Father or Friend?

I have been trying to figure this out for a very long time and I am still not able to understand how it is that in the end I always come out to be the "bad guy." If you are also a parent I am sure you know exactly what I am talking about. I have shared this subject with many other parents and I have learned that this is not unique to my parenting situation. In fact, even though in divorced households the "good guy" versus "bad guy" scenario plays itself out much more frequently, many times the same thing happens in intact families. If you think that as a parent you have some control over this, think again. It is not only rare that both mom and dad will unite at the same level to enforce discipline, it is almost impossible unless the parents upbringing was pretty much identical. As soon as one parent was raised differently than the other, the imbalance of disciplinary enforcement will reveal itself almost by default. It is probably even worse when in our parents upbringing their own mother and father held different ideas as to what good discipline should of been. In this case the role model behaviour of our parents could be so confusing that then we ourselves as parents are not so sure which one was right and how to proceed.

I remember as a young parent reading several books with respect to discipline. Positive reinforcement, time out instead of spanking, and a few other techniques seemed logical at the time. My now ex-wife and I at the time discussed a bit of what we learned by reading the books and in the end pretty much disagreed. I confess that she was much more tolerant than I ever was with my kids. Even though I have always been the more affectionate parent, I too was the stricter and more easily upset by bad behaviour of the two of us. My mom has commented that while visiting us when my boys were very young she remembers several times seeing my oldest son as a baby hitting his mother in the face and her allowing him to do so and simply holding his hands down in an effort to control the bad behaviour which he continued to do over and over again. On the other hand, the first time he did this to me I smacked his bottom, he cried for a minute, but never did it again. Was I right and she wrong in our parenting technique? If you would of asked me this question at that time I would of instantly told you yes since he never did it again to me, but he repeatedly did it again to his mother. If you ask me now the answer is that I am not really sure considering that he has never been truly physically violent towards his mother, and yet he has been towards me.

Is there a correlation to me enforcing physical discipline towards my son as a child and him later feeling entitled to be physically violent towards me as a teenager? Although I am sure that there is no black and white answer to that question, I do think there might be some kind of connection. The problem is that I also believe that there is much more that enters into the equation, such as the gender factor and my behaviour towards his mother. No matter how angry his mother and I would get between each other, physical violence was never a part of our home. So in essence our marriage was a positive role model for him with respect to how we dealt with disagreements. Even at the end we were always able to keep things civilized and without much of the drama that is so common among couples entangled in divorce proceedings. However, I do believe that the male versus male factor plays a significant role into his sometimes violent behaviour. Fortunately for us, this is one of the areas in which marked improvement has taken place between us. After participating in a 12 week program of behavioural management almost 18 months ago, he learned techniques to curve his outbursts, and I learned techniques to avoid the triggers that seemed to make him lose control. Although the situation is not by all means perfect, the changes have been dramatically positive.

Still though, I have such a hard time accepting the continuous "bad guy" role between us. The kid does everything in his power to screw up in his behaviour, I do everything in my power to tolerate as much as I possibly can before blowing a fuse, yet in the end I am the recipient of all the bad looks and attitude. Unfortunately, doing what is right as a parent most of the time means being the bad guy. As much as you would like to be their "friend," the reality is that in order to be their parent most of the time you have to be their enemy. Of course, just like the ogre in Shrek, there are layers in these relationships. You really don't want to become their true "enemy," you just cannot be their "best friend" because in order to do so you would have to compromise your status of authority in the parent child relationship. Anyway, the long and mean faces are just another kind of manipulation from their part. He figures that he can make me feel guilty for being a parent instead of a friend. Instead of buying into this subversive behaviour, once the punishment is over I just go back to being regular dad and typically kill him with kindness. If I stay angry with him, then he has an excuse to keep up the piercing looks. Once I start behaving as if nothing happened (I find this to be an important part of forgiveness), he has no other choice but to eventually let down his guard.

Yes, I am sure that my "bad guy" role is critical during these tough years, but I am also aware that eventually he'll see where I was coming from if he ever has kids of his own. In the meantime I'll keep being his "dad" and not his "best friend" because this is what he needs in his life. An advice to any of my readers that might not have any kids yet, don't have any...hahaha! But if you do, be ready to do what is right even though many times it will feel totally wrong. Loving your children comes in many flavors, and not all of them are yummy. The key is to mix those flavors up so that that bad ones go down almost as easy as the good ones.

FOOTNOTE: Consider the above comments as my way of sharing with you that within my "oh so miserable" last week with my son I still have found a way to get back on the horse and keep going. Just because the road is muddy, this does not mean that I intend to give up and wait until it stops raining to continue my walk towards sanity. I don't really have that luxury, in all of these years I never have been able to sit still for too long. If I did I'd probably get run over by fear. In fact, that is a very good way of describing what I feel when I stay still for too long, fear. As my situation got worse this past week with my son, originally I stood still and started to feel depressed and losing hope. Fear is a paralyzing emotion that I don't enjoy at all. The thought process that develops from fear is mostly self indulgent in itself. What I mean is that once I allow myself to be afraid, then fear in itself creates a vicious circle that immobilizes me and creates even more fear. I want to thank those of you that wrote to me recognizing that I was having a tough week. Your emails contributed much towards the healing that I needed in order to get up and take a step forward again. Also, I appreciate your prayers...they work.

Dad