When my 12-year-old daughter wanted to read my latest book, I discouraged her, because it addresses adult subjects, including organized rebellion against government (just the thought of which these days can label you a traitor), and it depicts sex and violence.

My 12-year-old. This is a girl who watches Bones and The X-Files, then switches over to The Learning Channel for Jon and Kate Plus 8, and dreams of becoming a forensic anthropologist like Temperance Brennan. I wish I could get her to read some of the original Tempe Brennan novels by Kathy Reichs, though. And if you’ve ever read any of them, you’re probably asking yourself…

Exactly why don’t I want her to read my book?

I don’t even actually do blood and gore like Kathy Riechs. My thing is deep characters and character interaction. I aspire to the utter revulsion that Kathy Reichs produces by her writing. I almost got it, I think, in Episode 4, Chapter 4, because while I was editing that chapter, I actually seethed with rage at the villain. (This is a villain that I myself dreamed up from my own demented psyche.) He literally tortures the hero in a violent rape that almost claims her life. But one reader told me “thank you” for stopping short of describing the entire ordeal in detail.

Little Brother, Who’s Watching Our Kids?

Then I read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. It’s published by Tor Teen, and of it Neil Gaiman said, “I’d want to get it into the hands of as many smart thirteen-year-olds, male and female, as I can.” Like my book, Little Brother is also a story of rebellion against government. And it depicts sex in at least as much detail as I have. And it depicts violence perpetrated by government officers in more detail than I have. And it depicts torture, and it doesn’t leave out the gory details of the ordeal.

This is a book being marketed to children almost as young as my daughter. And I don’t feel I should be outraged.

Rather, I feel like there must be some other reason why I don’t want my own daughter to read my work. Am I ashamed of the values I’ve communicated through my story? Am I afraid she’d see a side of her old man that I don’t want her to see? Am I really afraid she couldn’t handle it? Do I think it would make her uncomfortable? Or maybe I’m afraid it would make me uncomfortable. Am I afraid that she’ll want to try some of the things I’ve portrayed, things she maybe isn’t ready for? Or that she’ll fear the horrors I’ve portrayed? Am I afraid that she won’t know the difference between reality and fiction? Or that she won’t understand the words I wrote? Maybe I’m afraid that she’ll ask me questions. Or maybe that she won’t.

There’s a thread throughout these possibilities, however. It’s about me, not her. Shouldn’t it be about her? If she takes an interest, shouldn’t I support her in that interest?

Did I mention that we also watch Penn & Teller: Bullshit! on DVD together? (And not the cleaned-up Wal-mart DVD’s, either.) That’s definitely a together thing, because I don’t agree with every view they have. And there are definitely some episodes I don’t want her to watch alone–or even yet–because they’re bound to bring up issues. And now, you’re definitely wondering, Exactly why don’t you want her to read your book?

Growing Up with Sex and Politics

They say you should begin talking with your kids early about sex. And we have certainly done that. My wife and I, between the two of us, we have freely and openly answered any questions our daughters have asked. And they both are growing up, fast, and asking some adult questions, not just about sex and romance and love.

Wednesday, my younger daughter, 9, asked me about the presidential election. Apparently, they’re having a mock election at school. And I freely and openly answered her questions, filling her sponge-like mind with ideas that might have made her teacher want to call the DSS. Basically, you can’t believe a word either McCain or Obama says on the campaign trail, because it’s illegal to sue a politician for breaking his campaign promises, and the people who write the laws–politicians–are quite happy with that arrangement. I think somewhere in there I even got a jab in at Bill Clinton, because Paula Jones sued him while he was in office. (But not for breaking a campaign promise.) But my girls are too young to remember that. I’m not sure I clarified things for her or confused her further, because I seemed to be challenging notions she picked up from somewhere.

But then she did say: “Do I have to vote?”

“No,” I answered, “because you have a right to abstain. About half the people will not vote in the election.”

“Good, because I don’t even know anything about either one of them!”

Profound. That probably puts her one up on most voters.

(I’m not a cynic. Really. As Sir Humphrey said, “A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.”)

She’s also been bugging me to finish a not-so-top-secret project I’ve been working on, People Stories, because she says it sounds like a good read. It’s a collection of short stories (fiction and true stories) and other works, all revolving around characters. I’ve already told her it will contain “Love Through the Eyes of an Idiot” and “Carolyn and Amanda in the Dark,” both of which she loves. She’s very much a people person.

But most of the stories, I don’t think she would get, because she’s only 9. One of the stories is about falling in love for the first time. In another, the main character has a very adult quirk: When he asks a girl out on a date, he first establishes that there’s a promise of sex involved.

