Good Times, Bad Times

Having a daughter has brought some of the strongest feelings in my life, and as an INTJ, feelings are not something I usually pay much attention to.

In the days of my youth
I was told what it was to be a man,
Now I've reached the age
I've tried to do all those things the best I can

Led Zep lyrics are great in that they can be bent to fit any situation. There been no brown eyed man stealing my wife away (that I know of anyway) and it been a long long time since I had any dealings with a sixteen year old girl. But what I 've found is true as a Dad is that all the things I was told "in my youth" have stared to float back. I've posted before about how everyone has advice for new Dads, but I think it's the advice people give you before you are a Dad, before you're even thinking about becoming a Dad, that is the most important.

In those days of innocence, when meeting people and discovering girls is a new adventure, fathers are people who are there in the background for most, who come home at night and watch TV. I was lucky enough to have a great Dad, but silly enough not to know it, or rather to take it for granted. After all, didn't everyone's Dad take them to tennis, to rugby, help coach their teams? The simple answer is "no".

I went down to Streatham Common last Saturday and there was lots of football training, some coaches were out there giving it everything, encouraging the kids to run up the hill, to chase the ball and do the drills. But what struck me was that there weren't many parents there. I guess sport has become a sort of a babysitting service. These kids grow up thinking that it's normal for someone else to take care of them, that parents are not for learning from, that parents are what you have when something isn't so important.

So perhaps it's not something that's said aloud, and it's defintely not politically correct to talk about how someone else is raising their children, but letting someone else bring up your kids and get the best out of them is an option. But taking it is not what I think it is to be a man.