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“Men are the single greatest untapped resource in the lives of American children.”

Love means believing in someone, in something. It supposes a willingness to struggle, to work, to suffer and to rejoice. Satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment are byproducts of dedicated love. They belong only to those who can reach beyond themselves; to whom giving is more important than receiving.

 

 

 		 Fathering

Infants

  • Talk to your infant in a pleasant soothing voice, using simple language.

  • Listen to and respond to sounds your child makes and imitate them. Take turns babbling.

  • Allow your child to actively explore his or her environment. Encourage them to grasp, chew, and manipulate safe objects to help them understand the nature of their environment.

Toddlers

  • Label or name objects, describe events and reflect the feelings of your child to help them learn new words.

  • Use firm, rational communication reflecting logical consequences of your child’s actions when disciplining. Allow your child choices that are acceptable to you.

  • Routine tasks of eating, toileting, dressing, etc, are important opportunities to help children learn new words, about their world, and how to regulate own behavior.

  • Make bath time fun by playing with simple toys like boats, ducks or containers for floating and filling with water.

Pre-Schoolers

  • Provide many experiences to extend language and literacy abilities: reading books, telling stories, singing songs, writing down stories that children dictate, and illustrating the stories with crayons or water colors.

  • Give your child opportunities to problem solve by asking open ended questions like "How do you think this works?" or "Why do you think the water does that?"

  • Be available to share time with your child and share child care tasks like feeding, bathing, and going to the doctor.

  • Spend time teaching your child how to tie shoes, undo buckles, button and use zippers, as you help them dress.

Elementary School Students

  • Encourage your child’s literacy development: read with your child, go to the library together, provide reading and writing materials.

  • Develop a shared interest with your child and spend time working on learning more about that interest: sports, animals, stars, nature, weather, cooking, etc.

  • Give your child chores that are developmentally appropriate: making their own bed, setting the table, picking up their own toys, hanging up their coat, etc.

  • Be aware of homework assignments and other topics of study your child has. Monitor the completion of homework and be available for help.

Pre-Teens

  • Make a scrapbook together of some of the special activities you have shared. Write stories to supplement the pictures.

  • Show genuine interest in your child’s friends, interests, thoughts, feelings, and activities.

  • Monitor your child’s peer interactions by encouraging them to play in your house or in other supervised areas. Be aware of possible times when your intervention may be beneficial in teaching a social skill.

  • Teach your child family values and specific ways to deal with difficult situations involving drugs, alcohol, sex, social encounters, etc.

Teens

  • Learn and have fun together. Not only can the adolescent learn a new skill or hobby with you, but you can also develop new skills related to their interests.

  • Set aside some time with your child to discuss future plans and goals: career, college, marriage, etc.

  • Tell your child stories of when you were their age: use photos to share fun memories and major events, share embarrassing or funny experiences, what you did after school, your struggles, etc.

  • Encourage and support activities outside the house: sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work, or part-time jobs.

Resources:

1 Bitoun Blecher, Michele. “What Dad's Expect When Mom is Expecting,” WebMD Feature Archive, www.webmd.com.

2 Palm, Glen, “Promoting Generative Fathering Through Parent and Family Education,” in Generative Fathering: Beyond Deficit Perspectives, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 1997.

3 Brigham Young University offers a comprehensive list of activities for every child: birth to 18 years old. Visit the university’s website: http://fatherwork.byu.edu. The activities listed here are a partial listing from BYU. This document may be quoted, copied and disseminated at no cost and without permission, provided the source is identified as: “Minnesota Fathers & Families Network, June 2004, www.mnfathers.org.” Reproduction for commercial sale or benefit is prohibited. Do you work with fathers? Visit the Minnesota Fathers & Families Network online at www.mnfathers.org/resources.html for additional InfoSheets about engaging fathers in family service programs.

Being a Dad

While parenting can be done by either men or women, single or married, children get a special experience from fathers. Fathering  (being a dad) is not the same as parenting. There is no recipe for being a dad. There is no right way to be a father. What is important is what will work for you. When asked, children often say the things they need most in a dad are - doing things together, sitting and talking and for dad to stop worrying so much.

Some things dads can do:

  • Be patient

  • Talk about your feelings so that your children learn it is alright for men to talk about feelings.

  • Spend time with your children - you are a huge role model for girls to understand what to expect in future male relationships and for boys to role model from. Show boys how you would like them to behave when they are men and show girls how you would like men to treat them.

  • Enjoy your children’s company

  • Take your children to work and show them what you do.

  • Comfort them. Even tiny babies get a special feeling by being comforted by a dad when they are frightened or upset.

  • Play with them. They can learn they can be strong and not need to be rough or hurt others. That play can be controlled and not get out of hand.

  • Help your child with a sport or hobby.

  • Share your child’s life - go with them to school or parent nights, to the doctor, to the park or to watch a sport event.

  • Teach your child about rules and laws.

  • Talk about what you expect from each other.

  • Treat the child’s mother with respect.

  • Show you love them in different ways - go fishing, biking, watch a movie, do a hobby, build a treehouse, walk in the forest, cheer for their team, help with homework

Source: Kyle Pruett. “Fatherneed: Why father care is as essential as mother care for your child.” New York: Free Press. 2000.

