A father returns home from work.  The day is warm and lazy and as he walks across the lawn he sees his little girl playing alone near the wood stack.  As he walks over he sees her, hammer in hand, having the best of times.  He observes her lifting the hammer, letting it fall and with a smile of glee, she repeats this action.  As he draws nearer he sees what she is up to.  There is a string of ants parading in front of his girl.  “Smash,” the hammer falls again.

This little girl is only three years old, not yet conscious of life and death, right or wrong.  Her impulses compel her to “experiment” with these tiny creatures.  This is a good moment for the little girl and a bad day for the ants.

Does he intervene?  If he does, the ants’ will live and this little girl’s impulses will die.  If he does not, the impulses will live and some of the ants will die.

We know that all things come to an end. Imagine a happy moment with your child as she speaks to you of her excitement for her coming freshman year away at college. She sits in front of you and beams with joy, “I have worked so hard for this and now it is almost here.” You smile, your eyes meet; she has been seen, acknowledged. The phone rings, someone answers it, the moment has passed. For all practical purposes that joyful moment is dead and now only lives on in your memory. This passage of life is simply part of a greater cycle. The phone call brings new life and new possibility. It is her friends calling, and they are stopping by later and plan to walk for ice cream. You rise from the table and begin the dishes.

“Am I being the father that I want to be?” This is so difficult to tell. Do I see my value in my own experience and through the eyes of my child? Do I recognize myself through my beliefs or ideas of fathering or through the feedback that I receive from my partner? Being the father I want to be, as a concept or a belief, is one thing. The other is to focus on the response I get from my child and partner in each moment of parenting. Take a look at the eyes of your child and notice who they are seeing. Does your child see the father she or he wants and needs?

Place this experience of your child into the context of all the other demanding roles you are responsible for fulfilling: provider, care-giver, mentor, bridge to the world, protector, and so many more. And as you do this, make sure to give yourself a break. The best thing about determining whether or not you are a good father is found in each moment of parenting. You never lose your option to make new and different choices. If what you are doing isn’t working, try something else. You get to start over every day.

And the reason you get to start over is that children grow very quickly and they are very forgiving. Show up for your children and being willing to stay connected and feel what is necessary to feel in order to stay present. Now you don’t really have to be there all day. You simply have to be present for them when they need you. It could be to read a story before bed, taking their phone calls during the day, answering a text, being on time for them and simply not disappointing them.

Make the choice to be with your children and they will figure out what to do with you. You will face many challenges, but nothing need take you away from knowing that you have a place in your child’s world that is always available to your presence.

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father’s tie there in secret

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

-by Donald Justice

(via: @ http://twitter.com/zachbraiker)

The other day I was walking with a friend along a bike path and it was a beautiful fall morning. We passed by the park and there they were; an army of fathers with children orbiting about. Coffee in hand, cell phones to the ears, text messages flying off into the unknown like scattered pigeons startled by the sounds of their children at play. One particular father meandered by on his bike as we progressed down the path. The now familiar tri-wheeled, mesh enclosed cart in tow with the youngest of his children, head bobbing side to side in a pre-sleep state of discontent. The older child, perhaps six years of age, riding beside dad on his tiny bike, seemingly accustomed to this excursion, alone and holding his experience in wait for the attention from his father, which did not seem to be coming anytime soon. And Dad, blue-tooth in ear and fully engaged in a friendly and somewhat rejuvenating discussion indicated by his quick jabs and repartee with someone who unbeknown to him or her, participated in stealing his presence away from his children. And I wondered, was the cost of these lost parenting opportunities worth it?

In fulfilling my purpose, to help people Rest within a Sense of Wholeness^TM , one of the most vital applications of this intention is what I call The Present Father^TM.

In my doctoral thesis on Fathering, I open by quoting N. R. Gibbs from a Time Magazine article in 1993: “More children will go to sleep tonight in a fatherless home than ever in the nation’s history.”  Gibbs said this more than 17 years ago, a haunting statement that is even truer today.

