got on her case too.  What happened to my credibility?  I am angrier, I note that, and yes I realize that the more you yell, the less it works, but when Mommy comes in with a super yell and "Enough of this" they get down to business and listen to her. 

This does not bode well for the long term. If this virus keeps us in this situation for an extended period, and an extended period is a month, which it looks like is going to happen I think my daughters will be yelling AT ME and refusing to do anything I ask them to do.  OR, just not listen to me.   It has just been a week and a half at this time of writing. 

What happened here?  Mommy is the boss and they listen to her.  I might as well check out of here or just not say anything.  Everything I ask them to do comes to naught.  A very bad situation.  Frustrating for me as I already mentioned. 

No respect for Daddy. 
What happened? 
This link is a very long blog of what I am talking about, though this guy has much more anger.  The article just about perfectly hits my situation on the head.  Just about.
https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/angry-daddy-cant-get-no-respect/

Please practice social distancing now. Wear masks and be safe and, stay away from people for now.  It could mean your life and others. 
Would appreciate any comments which mean something, not bot comments or people touting their business or products.  Kind of annoying.  Stay well besides.  And listen to more Bob Dylan if you are getting upset and covid is getting you way down

Endings and Beginnings Part I

I dislike endings.  Maybe I am afraid of them too.  The end of movies, the ending of  a book (but not a chapter), even the end of my teaching classes.  The worst, however, is the end of the school
 year.  It was even bad when I was a kid.


Back then June was pretty nice.  The days were long and hot and a lot of  us were playing soccer in the big backyard
of a friend down the street. Or the people right next to the soccer yard were very kind and opened up their backyard pool to the neighborhood.  They all had huge backyards on the OTHER side of the street.  We just had normal size backyards.  But anyway, June was nice because school wasn't so hard in June and we just had lots of time to mess around.  Still I think I liked March or April the best.  Sometime still in the thick of the plot long enough away from the end.

Soccer house on left, open pool on right

When the end of June rolled around my family had to prepare for our vacation and close our regular house and make a big travel to our summer house.  Mind you, by the time we got to our summer house, I was very happy and excited.  But that was a known BEGINNING and not an end.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with the price of sheep and being a father?  Well, besides the fact that I just like to reminisce a bit,  it is still the same now that I am a father.  The end of the school year is sad.  The worst was two years ago when my youngest daughter finished three years of pre school and both my girls were done with that school.  We wouldn't be going back there anymore.

But I think the biggest, toughest part about finishing something is the fear of moving on and knowing that you have to start, perhaps, something new or unknown.  Beginnings are often not comfortable.  They are out of the comfort zone.  Not like the middle of March or April.

This year was even more frightening because it would be the first summer where I would be taking care of my daughters by myself.  In last summers my Mother was there for support and a lot of help.  My wife has to stay home and go to her job.  But this year my Mother would not be with us in the vacation as she was staying down in the hot hot South and we would be in the temperate pleasant North.  (We would visit her for a week, but ultimately the heat in the south didn't make it very enjoyable).

For three weeks it would just be me and the daughters.  I mean, the name of my blog is 40 per cent daddy at home and I have been taking care of them , sometimes more and sometimes less, but this was a big move to do everything myself.  To be responsible for having everything in place including three meals a day plus snacks.  Even for a loving care taker father this is a bit daunting.  Or maybe I am only speaking for myself.  But maybe not.  Understand the situation.  There was no other person around to fall back on if something went wrong or got messed up.  No wife or mother or anyone around.

Not only was I travelling half way across the world with them as usual, but then renting the car,  being the driver every time, buying the groceries, making sure the food is in the fridge and the meals will be planned for some time of day to be eaten and getting around everywhere, or even just staying in place.  All up to me. Or should I say down to me?  Granted as happened on the second day, if the food isn't in place to get cooked and eaten, I can fall back on taking them out to dinner.  I know many people cant have that back up.

OK, so I live in the western world and things are easier to take care of, .... but still....... Three weeks.  Everything is my responsibility.  Two little kiddlers.  Just me.

End of Part I

Spider Lake, Michigan

DNA vs Bad Parenting.

