Daddy’s Kids

Last weekend Daddy and his little girl put her bike together. Poor thing she’d been waiting since we moved here and other things always seemed to take precedence. One day she just piped up… right in the middle of the football game. He couldn’t resist. Soon all the tools and her bike were strewn about and all three kids jumped at the chance of a project with Daddy. I thought the kids would scream and fuss and fight but they managed beautifully… without me.

I’m always amazed at the differences in parenting and I get myself in trouble when I think it has to be done my way to be correct. The secret to a couple successfully parenting together is respecting your differences and going with the flow. It’s reasonable to expect that if it isn’t done by you it will be different. But it isn’t necessarily wrong. A great article in Psychology Today talks about the father’s role in parenting their children.

Here are some of the highlights:

“[A fathers’] …more playful, jocular approach carries major consequences for
developing children. Where the "average" mother cushions her baby against
irritating stimulation, the "average" father heaps it on, consistently producing
a broader range of arousal. The resulting ups and downs force children to
"stretch," emotionally and physically.”

“This emotion-stretching dynamic becomes more pronounced as father-child relationships enter into their second and third years. When playing, fathers tend to be more physical with their toddlers--wrestling, playing tag, and so on--while mothers emphasize verbal exchanges and interacting with objects, like toys. In nearly all instances. fathers are much more likely "to get children worked up, negatively or positively, with fear as well as delight, forcing them to learn to regulate their feelings." In a sense, then, fathers push children to cope with the world outside the mother-child bond. Fathering behavior also seems to make children develop emotional communication skills.” They do this in three steps.

“First, children learn how to "read" their father's emotions via his facial
expressions, tone of voice, and other nonverbal cues, and respond accordingly.
Is Daddy really going to chase me down and gobble me up, or is he joking? Did I
really hurt Daddy by poking him in the eye? Is Daddy in the mood to play, or is
he tired?”

“Second, children learn how to clearly communicate their own emotions to others. One common example is the child who by crying lets her daddy know that he's laying too roughly or is scaring her. Kids also learn to indicate when interactions aren't stimulating enough; they'll show they've lost interest by not responding or wandering off.”

“Finally, children learn how to "listen" to their own emotional state. For instance, a child soon learns that if he becomes too "worked up" and begins to cry, he may in effect drive his play partner away.”

“The consequences of such emotional mastery are far-reaching. By successfully coping with stimulating, emotionally stretching interactions, children learn that they can indeed effect change both on internal matters (their feelings) and in the outside world (their father's actions). In that regard, links have been found between the quality of father-child interactions and a child's later development of certain life skills, including an ability to manage frustration, a willingness to explore new things and activities, and persistence in problem solving. As important as learning to regulate the emotional intensity of their interactions is children's ability to master the larger interactive process, the give and take that makes up social communication. Kids who learn how to decode and encode emotions early on will be better off later when it comes to any social encounter.”

Wow all that huh? Who knew? Daddy’s projects with the kids almost always go smoother than I thought it would. There’s something about watching your husband with your kids that makes you appreciate a different method of parenting. But if you micro manage the way he interacts with them you’ll find this discourages his involvement. If you can welcome your differences your family will flourish. The article reminds us of this when they later say that families “…should take advantage of the difference[s] between men's and women's parenting approaches. Since fathers' boisterous antics seem to help prepare children for life outside the family, mothers shouldn't cancel this out by intervening or being overly protective.”

I didn’t intervene… this time… and the bike got put together. And she loved it. She hopped right on and proudly puttered around the patio.

Sheila Cason, MD