Posts filed under ‘Dad’
When Parents Make Mistakes
Parents are invincible…infallible…Human!
My husband and I saw Black Nativity last night and I am glad we did! Being a person of color, we usually support movies with African-American actors, directors, film writers during the first weekend the movie airs to support it financially. While I love, Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett, I’m not crazy about musicals, so I almost missed a golden opportunity. If Black Nativity is still playing in your area, go see it! Anyway I digress… There was a line in the movie that absolutely spoke to me about PARENTING! Rev. Cobbs (Forest Whitaker), the estranged father of Naima (Jennifer Hudson) said “Parents make mistakes…I am so sorry that I meddled in your life.”
Have you ever felt that way about something that occurred between you and your teen or adult child? Were you able to admit it and have an honest conversation with your son or daughter? Or did pride keep you from opening the doors of communication with that person that you love with all of your heart and soul? The movie had another theme that has been really messing up my parenting theory about our teen (or twenty-something) daughters getting pregnant and having children without being married. When my daughter was a teen, we had the ‘SEX’ talk a few times. I wanted to make sure that she understood the consequences to getting pregnant. I felt (and told her) that she would have to move out if she got pregnant before getting married. I felt that way because she, her dad and I talked candidly about waiting until marriage to have sex; if she couldn’t wait then use birth control. I know you’re thinking OMG – it’s okay for her to have sex??? She did not get pregnant, but what if she had? Would I have made her leave home for this mistake? Would we have been estranged? What about her future? Would she have gone to college, grad school, or become the professional woman she is today?
Well, no I didn’t want her to have sex, but let’s be honest here; part of the teen experience is that LOVELY puberty that starts to occur to our kids when they turn 12 or 13. The boys you couldn’t stand in fifth and sixth grade, now start to look a little less like wimps and more like hotties! A kiss on the lips, turns into raging hormones! Right?!? If your daughter loses control (and has sex) she’s screwed (no pun intended) unless she is taking birth control. Again I digress. So for mothers like me who take that hard line, what are our daughters supposed to do if they find themselves pregnant? That was the dilemma of Mary (Grace Gibson), the very pregnant and homeless teen in Black Nativity. She said, “I made a mistake and was kicked out. I have nowhere to go, so here I am pregnant and homeless.”
The other theme that caught my interest was the relationship between the mom (Naima) and her teenaged son (Langston). God, she really loved him (and he loved her too), but as a single mom trying to make a living for the two of them, she was unequipped to offer him the masculine discipline & love that he needed to grow into a man. Well I won’t tell the entire story, but I’d like to end with this: if you, and your son or daughter have not spoken to each other because of miscommunications or disappointments, reach out and call them and begin to mend the fences. There is nothing worse that not having an opportunity to say “I’m sorry” and having regrets for the rest of your life.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
Dads Are Important Too
family Christmas and other dad traditions
When I think of the holidays, Christmas especially, I think of my dad and my granddad. As I write this post, a myriad of memories crowd into my heart about the men in my family. Today is ‘Dad’s Turn’. My dad would drive our family through different neighborhoods to look at the Christmas decorations. A day or two before Christmas, we would pick out a Christmas tree and decorate it. ..Lots of fun…
My dad was usually the parent that my siblings and I could count on to ‘play’ with us and have fun. He would jump out of the closets and scare us, and tell us stories about him and his brothers growing up. He was the male balance of our household – the last word. When he would play with us, we’d forget he wasn’t a kid like us and be disappointed when he became ‘Dad’ again. No fair… We would drive every week to our grandparents to spend Sundays with them and the Ed Sullivan Show. I hated that show, but loved the family time together. I loved watching my dad interact with his dad. They looked just alike, except for the age difference. While Dad was disciplined, Granddad was even more disciplined, yet he let me do things I couldn’t do with my own dad like comb his hair, and push in the buttons on his very cool Dodge dashboard. Granddad also smoked a pipe and had the most delicious smelling tobacco.
As a young girl growing up, Dad was always there. He may have been preoccupied, or asleep on the couch, but I remember the time he spent with us. I knew what he expected of me. I also knew I could trust him. His way was different from Mom’s. They both meant business; however when Mom told us she was going to ‘tell Dad’, we knew it would not be good. As much fun as we had with him, he was a former ‘military’ man and didn’t tolerate nonsense!