The absent father shows up all too frequently in my one-on-one sessions with clients, often as the source of debilitating behavior, depression, self sabotage, unhealthy relationships, and other destructive patterns. Furthermore, many of today’s social challenges – increasing crime rates, substance abuse, physical abuse, and racial and economic disparity – are also rooted in the absent father.

As a man who experienced the absent father throughout his life, as a scholar with extensive research on the topic of Fathering, and as a father, I know we can heal the pain of the absent father.

I am referring to healing the pain that comes from:

• Having a father physically there yet absent in other manners.
• Literally not having a father physically present.

In healing the pain, we reverse the negative effects of a fatherless society and restore The Present Father^TM for generations to come.

For me, the healing took place when I chose to show up as a father – The Present Father^TM. There was no historical basis to inform me, no one to look up to, no place that I knew of in the culture to guide me. I had to discover what fathering meant through my relationship to my child. I would listen to my child’s needs and respond. In that same moment, I would also grieve, letting go of the wounds from the relationship with my own father.

As I began sharing my stories of being The Present Father^TM with clients, colleagues, and friends, I saw that it helped them recognize and understand the pain they too felt as a child. In hearing my stories, they were able to identify where their fathers were not present, to grieve and recover from their sense of loss without having to actually parent a child.

The Present Father^TM encompasses guidance, techniques and tools on fathering, stories that inspire fathering, one-on-one fathering sessions and seminars available via webcast. My book will be released in 2011, and until then you can read more about The Present Father^TM on this blog.

If you are interested in a one-on-one session or would like to participate in a seminar, please contact me.

There are times when we are parenting our children that our presence is just not enough to maintain connection with them. They will get stuck and trying to help them pushes us beyond our ability to know what they need and how to give it to them. We sometimes need help to address the obstacles that arise between us and our children. Sometimes all we have to do is find our way through and we are back into connection. However, if you are parenting alone, this can be a daunting task. Look for resources outside of yourself – a friend, a sibling, another parent, or a family member may hold the key to unlock and free them. If you have a partner, enlist them to aid you in getting back in touch with your child. Children are explosive in their development and sometimes it takes a little creativity to help them to get back into the business of being a child.

“My boy is probably five years old, sitting in his room on his bed next to his playroom. I have joined him for some play and suggest that we move off the bed and back to the machine we are constructing with his set of Legos. He wants nothing to do with me. Then I suggested we wrestle. He’s grumpy, remote and though I am available he is not available to me or to our play.

I sit with him, try to talk, but he just tells me to leave. This is an unusual circumstance that I cannot get through to him. I try again in 15 minutes and his mood has not change. He is stuck and I don’t have the resources in that moment to help him through.

I speak to his mother, she is skilled in ways that I am not, and she reports that he has been like this sense she picked him up from school the day before. We discuss it and concerned that something may have happened to him, decide that one of us will try to break through. She heads up the stairs, I follow, and the door shuts between us. I head back down for a cup of coffee and wait.

Later she emerges and has had a break through. After a little struggle and and buckets of tears he discloses to her that he had taken five fuzzy buttons from school the day before, that he did not have permission to take. Guilt, shame whatever you call it had him immobilized. He had hidden the buttons in the fist of his hand and when she handed them to me they were wet from his despair. Such a small transgression in the scheme of things, had become an insurmountable obstacle for this little boy.

He was now relieved but needed a plan to figure out what to do to make the situation right. I went up and sat with him and after much discussion we knew what needed to happen. We were going to conduct a Ninja, Stealth, mission to replace the buttons. After much rehearsal, excitement, drawing of plans, decision about timing, and the route to take, we were ready to go. The next morning we left early to school, we stealthily walked in together and we secretly replaced the buttons – No one being the wiser.” (Fathering Journal, 1996)

Being present for your child and the relational life that is developing between the two of you, requires that you are able and willing to remain separate. Your relationship with your child carries within it the capacity to develop. It is a living, breathing organism that you manage with your presence, caring for it so that it evolves as a healthy and functional separate entity. This relational life exists because of your presence as well as in your absence. Like the breath of a living thing you are present when you are inhaled into participation with your child and your presence remains when you are exhaled.

