Recently Husband and I went to visit my mom, and practically the whole time he and my sons were outside playing baseball. The boys had fun until the other team scored a run or they thought they should have another chance at batting but the game was actually over.
Truthfully, most of the games ended in tears (but they didn’t start that way).
After one such game, when I could hardly keep my eyes from rolling out of my head because of the broken hearts (they were exceedingly loud) from the losing team, Husband plopped down in the seat next to me and said, “I love playing with them.”
“Even when they whine and complain after the game’s over?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
And I was struck, right there on my mom’s front porch, which faces the open yard and, across the street, a cornfield, by how much children gain from the involved presence of their dads (not for the first time).
Dads offer something incredibly important to their children, and here are some of those things:
1. A confirmation of their identity
This is the most important thing Husband does for my sons. It’s the most important thing, in my opinion, that any dad can do for their kids. A dad can reinforce to their children the truth that they are important, they are beloved, and they are worthy of the love they are lavished.
I think here of my own background, where a dad did not stick around. What it spoke to me, the hole I carried around—and still carry around on my worst days—is that I was not worthy of his love.
Dads, with their continued involved presence, affirm who children are; they speak into their lives in an authoritative way, one that stands strong against the arrows those children will take when they are someday grown. Dads tell their children, through their involved and interested presence, that those children are worth being loved. And this means the world to a kid.
2. A role model
Dads model for boys who to be. Boys will try to walk like their dads and talk like their dads and sometimes even think like their dads. But dads also provide an essential model for their daughters, too. They show girls how to be loved. They show their daughters that they are not loved for their beauty but for who they are—and in a world like ours, this is an essential message to pass on.
Dads show boys how to treat girls, and they shows girls how to be treated by boys.
3. A voice of wisdom
Moms are wise and capable. Dads offer another dynamic of wisdom, a reinforcement, an underlining of that wisdom. A mom can exemplify to her children how to treat others, how to be kind and loving, how to live with courage and strength. But when that message is reinforced by dads, it grows spectacular wings.
I’m exceedingly grateful to the man in my life and all the hands-on fathers like him. Thank you for what you do.
(Photo by Helen Montoya Henrichs.)
