Bringing Up Boys Update! (All fathers to read!)

On the Chapter 7 of Bringing Up Boys now and read some interesting stuff which I thought would be good for all parents or future parents-to-be to know, especially the fathers…

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On the topic of Neglect

Chronic neglect of boys and girls during the 1st 2 years of life is devastating psychologically and neurologically. The brain is a dynamic and interactive organ that requires stimulation from the outside world. When children are ignored, mistreated, or shuffled from one caregiver to another, terrible losses occur in thinking capacity. The more severe the abuse, the greater the damage that is done.
This understanding has been confirmed by hundreds of millions of federal dollars (research done in US) invested in medical and behavioral research, focusing not only on infants but on teens who were horribly abused as babies. Some of them stood in cribs for days while wearing dirty diapers that burned their bottoms, or they were beaten or scalded by mentally ill or cocaine-addicted parents. Extreme neglect or rejection of this nature, researchers say, causes a child's body to produce significant quantities of the hormones cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals move through the bloodstream to targeted areas of the brain responsible for compassion and conscience. The damage done there to critical neural pathways never repairs itself and ultimately limits the individual's ability to "feel" for others later in life. That's why many of the most violent kids are "brain damaged," quite literally.

The Essential Father

Behavioral scientists have only begun to understand how critical fathers are to the healthy development of both boys and girls. According to psychiatrist Kyle Pruett, the author of Fatherneed, dads are as important to children as moms, but in a very different way. Here are other surprising findings that have emerged from careful research on the role of fathers:
- There is an undeniable linkage between fathers and babies beginning at birth.
- Infants as young as six weeks old can differentiate between a mother's and a father's voice.
- By eight weeks, babies can distinguish between their mother's and their father's caretaking methods.
- Infants are born with a drive to find and connect to their fathers. As they begin to speak, their word for "father" often precedes their word for "mother." The reasons for this are unknown.
- Toddlers are especially obvious in their assertions of fatherneed: they will seek out their father, ask for him when he's not present, be fascinated when he talks to them on the phone, and investigate every part of his body if allowed.
- Teenagers express fatherneed in yet more complex ways, competing with their father and confronting his values, beliefs, and, of course, limits. For so many sons and daughters, it is only at the death of the father that they discover the intensity and longevity of their fatherneed, especially when it has gone begging.

Don Elium, author of Raising a Son, says that with troubled boys, the common theme is distant, uninvolved fathers and, in turn, mothers who have taken the responsibility to fill the gap.
Sociologist Peter Karl believes that because boys spend up to 80 percent of their time with women, they don't know how to act as men when they grow up. When that happens, the relationship between the sexes is directly affected. Men become helpless and more and more like big kids.

These statistics and trends can't be appreciated fully until we see how they are translated into the lives of individuals. I was talking recently to such a person - a 58 yrs old man who described the unhappy memory of his father. His dad had been a minister who was consumed by work and other interests. This father never came to sporting events or any other activities in which his son participated. He neither disciplined nor affirmed him. By the time the boy was a senior in high school, he was the starting guard on a winning big-school football team. When his team qualified for the state championship, this boy was desperate to have his dad se him play. He begged, "Would you please be there on Friday night? It is very important to me." The father promised to come.
On the night of the big game, the boy was on the field warming up when he happened to see his father enter the stadium with two other men wearing business suits. They stood talking among themselves for a moment or two and then left. The man who told me this story had tears streaming down his cheeks as he relived that difficult moment of so long ago. It has been forty years since that night, and yet the rejection and disappointment he felt as a teenager were as vivid as ever. A year after our conversation, this man's father died at 83 yrs old. My friend stood alone before hid dad's casket and said sorrowfully, "Dad, we could have shared so much love together - but I never really knew you."
Going back to the night of the football games, I wonder what that father considered more important than being there for his son. Was his "to do" list really more urgent than meeting the needs of the boy who bore his name? For whatever reasons, the man allowed the years to slide by without fulfilling his responsibilities at home. Although he is gone, his legacy is like that of countless of fathers who were too busy, too selfish, and too distracted to care for the little boys who reached for them. Now their record is in the books. If only they could go back and do it differently. If only... if only...!”
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If only we would rely more on foresight rather than hindsight. If only even when we don’t have much foresight, we would rely more on the hindsight of those who have gone before us. If only we fathers would give more of our time to those who really need us and not be pressured to spend too much time on those who won’t really appreciate our time at the end of the day. If only we fathers see time gained rather than time sacrificed.