FCYU-Feature Story

Giving Better Than You Got
A therapist talks about how to be a good father

Even if you’ve grown up with a supportive, involved father, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what you got from him. If you didn’t have a dad like that, it’s even more mysterious. What makes a good dad, and how do you become one if you didn’t have one growing up?

We posed that question to Dr. John Carr, a therapist whose upcoming book is called A Father is Born: A Guide to the Emotional and Practical Challenges of the First Three Years of Fatherhood.

Dr. Carr said that if your parents abused or abandoned you, first you need to accept and deal with that. Carr says that most of us tend to remember bad or absent parents fondly. That’s not always bad, but eventually you have to come to terms with the abuse or neglect and your feelings about it.

“Maybe a person isn’t ready to see an abusive parent as abusive,” he explained. “It’s hard to accept. Denial works for a while, but eventually you need to get to acceptance. And then you’ll probably get angry,” he continued. “Kids in foster care have a right to be angry. You need a safe container for that anger—a therapist’s office, writing or other creative endeavors. You need to use that anger for yourself as opposed to against yourself (or anyone else).”

Understanding the anger can keep it under control and also allow you to know that you deserved better than you got. That understanding will help you be generous, patient, and loving with yourself and with your children.

With Your Own Kids

As far as being a good father, most of what Carr described applies to good moms too. But there is one fun role that fathers usually fill. “Dads are particularly good at playing,” he said. “They tend to use themselves as play figures more often than moms. They are the jungle gym.” He added that boys especially learn from physical play with fathers. “Boys are naturally aggressive and physical. Engaged, involved fathers provide boundaries and rules to wrestling matches and other physical play. This helps kids explore limits safely. An acting-out kid is looking for discipline and limits,” he said.

Besides physical play, everything else Carr called good fathering is basically good parenting. He explained how good parents help young children understand their emotions.

“There are four primary emotions: sad, mad, glad, and scared,” he said. “A good parent sees and names his child’s emotion; for example, saying, ‘I see you’re angry; it’s alright to be angry.’”

Where discipline comes in is accepting the emotion, but correcting the behavior. “So for instance,” said Carr, “If my kid is stomping around and kicking me, I’ll say, ‘You can be mad, and you can tell me about being mad, but you can’t kick me.’ When there’s nobody there to validate the emotions, kids don’t know that it’s OK to be mad, sad, and scared.” He explained that “reading his own feelings helps a kid know what to do. Feelings tell people what’s wrong or right.”

Feelings that are not understood or accepted are more likely to erupt in destructive or self-destructive ways. Kids who have explosive anger may lose control “because they were never taught to control emotional expression,” said Carr.

When children become adolescents, they tend to push their parents away. Good parents understand that and keep on giving support. The parent needs to provide unconditional love at that stage to reassure the child of his love and support even as they go through drastic psychological and body changes.

“Identity is so important in adolescence,” Carr said. “The teenager wonders, ‘Who am I becoming?’ It’s very important that parents keep knowing their kids in adolescence, that they have that continuity.” As we all know, whether we had fathers or not, a good dad keeps being there.

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