Some years ago I posted a video on my personal face book site.  It showed  a kid about 5 or 7 banging a shopping cart into another 30 ish man, not his father, just a stranger, in the waiting line at the supermarket.  The man opens a carton of milk he is buying and pours it on the head of the kid.  The kid starts crying.  I took the post down after a couple days after many people told me the guy SHOULD have poured the milk on the mothers head.  After all, 1) she wasn't doing anything to stop her kid from hitting the man, or not enough and 2) she was the parent.  The kid is her son.  She should have taught him, or disciplined him in general that you don't do that kind of thing.  In other words, it was her fault as a bad parent.

https://www.opposingviews.com/category/man-grows-tired-unruly-boy-hitting-him-grocery-cart-while-mother-ignores-situation-video

I took the video down, but in recent months I have had second thoughts about this whole theme.  Let me explain.

Not my daughter, just some random photo 

For many years and over many topics I was always half worrying, 'oh, i better teach my girls correctly or else people will think I am a bad parent'.  Even now I criticize them when they eat their food with their fingers and ask them if they do that in school and I tell them under no circumstances may they eat with their fingers at other peoples houses.  After all what would the other parents think of my wife and I?  That we couldn't teach our kids to eat with a fork and knife and they don't know how to? Or that we don't care to teach them manners?  And we don't teach them how to be polite and not arrogant and share and say thank you ... and all that stuff.

But lately, I start to think where does some of this stuff come from? It ain't me.  I am not a nasty...  Well, my younger girl, she can be really mean a lot of times and teases.  And it isn't me.  I try to teach her to be nice and not tease her sister.  I tell her 'dont talk like that, say it nicer. Why do you have to be so mean when you say it? I didn't teach you any of that.'  And I didn't.  I am a very pleasant guy and was even more pleasant and nice when I was a small tyke.  I wasn't mean.  I didn't yell at people when I was three and get upset that someone got a pizza with black olives instead of green.  I was happy to get a pizza. But this girl... where did it come from? Or where DOES it come from?

I keep asking her, 'can you say that in a different way?  Please use nicer language and don't yell or call people stupid if they don't remember what you said or don't do it exactly how you want it'. I ask my wife, 'were you a nasty kid?' And she says no. I was a nice kid.  I have to believe her.  But where has it come from?  We teach them to be polite and nice.  

So, i say to myself, 'you know, I am not a bad parent. I don't teach my daughter to be nasty and yell at people, to yell at her father.  I try to teach her to say it nicely.  'You make me angry' she says.  It has to come from inside her.  There must be a DNA for anger.

I have asked this question before and I have been warned that laymen (me) show their stupidity by blaming things on DNA, but, but, where is the behavior coming from? It has to be from some distorted, mutated DNA. OR some DNA from some other family member.  Maybe my side of the family.  Maybe my grandma wasn't a nice person.  Maybe she was mean and passed on a recessive gene for nastiness??  And it is showing up in my daughter, it didn't show up in me or my mother, but my daughter.  Maybe.

And so was it really the mothers fault that her son was banging the other guy with the shopping cart?  Well, she could have yelled at her son harder and physically pulled the cart out of his hands.  But as far as the fact that the kid was doing it in the first place, NO.  Maybe she tried to teach him every day, that is not the way to behave, but he does it anyway.  He ll end up in prison and I couldn't say definitively it was because he had bad parents.  And maybe HE deserved the milk on his head and it taught him that he can do these things, but he will pay the price too.  Maybe his mother didn't and couldn't teach him that. I mean its not like SHE was going to pour milk on his head if he was bad.  It took a stranger to get angry with the brat and teach him consequences.  As a result he wont go to jail.  Although he still might because he has the DNA to be mean.  And he is going to end up knifing someone or smashing someones head on the concrete.  And I doubt that will be the fault of his mother.

Just some thoughts on my part.  Thank you for reading.  Make a comment if you like.

Daddy the Disciplinarian. Why me?

Yes, it is March now and this is my first post for the year.  I always have ideas in my head and stories to tell in the ongoing life of Daddy 40%, but .... I guess I am doing other things that preoccupy my mind and time more.  Not to mention that I am not as good at staying up later to write as I used to be.  But I am not cancelling my blog, like others. In fact I will write more posts this year than last.

So, we were finishing off the Christmas holidays, yes I know, way way in the past now, and we sat down to watch a family movie together.  There is enough room on the couch for all four of us.  Two daughters age 7 and 10,  two parents and potato chips and all.

