How to Be a Good Father to Your Son
For me to convey the meaning of a good father, I feel it’s necessary to first bring up some alarmingly ugly facts that should not only get your attention, but also give you a sense of what we’re up against. In other words, to tell what a good father is, I believe I must first pursue the bad direction in which our fatherly images have traveled in the past few decades.
The Good Father’s Purpose
You may believe it is too general to look at discouraging behavior in our kids and point the finger at the father of troubled children, as there may be deeper complexities that exist. Yes, this has been done many times in various parts of the world and during a great many different time periods.
If you were to randomly survey people off the street to ask them to define a good father, you may be very surprised by what you hear, unless you focused your efforts on a group of people who see the need for a strong family leader. The group might tell you that fathers usually try to get the sympathy of other family members, including their wives. He may go about this in a childish manner, begging for attention. This I imagine has been drilled into our population by the one-eyed monster, we call television, that graces most all our homes.
I digress, as television can only be held responsible to an extent. Over the years, our culture has become so liberal that strength and leadership is shunned by many and avoided by most. Rarely is a genuine person of character with positive leadership skills elected to be our public officials. The same can be said for the father image, as well. Perhaps a strong-willed, God-fearing head of the household projected in either real life or fiction would be damaging to the youth, with his domineering personality, causing children to be subservient and silenced in their true voice and expressions.
I could not disagree with this more! Leadership can only be passed along through example. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one to perpetuate this image as we have lost almost all of our examples as fatherly leadership is concerned. No young man with a weak father figure can identify with the strong paternal image, and so he doen’t truly know what a real man is. He sees the dad allowing the good mother of the home to carry on his responsibilities, while he grossly neglects the family in many different ways.
Christian Family Ministry
I am sure that at this time you are wondering if I am ever going to get around to telling you what I think a good father is. Surely by describing what a bad father lacks, gives many clues as to what a good father is. The good father is the antithesis of the weak and poor father. I would prefer seeing a strong-willed, man of character pass his child, and in doing so, observe the child somewhat flinching in fear of the repercussions of their actions, than see the reaction of most children to their father today. Call me old fashioned, but that fearful respect for the father is representative of being accountable for the child’s actions, recognizing that the good father represents values.
Protecting your child in a seductive world
The good father is involved in the lives of their children, doing the things we typically image father doing with child. This includes teaching his kids to ride a bike, playing ball or taking them fishing; cultivating the bond between himself and his daughters, and being a strong, yet also a sympathetic figure. He should do all these things, yes, but he must first and foremost be the family leader. To take the helm of the family as the leader, guiding the household through the storm times it faces through the years.
