Fathers, Tell Your Stories
By Mark Brandenburg, MA, CPCC
I must admit to having a fear that
I believe I share with many fathers. I fear that I will some day
be insignificant to my children. It's not as though they'll completely
forget who I am; it's that what I stand for and what I believe
in won't be a significant part of their lives.
Perhaps popular culture will take
over … or perhaps they just won't care. The fear is there
because it's so important to me that my children have a moral
compass to live by and that they have a value system that honors
and respects others.
Can you show them the way?
So what are fathers to do? We live in an increasingly complex
society and the answers to our children's questions are neither
easy nor simple. Many of these questions may be difficult to answer
and may show your kids that ideas about what's right and wrong
are not always very clear.
What fathers can do is to wish
and hope that things turn out for your children -- or you can
have the courage to make passing on your values an absolute priority
in your family. You can challenge yourself to pass on love, faith,
courage, freedom -- the eternal truths that will have meaning
for your children for generations to come.
There will certainly be some bumps
along the way and it won't always be a smooth ride. After all,
there's an entire culture out there that's telling your kids that
what they wear and what they buy is the most important thing in
their life.
Tell your stories
There's a way for fathers to succeed here. You can do it through
the stories that you tell your kids and also through how you model
for your kids.
You can start by taking a different
and closer look at the daily events that happen in your life.
Your life is filled with significant happenings that you can sometimes
pass over if you're not paying attention or if you get too busy.
These events can become stories that your children will cherish.
Why is it important to tell your
stories to your children?
One important reason is that it
serves to connect your children to previous generations and to
help them to feel a part of the larger whole of your family. Perhaps
a more important reason is that telling your children your stories
helps them to deal with the difficult challenges that they'll
be facing in their life.
Don’t come to the
rescue
The truth is that your kids will go through some real struggles.
As parents, it can be painful to watch -- and it is seldom useful
to try to come to the rescue. What can be helpful to your kids
is to know that their father and other significant people in their
lives have gone through similar struggles and have survived.
Stories are often about struggles
and failures. Your children love to hear stories about these struggles
because they have them often in their own lives. They know failure
and struggle extremely well; that's a lot of what being a kid
is about.
The stories you tell them ultimately
will be comforting. That you have had these struggles and have
come back and recovered is encouragement to them; your kids will
need a truckload of encouragement to navigate their way through
life.
It is truly a gift to be able to
communicate to your children what is in your heart through the
use of stories. Stories can not only be used as a vehicle to pass
along your values, but they are likely to inspire your children
to repeat the same process with their children.
Developing your own stories
Here are five suggestions to help you come up with stories for
your children:
1. Tell stories to your kids when
they are the most attentive to them -- when they are in bed or
settled down so they can sit still for awhile.
2. Make sure to include stories
of your failing miserably. These are particularly useful to your
kids. We've all got a few of these, don't we?
3. Have your parents tell your
children some of their own stories if they are able -- a great
way to show the connection that exists between generations.
4. Use stories to answer your kids'
questions about difficult issues. They need to know that you have
faced these issues yourself and that there are many choices available.
5. Realize that you don't need
a history of storytelling in your family to get started, and you
don't need to be a great storyteller. Give some thought to experiences
you've had that might relate to some of the issues your kids are
facing right now or in the near future.
There is a short window of opportunity
in which to tell your children the stories of your life. Many
fathers fail to tell their stories because of a lack of a storytelling
tradition in their family of origin. This can be a wonderful opportunity
to begin your own tradition with your own stories.
Teaching your kids about life through
telling your stories will be a whole lot more effective than lecturing
any day of the week. Your kids will want to hear your stories,
the lecturing they could probably do without.
May your stories live on eternally.
Mark Brandenburg,
MA, CPCC, CSC, is an author, speaker and certified relationship
coach. He has worked with individuals, teams and families to improve
their lives for more than 20 years.
He is the author of a number of books for men, including 25
Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers. Mark
coaches parents from around the country through weekly telephone
coaching sessions on balancing their lives and improving their
parenting. He runs workshops and gives presentations for fathers
and for parents that are enthusiastically received, as well as
teleclasses for parents at MarkBrandenburg.com.