I am very skeptical about my role as disciplinarian.  This role for the father remains his job well into the 21st century even as mothers became single parents in droves, even as fathers became the primary caretaker of their kids in... well increasing amounts.  Which means they have to be both security blanket AND chief nagger of kids in duality roles.

If fathers are staying home with their kids and taking care of toddlers lives, or even older KIDS lives, why do they have to be the disciplinarian also?  It seems like its a contradiction of roles.  I speculate that even when mothers are acting as single parents, the father is still visiting once in a while and acts then as disciplinarian, or even from afar, "what would your father say?"  I may be wrong.

I recall my Sister in law was very strong with her kids.  My brother had a job in which he was on the road for long periods of time.  But when he came home, he was disciplinarian.

Why?

I hate being a disciplinarian.  Kids always hate, and I do mean HATE, the disciplinarian.  He is doing it out of love, but gets no love back.  Only, "yeah, sure sure", "I'm going I'm going".  Leave me alone, I did it already. Go away". 

It seems that as roles change and become more equal and the sexes become more equal in the role of parenting, women could be more of the hard nose disciplinarian. But really, in stereotyping in the media and television, save for Mommy Dearest, do you ever have the mother being a real terrorizer to the kids?  I mean even in Grimm's fairy tales and TV the mother will never beat the kids.  She may yell at them, but never has physical contact.

Don't get me wrong, hitting kids is in my book wrong, very wrong.  I don't condone it, nor do I think society does anymore, as it did whipping in older days.  But in all the history and especially current history, has there been any mention of mother physically disciplining the kids? Don't you think it happened?

But no.  mom, mother, is always the love giver, the security for the kids.  Dad is shown as the strict upholder of the rules and laws.

Why me?

I am a pretty gentle guy who does not like aggression (except I don't mind it in music).  While I have much heated debate on the verge of conflict with business people and even friends, I stay away from potential violent situations such as bars and conversation with narcissistic, arrogant types. (I could make a good joke at this point, but I will keep it out).  I even stopped Facebook commenting because it was just getting too heated and nasty.

So why am I the one who still has to push them to get to bed each evening?  Why am the one who has  to push my daughter to practice guitar more?  My older daughter doesn't let me kiss her anymore "because I m a boy", and I really miss this.  I mean even to give her a peck on the head, she gets angry.  And it makes me sad.  why cant my wife be in this position for all these things?

I don't have the answer.  If there is anyone out there who has statistics on this issue, I would be interested.  Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe there are statistics showing dads are not the disciplinarians as much anymore.  I would like to see them. I don't believe it.  As the male parent of the family I am, by default, the enforcer, the punisher.  Something I did not ask for.

So there we are sitting on the couch on the Saturday or Sunday before school starts again.  All the amenities in place.  The movie starts.  A five minute car chase in which people are shot at repeatedly, heads and brains are shown being shot off and people skidding on motorcycles for meters and meters and much of it in slow motion such as where the head comes off.  Then it goes on and the hero threatens a person with death if he continues to stalk someone. He makes his point that he means business and the death will happen.  No questions asked.  Then we are in a bar where the "hero" starts talking about sucking another characters ..... HOLD IT, ENOUGH OF THIS.  WE ARE NOT WATCHING THIS.  STOP RIGHT NOW.    I took the DVD out.  This is not good for a ten year old, let alone a 7 year old.  How can this be a Marvel comics movie?  We are not watching Deadpool 2 and this is final.  Not now, not for many years.  Who got this?

My kids hated me.  They yelled at me.  They glared at me.  They tried to restart the video, but I took it and hid it.  They said it wasn't so bad and none of the words were bad in translation. We ended up watching Spykids 2 which was incredibly stupid but very friendly.   There was bad atmosphere in the house now, but there was no way I was going to let a violent movie put bad ideas into my girls heads.  This was not life, this was not how life should be presented.  This was a bad example of a non existent life with no value whatsoever, especially for kids.  It portrays everything I am against and not how I want my daughters to see life and use as an example to follow, even if we had seen only 10 minutes of the movie.  NO WAY.

I had to put my foot down.  I had to.  No way to :

Christmas gifts. What kids need

Another "no duh" post provided to you by Daddy 40 per cent or more stay at home.  But it was a little epiphany for me.