­Make Everyday Father’s Day for Children
Visit us online at: www.mnfathers.org

Speaker Stories

We are excited about bringing Mr. M. Kim Combes (Licensed Bachelor of Social Work/M. Ed) to our Fall Child Conference. Kim is a great speaker, foster/adoptive parent and professional who understands the children we work with. Kim is currently a licensed therapeutic foster parent and Family Therapist for Quakerdale in Providence, IA. Since May 1994, Kim has had 30+ young men through his doors. He is currently Vice-President of both Iowa and National Foster Parent Association Boards and and NFPA certified national presenter. Kim and his wife, Diane, live in Colo, IA with their two children Nicole, 15 and Logan, 4. Following is an excerpt  of an article by Kim.

" A Journey With Jason "

by Kim Combes, Quakerdale Family Resource Manager

"WILL YOU ABANDON ME?" These words haunted me well into the holiday season following the initial meeting of my future foster son, a young man with no perceived security or stability in his 16-year-old life. In an ideal world, this question would never have passed his lips.

It was in July 95 that I was first made aware of Jason. Because of my experience as a human service worker and a foster parent, his juvenile court officer believed that my personality might best match with the problems this teen may manifest in my home should I choose to foster her challenging client. He was currently placed in a residential facility, needing to work it's program before he could graduate, be discharged and placed in my foster home. She would keep me posted as to his progress.

Jason wanted to meet me after hearing there was a foster parent potentially willing to have him into his home. A staffing was held on November 16. The juvenile court officer drove Jason's mother (whom he had not seen in over a year) and me to the facility. While making conversation during the 3+ hour one-way drive, I realized that I had met Jason's extended family several years ago while employed with the Iowa Department of Human Services. His mother and I concluded it was a small world.

Upon seeing his mother, Jason hugged her and wanted her close to him as the assembly of social workers and treatment staff gathered to discuss his progress. He watched me intently, seemingly trying to get a grasp on who I was. Was I someone to be trusted? When the reporting was done regarding Jason's behaviors he was given an opportunity to 'interview' me. His longing look, coupled with his first words, tugged at my heartstrings. His inquiry underscored his first and foremost priority. Rather than delve for information regarding rules, home life, brothers and other related issues, his most predominate concern popped out with no apparent effort - 'Will you abandon me?î His affect disguised the vulnerability underlying the words. What if I said YES (or couldn't convince him I wouldn't)? He wanted to trust, but history was not on his side. Why should he believe I would be different than others to whom he had given his susceptible heart?

I can't remember my response to this pointed and poignant request for a 'forever' relationship. The intensity of it took me aback. I had been in the human service arena for over 15 years. I thought I had seen and heard it all. However, in this context, I could not rid myself of the echoing memory of those four powerful words. It was as if I held his life in the balance.

Jason spent some time with me and the foster siblings in my home over Thanksgiving and New Year's during his pre-placement visits. He was anxious to graduate so he could thus become a member of my household and family. This was not to happen until February 12th however. It was then that his still-echoing words were going to be put to the test.

He initially hated the court-ordered day treatment program in which he was placed. This program was to provide him some structure so as to more easily transition into having the freedom most teens his age have. Because he had been in a locked facility for so long, he would need some bridge to insure a smoother changeover into the real world again. The frustration of having to spend 12 hours a day in another therapeutic environment, coupled with the influence of a negative foster brother, sparked the explosive combination of ingredients in a recipe for trouble.

Within five weeks of placement in my home, he bolted from his court-ordered structure. He was found within two weeks and subsequently spent a month in a short-term group facility. Tearfully he asked me over the phone if he was able to return to my home. Most assuredly so.

Six months and many power struggles later, he was once more placed in a short-term facility for 'regroup time' due to some poor decision making on his part. A visit and several phone calls again gave him the confidence that I was still there and still FAMILY. He was placed back with me for round three.

Fall turned into winter. Jason began to trust that I was committed to his well-being–and to HIM. Progress was being made. Jason's increasing maturity was reflected in his making better life choices and decisions. His desire to be reunited with Mom grew stronger as they spent time together getting reacquainted. They had been separated for various reasons for much of his short life.

Winter gave way to spring - a season of rebirth. It would seem appropriate then that this season of positive growth and change would see Jason back with his mom full-time. It was an emotional moment when his worker remarked at a monthly team meeting that she saw no reason for him to stay in foster care. He and his mom were speechless as tears streamed down their cheeks. They had not anticipated this reunification until summer at the earliest. Jason was to see his hopes realized.

Prior to leaving my home, Jason gave me his good-bye letter. The following is an excerpt from this touching farewell:

'I do not know how to thank you so much. I came in here thinking that this is going to be another foster home that will abandon me and not help me much with anything. You have worked with my mom and I so much and helping us to get back together soon because you always told me that you would bring up to [the worker] to have me move in with her at the beginning of the summer and it happened sooner than we both thought. I think you did a very good thing for becoming a foster parent for many kids. God must have said to you at an early age to help out all these kids because they need a home to go to and a loving foster parent like yourself.”

As with many things in life, desire alone does not always make dreams come true. It eventually became apparent that familial love was not enough to make this long awaited living situation work. Jason once more entered into my home. He hadn't lost the trust of our relationship after 8 months of living elsewhere. We were thus able to continue to build on the pre-existing foundation we had both struggled hard to cement over the last 2 years. . . . .

. . . .It's not been an easy road for either of us. Nothing of value really is. The father-son relationship was borne with tears and great frustration on both sides. But this young man now knows the answer to his long-ago asked question.

Foster and Adoptive Care Association of Minnesota
P.O. box 48716
Minneapolis, MN 55448-0716
612-233-3399



Articles have been reprinted from News and Views of Our Families 1992-2004