Like most families in the sixties, he was a family man. I never understood why he didn’t do housework. Okay yes he cut the grass, painted things when necessary, and barbecued the meat during holidays, but it never made sense that we (the Gist kids) had to wash walls and clean up the kitchen! When I had the nerve to ask why we had to wash walls, he would say “You dirtied them up didn’t you?” Let me just say that after washing the walls, we kept our hands off the walls! While Dad didn’t cook much except BBQ, occasionally he made lunches for us – fried Spam sandwiches and tomato soup. Yummy! He’d cut the sandwiches into shapes and while no one today would dare eat a Spam sandwich, it was another fun time with Dad.
A lot of those traditions changed as our family went through the transition of divorce and separation, I remember the times when I didn’t see my dad much. He would promise to come by for a visit, and never show up. My mom was careful not to talk bad about him to us, so all we had then was disappointment. I didn’t reestablish my relationship with him until the summer before I left for college. I had sassed my mother and wasn’t on speaking terms with her, so I cherished the times I got to spend with dad. We talked about a lot of topics, and I got a chance to know him as a person. I asked him about the times he didn’t show up and how disappointed we were. I remember him saying that he was barely getting by (financially) and didn’t want to show that side of himself (to us).
Perfect, he was not. Necessary to me growing into the woman I am now, very definitely! Today, there are a lot of girls growing into woman without the benefit of their dad. Woman decide what men they will become involved with based on the relationship they have with their father (dad), stepdad, grandpa or other positive male role model. Merry Christmas Dad!
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
Love Isn’t Always Easy or Convenient
Love Isn’t Always Easy or Convenient
Both of our parents are elderly. My dad is 81, and my mother-in-law is 79. The good news is that they both live on their own. However, even though they both live alone, one is experiencing temporary memory loss, while the other has been diagnosed with early stages of Alzheimer.
While visiting Dad, I found myself treating him like one of my children. It felt very odd to remind him to do things, that I took for granted he did. Yet, like my kids, he needed reminders to do what he normally would do (without my help). Take eating healthy. Dad is a big proponent of juicing, exercising and eating moderate amounts of food, yet he’s consuming more sweets than ever seen before. Looks like lunch has been replaced with coffee and a sweet something or other. Another thing, every couple of weeks he’s having something new repaired on his car. When I ask him why, he says, “I want my car to run well.” It already runs well… I’m concerned that he’s wasting his money, or worse, TV ads are convincing him to spend money unnecessarily.
You’re probably saying, hey that’s not a big deal! He can still take care of himself! Well what happens when he forgets (again) how to get to the VA Center, which he has driven to for years? Or how do you tell your elderly mother, that you have to take her car keys because she continues to get lost and has to have someone call you because she doesn’t know where she is? Loving your parents means that you care for them, (and make those hard care decisions) when they can no longer care for themselves.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru Author & Parent Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010) The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
Patiently Waiting for Dad
As I travel back to my hometown, I think about my annual weekend visit spent with my dad. We talk weekly, but seeing Dad face to face is another story altogether. Over the phone he sounds pretty normal; a little more cantankerous the older he gets, but still my wonderful dad. Up close, I get to see how time has started to slow his walk considerably and determines how many household chores he is able to accomplish at any one time. Seeing him, I understand that it really is difficult to cook dinner and talk to me on the phone at the same time, because he has to focus.
Although he is prescription and disease free, his short-term memory comes and goes, which is really scary. During our weekend together, I didn’t understand his need to stay in the house and decided he was just being a stick-in-the mud. 
I remembered that “he’s eighty-one years old, and while he looks to be in his early seventies, his body (and mind) probably feel his actual age. Did I mention that he doesn’t have the modern conveniences I think all households have – cable TV and Internet access? So once I got it into my technology driven mind that Dad lived in the horse & buggy era, I collected my thoughts, reminded myself how glad I was to have a dad that loved me and who was alive, and I challenged him to a game of Scrabble. Parenting 101: enjoy your family with the tools that are readily available! Guess What? His mind was alert enough to beat me by nine points! Ahhh.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens 
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