I strongly think that one job of kids is to play and have fun, have adventures.  Adults should try to work and get things done.  Kids "job" is to play.  You think this is another "no duh" statement from Daddy here, but it's not.  Think about for how many centuries children were just thought of as little adults and were treated that way.  Even Freud.  Even he thought of them as little premature sex machines just waiting to reach maturity to have sex.  Just little adults "in training" for being an adult.  Some of the literature still refers to them as such.  But kids just need to be... wait for it.... kids.

Believe it or not, this is not so apparent even in our modern world.  I am talking socially now, not medically, though there is great debate on whether kids should be treated with "adult drugs" for sickness.

At any rate, kids got to be kids.  They have to play.

Therefore,  the Christmas gifts for kids have to suit kids.  I just think about it because all the gifts I received this year, besides a pass for the local swimming pool, were rather boring wishes.   I wrote a letter to the fabled giver of presents that I would like, after world peace and peace between my kids of course, a new pair of  long underwear, a long sleeve shirt, some new winter gloves, a winter hat (with the logo of my favorite band on it) AND a second weight barbell as I only have one.  Wow.  That stuff would bore the tears out of Santa.  Or maybe make him laugh his butt off.  I don't think of myself as a boring person, but maybe I am.

I would have asked for a collection of Bauhaus records, or even just one.   But I don't really need them right now.  I ll get them when I am a little more financially secure.  Maybe that will be never.  I can wait.  But, the long underwear can not wait. I don't want to get them next year. I want them NOW.

Likewise, games for my kids is what they need RIGHT NOW.  My kids need to play and I want them to play.  Of course they need new clothes too, but they get those any time of the year.  They need games for Christmas.

At this point I have to be a "parent on guard" and say that I am unwilling to buy them Xbox, Play Station, Nintendo and the likes.  Call me unknowledgeable and I don't know anything about these games, but it seems to me most video games use only your knee jerk re actions and thumb and finger co ordination. Maybe a little logic about where granny might be hiding with that knife or whatever.  Take the older games, even card games, they take logic, thinking and a steady hand to play.  Stratego takes logic and thinking. Even Battleship and card games, which are a lot of luck, take a thinking mind and some development in the brain to play.  I admit when I was growing up I was addicted to Pac Man, but, its kind of useless.  Super Mario brothers?  None of those hold a candle to the likes of board games and Monopoly.  Even Match Box cars take creativity and a bit of scientific thinking to figure out which car will go the farthest down the hill and how.  Yes, I know I am being old fashioned and a bit daft even if some new video games use some logical thinking to play, take me as being an old fart, but the old board games, even Barbie, are what really help kids develop AND are great fun.

I just had a great Christmas holiday.  For two days I played Monopoly with my girls.  Seriously, pretty much straight and only time out for opening presents, sleeping and eating.  This will be a Christmas I will remember fondly.  It was so much fun. 

Anyway, to criticize the new video games compared to the old board games wasn't the reason of this article.  The point was that video games or board games, you have got to give the kids what they want. Something fun.

And you know what?  Its interesting to shop for them also.  Just think, in five or ten years they are going to be boring teenagers who just want cool clothes or sneakers so they can be hip, cool dudes among their school peers.  That will be the height of boring shopping for me.  They say that kids younger and younger are asking for this stuff.  Oh man.  Get them a tank of tropical fish to take care of instead.

My friend bought his 15 year old son a (second hand) DJ record player.  How cool is that?  That is the

kind of "toy" teenagers should be getting.

OK, but again, the simple idea I wanted to get across is the jobs of kids is to play.  I know it is after the fact, Christmas was yesterday.  But if you  have to return some of the clothing you got them because it is the wrong size, why don't you also take a few steps down the mall or where ever to get them some game too.  Kids need to play.  They learn and they grow up, and they become adults... most of them.

Checkers. Get them an old fashioned game of checkers.  Everyone should learn how to play Checkers sometime in their life.

Been listening to Christmas carols and classical music devoted to Christmas the past couple days including while writing this.  Nothing but.   Not even the Beatles album CD Santa got my girls again for Christmas, though I am Jonesing to hear that.  We did watch, as we do every year,  the cartoon version of "How the Grinch stole Christmas"

2,999,999 more out there. Where?

