Daddy Dearest

As a an African American male and father of a 14 yr old son, I find parenting to be so much more complex than when I was growing up. My son's mom and I are no longer together, and I'm pretty much the weekend and extended vacation parent. I set up this page, not only to exchange ideas on being a better father and better parent in general, but maybe just maybe I can help someone else out along the way. As my son gets older my focus is to put our interactions in writing, which in turn will help me come up with some answers in regards to his behavior and also allow readers like yourself, give insight on how I can potentially resolve some of his issues.

Parenting, regardless of ethnicity is not an easy task, especially in this pop driven culture that we live in. We also can't leave out the fact that we have video games, raunchy tv programming, and endless negative marketing that influence our children and have a huge impact in their thought processes. Most parents it seems have the bright idea that it's best to be our kid's friend and not so much an authority figure, or heaven forbid we piss the little darlings off and they call the cops on us and have us reported for child abuse! The older I get , the more I can appreciate the old school form of corporal punishment. Eventhough I'm not promoting beating the snot out of your kids, a good lick on the hind parts was definitely a motivation for me to stay out of trouble. My parents played good cop(Mom), bad cop(Dad), and if you had any type of common sense growing up in my era, you most definitely tried to resolve any adverse situations with the good cop before the bad one got wind of it,lol.

I marvel at the ingenuity and wisdom of my son, when he does dirty deeds and I wonder what was going thru his mind at the time of his actions. Well these are some of the things that will be explored in my daily or weekly blogs. Since I work a regular job and I'm not a blogspert or one who has the leisure to sit down and wax philosophical on the net about the joys of parenting. I will do my best to impart my wisdom and knowledge as a parent as much as possible. I'm also open to hearing any interesting stories or tidbits of advice that can make me a better parent, man or human being, ha! picture that!