“This morning when my boy woke up he called for his mother; a few minutes later, while she was preparing a bottle, I walked quietly into the room. He waved to me, as I lay across the end of his bed. He muttered “good morning” in his sleepy voice. His hand was extended to me and I held it for awhile, massaging the fingers gently. No words were spoken. The action seemed to be pulling him from his not-yet-awake consciousness, into the world. He withdrew his hand and said “Go.” That was all he said, “Go!” I smiled and said “ok.” As I left the room I added that I would see him in awhile. He smiled and nuzzled deep into the bedding.”

This moment, captured in my fathering journal, occurred when my son was very young. I remember feeling conflicted. What I really wanted to do was to be with him on that sunny Saturday morning and play “Space Ship.” This was our traditional “under-the-covers” game in which we turned his bed into an intergalactic warship, struggling for survival against hideous celestial creatures. I actually felt rejected and would miss this moment of actively creating our relationship through this magical play. However, the life of our relationship would go on in my absence. Some things grow more fully in the dark than they do in the light.

My boy can afford to “toss his father away” in one moment because he is safe enough to expect that I will be there later, when he chooses to be with me. The presence of my absence, in this case, was positive. My child determined our proximity to one another and the relationship continues in the soft embrace of a world that is whole and together.

 “Psychologically, the result of separation by division into two is awareness of the opposites. This is a crucial feature in emerging consciousness.” (Edinger, 1985, p. 187)

Against a backdrop of presence, if we cannot tolerate what it feels like for us to separate from our children we inhibit the natural development of relational life. And we may find ourselves doing this simply because we don’t like how it feels! Presence requires that we can tolerate the conflicting feelings within us without having to project them into our relationship with our child.

 “One becomes conscious as one is able to contain and endure the opposites within.” (Edinger, 1985, p. 187)

Edinger, Edward F.  (1985). Anatomy of the psyche: Alchemical symbolism in psychotherapy. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

Our presence with our children determines the success of our relationship with them. This “success” is determined in every moment of being with them. It is not until we actually participate in our relationship with our child that the relationship has a knowable form.

Scene: Your child walks in the door late for dinner: “where have you been?” The form or body of the relationship emerges with a feeling of aggression and defense. Perhaps you are frustrated by waiting for her, too often. Maybe you are worried for her safety. In this one statement the relationship with your daughter takes form, this coming together of the two worlds that you occupy separately, emerges as one, with a clash! This is the current manifestation of your relationship, entirely determined by your statement as she enters the room.

Relationship exists separately from us in a formless field of possibility: Like some being without a body, our relationship with our child waits to take form and is determined by how we participate.

Scene: Your child walks in the door late for dinner: “Hi Sweetie, I worried about you, are you ok? What happened?” This will evoke an entirely different response.

Scene: Your child walks in the door late for dinner: “Hey, there you are . . . saved you some dinner. When you are settled I will sit with you while you eat, I want to hear about your day.”

Each scene is an opportunity to bring into form the relationship you have with your child. Of course there are extenuating circumstances that always come into play. So, how we engage will determine the form the relationship has in any given moment. Our relationship with our child is a participatory phenomenon that is entirely dependant on our behavior, thinking and feelings as we communicate them through our presence. And if we are present for this moment, we have a choice in how we build this relationship.

 It is not until we engage with the child that we can actually and accurately determine the true nature of what lives between us, the form our relationship will take in this moment. This means that this interdependent, co-arising entity – relationship, is always in a potential state of transformation. We can literally determine its evolutionary life solely by how we choose to participate.