Over the summer I had to clean out our cottage in a hurry and take or throw away a lot of stuff.  I am a very sentimental guy who has a strong memory for the past if you get me.  My Mother, not.  So it was terrible to see these birthday cards and all sorts of cards just tossed out.  It was history for me.  I am not a pack rat, just a believer in history.  Don't confuse the two. 

I have to get to the point now.  What I really wanted to talk about, query, is: where do all these things go?  Mostly I am thinking about games.  Cards of all sorts get burned or are biodegradable.  But games?  They are mostly plastic. What happens to them?

I looked at one of my most favorite games from when I was a kid, Hi Q, and it said on the box cover, "over 3 million sold".  3 Million!  And that was when we bought the game in the early 70s.  Maybe they sold 10 million all told.  I don't know.  But the point is, where did they all go?  I have one.  What about the other 2,999,999 or more?  Games aren't like your grandmothers earrings which get passed down from generation to generation. Its not like your grandmother says to you before she passes on, "here, take this heirloom and cherish it" and she passes you a game of Chinese checkers or Parcheesi.

Did they all go to the land fills? Or are they sitting in 2,999,999 attics or basements?

2,999,999 games of Hi Q sitting buried in land fills across the US and A?  Plastic.  600 years later they are still sitting there?  And how many others?  Milton Bradley, Mattell and Parker Brothers games, not to mention all the Barbies, sitting, just sitting in land fills?  I wouldn't believe it.  But...    I don't know

So I packed away STUFF into boxes and sent it FedEx overseas.  The Hi Q, Rubik's cube, Chinese Checkers, Battleship, Stratego (god, how I loved that game and how many times my friend and I played it when we were ten) Operation, and the funny clincher, Monopoly.

Thus the games will live on with me for another 50 years or thereabouts.  Then what?  Given to some school, or a library, or distributed to poorer peoples homes? Or given to the girl or boy down the street?  IDK

I still love them now and have introduced them to my kids with some success.  But really each generation has its own Heroes, TV shows, music and games.  Games usually have a shelf life.  Only a few like Barbie have been able to withstand and survive multi generations.  Its not like I see kids running to the store to buy Stratego these days.  They last a generation, if that.  Its like that with a lot of things except for the biggest names.  When I think of it now, the best "toy" or keepsake which probably no one has as a keepsake is the pet rock.  What a genius idea it was.  I mean for the future.  You didn't have to worry about it sitting in a landfill.  Just chuck it out on the street or anywhere and it hurts no one.  What a great idea as far as recycling goes. Did anyone keep a pet rock?

Music on the other hand, is going to be sitting around.  OK, no one threw away or should have thrown away their Beatles, Pink Floyd, or Led Zeppelin collections.  But only the real collectors care about saving all the Camper Van

cover to Take the Skinheads bowling EP.  I own one

Beethoven, Vomit Launch or even Partridge Family albums.  Cmon get happy. Its been thirty years or more since any of those bands have done anything and not many people know about them, let alone care about them.  'Cept for me maybe.

Its the same with games.  Besides for Monopoly, not many people really care about Stratego or Battleship these days.  Just me, maybe some other weirdo collectors.

 My life is the long and winding sentimental journey road.

What I ll probably do before I die is ask that I be buried or cremated with all my games, CDs and maybe a smattering of birthday cards and books.  Have them all come with me.  I CAN take it with me.  Why not?  I don't think many other people will care for my belongings.  Then when I am buried, or my ashes are buried, all the atoms will mix together and there will be an atom of Max mixed with Camper Van Beethoven's "take the skinheads bowling" vinyl EP.  Some tree will grow from my ashes, which will throw off acorns, which will get eaten by squirrels which might get shot by a hunter or eaten by an owl who will pass those atoms on to their children and the matrix for Max and Camper van Beethoven and Stratego will be passed along to some plant, animal, and human in the near future.

I pity that  (future) fool.

Nothing's ever lost.  Everything eventually ends up someplace else.  Isn't that nice to know?

Dads Depression I : Dads can be hurt by kids too.

There is a lot of talk at Dad conferences about the depression of Dads.  There are statistics about it. Maybe I should find some too.  I understand it all too well.

Look folks,  without having a doctorate in psychology, I can tell you with a great degree of certainty that people need to feel good about themselves.  They need to feel good about their work and what they are doing.  Perhaps some people need to feel they are contributing something to life, to society,  or at least to their family if they have one.  When you don't have that feeling of contribution, then  depression can develop.  Of course depression can be caused by other variables, but lets stick with this reason for now.

The problem is that many societies or communities still do not recognize dads as a main caretaker of kids.  I think even in the US stay at home dads are still considered a niche, an anomaly.  Dads should be working.

So when you are a stay at home Dad, your view of yourself must be very very strong to resist this mud that is thrown at you by society.  You are not doing something worthwhile they say.  When are you going to go out and get a job?  Be a real male and go and fix my car or something manly.

I can understand this attack quite well.  To some extent though it can be magnified within ourselves. In other words, perhaps the community is not saying this, but you hear it in yourself.  Your SELF is saying it to you on its own.

The irony of it all is that in many cases stay at home fathers are doing even better work than what they might be doing out in the community.  I can think of many jobs, but will not list them, where taking care of kids is more worthwhile than the jobs we get paid for and spend our time on.  When we all learn that taking care of kids, bringing them up with strong, good values and teaching them the difference between right and wrong is important and can be done by either parent then we will be progressing.  But it should be done by some parent!  Then we will have a stronger community and, yes, I kid you not, but many crimes will decrease.  I would say that is worth quite a bit!  And for what ever reason, if Mommy can`t be the caretaker, then it really shouldn't matter if daddy will teach and be there for children. 

But

After that lengthy introduction, what I wanted to talk about is the pain you can feel as a father when your kids reject you.

Now I am not saying they throw you out from the apartment, they don't want you, but they are just sort of not nice and hurt your feelings.

Like this.

My 9 year old  daughter called for me around 2.25am as she often does when she has a bad dream.  I heard her right away from the parents room and came to their kids room because I sleep like a deer.   She always calls for daddy because she knows I will come to her.  I hold her hand until she falls back to sleep, trying to hold my bathroom needs also which always come if I get up in the middle of the night.  If I am lucky she falls back asleep quickly and then hopefully I fall back to sleep quickly.  If not, I am awake for an hour.

But then, that morning, I came to wake her up at 7am and she said with a wicked sneer, "I want Mommy".  That hurt.

This last week my wife went to the theatre and I got home a little after she left.  They closed the front door on me, and said, "wait, wait don't come in yet".  Well that gets me a bit angry because usually they are closing their game they are playing on their phone and don't want me to see.  But then this time it was even more.  It was, "daddy, don't come into our room, go away."  Mind you they aren`t teenagers.  Teenagers might get away with saying that, but 6 and 9 year olds should not say that.  I went away cursing a bit louder than I should have.  Yes it made me angry.

Then ten minutes later my daughter came into the kitchen and said, the reason we didn't want you in our room was we were trying to fix the computer.  But we couldn't, so could you fix it?

Naturally enough I exploded and said in a rather loud manner, "oh, when you don't want me you tell me to go away, but when you need me then you come to me and say we need you, right after telling me to go away.  Well look, I have feelings too, I hurt too, and it hurts when you tell me to go away.  Whatever the reason."

That might have gotten to them. It got to me.  My younger daughter came in and said, I don't want to hurt your feelings daddy.  Do you want to play Go Fish? (a card game).

Yes.

Yes, daddies have feelings too and we can feel hurt.  I guess we are supposed to bite our lip and let it go. But isn't that what boys growing into men are taught?  Take it like a man.  Boys don't cry was the name of a Cure song.  Now is that natural? I ask myself? Whats up with that??  I just read an article in the NY Times today in which the subheading was something like, girls have more paths but boys have just one.  A friend of mine is able to brush it off like water on a duck, but sometimes for me, it doesn't work. I have feelings which can be hurt, just as kids do.  How else can you let them know that you hurt except by telling them?

Depression in dads can come from many directions.  It can come from society.  It can come from ourselves.  It can come directly from the actions of our kids.  Are we strong enough to just brush it off?  Sometimes.  Many times, no.  What to do when it strikes should be the topic of concern for all us stay at home dads who love our children.  For we  also have to love ourselves, or at least feel good about ourselves.