I’m actually thinking of letting her read it.

-TimK

The job of Storyteller has a long and worthy history in this country and is, I’m happy to say, an old tradition that in recent years has been resurrected – and rightly so. However, I don’t think it’s just the role of an official storyteller, or that of teachers, to introduce children to the wonders of the written word.

To me, teaching our kids to read and instilling them with a love of books and literature is, quite simply, one of the best gifts of love a parent can bestow.

We have the chance to show them whole new worlds inhabiting the pages; to enhance their imaginations and creative skills by showing them how characters can come to life inside their minds; to instil in them a love of the knowledge they can find within books; and to teach them that they need never be bored while there’s a library nearby.

We’re blessed in that we have such a vast range of authors and genres which we can use to do this. From Dr Seuss to Roald Dahl, from AA Milne to JK Rowling. It’s all there for us to read to, and with, our children.

I’m not fortunate enough to be with my two boys 24/7, but I’m luckier than many in that I have plenty of access and I make time to spend with them as well. And for me, the best part of that time is reading with them, which I do every Thursday evening as well as at weekends.

With Josh, who’s just three, it’s mostly bedtime stories and Dr Seuss – but to see his eyes light up when we read ‘The Cat in the Hat’ together is just amazing. I’ve also started introducing him to poetry – today, for example, we were walking around the living room to AA Milne’s ‘Lines and Squares‘, stepping in time to the rhythm of the verse, both of us shouting, “Bears!” at the appropriate moment.

Then there was the wonderful moment of reciting ‘Jabberwocky‘ – chasing a screaming Josh around the room, being ‘the jaws that bite, the claws that catch’. He loves it, and he doesn’t even know he’s learning.

Jay, at 10, is more difficult, however Roald Dahl is always a winner. His characters are so vibrant and rounded, his goodies so good and his villians so vile, that it gains and holds the attention of even an older boy. And of course, the graphic descriptions of baddies meeting sticky ends is always popular. We’re doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – and we share the reading, so he both learns and is entertained at the same time.

I’ve also started bringing poetry to Jay – he needs a little help with his reading at the moment, and the cadence and structure of simple poems seems to aid both his concentration on the words and also on his expressiveness when reading. The choice of subject matter also helps – I find that snot-related verse seems to have the desired effect!

My best friend Loudmouthman recently wrote an excellent piece on the Duty and Responsibility of being a Dad, which I urge you to read. However, I believe that a big part of that responsibility is very simple.

Read with your kids.

You never know – it might even be fun.

A big part of being a good Dad is arming your kids with the tools they’ll need to understand and navigate the world successfully as adults. When I first became a Dad, I took some time to reflect on the adults I knew… on what the ones who were doing better seemed to understand, and on what the ones who were doing worse seemed to have in common.

I uncovered a few insights that seemed important, and now as I await the arrival of my fourth child, I’m pretty sure about the most important lesson I’ve had for the first three.

It is this:

We make choices in life, and those choices have consequences. Growing up means accepting the consequences of your choices, and dealing with them in a responsible way.

Pretty obvious, right? So why is it so important?

Different Outlooks, Different Outcomes

Do what I did… think about the happiest people you know, and about the most miserable. Pick a few real people in your life from each category, and visualize them in your mind. Ready?

Dollars to donuts, the happiest people you know aren’t necessarily the richest, the best looking, the most talented, or even the most loved. They are the people most in touch with the truth – the truth of who they are, the truth of their relationships, the truth of the people and circumstances around them. Look closely, and you’ll see that these people interpret themselves to be more or less in control of their lives. Not in the sense that unforeseeable, bad things don’t happen to them. They do, just like everyone else. But these people tend to respond to life’s inevitable setbacks and tragedies by accepting them as an objective reality to be dealt with, and focusing on the choices that will help them best address that reality.

Happy, well adjusted adults understand the nature of personal responsibility. They neither avoid the entanglements real relationships entail, nor burden themselves with worry over that which is beyond their control. Robert Frost called them “easy in their harness,” about the best distillation I’ve come across.

Now come back to the most unhappy people you know. When you talk to them, when you ask how they are, what do they say? I bet it’s some variant of this: Their boss did this to them; their wife did that to them; the whatever isn’t fair because of the <blank>; X screwed them out of Y because of Z. These people conceal the truth of their personal responsibility from themselves. They don’t hold themselves accountable, don’t see their lives as the product of their choices. They see themselves responding at the margins to circumstances beyond their control, and drift with the current toward destinations far from their hopes and dreams.

And where did these people learn to function this way in the world? Sadly, more often than not, they learned it from their parents.

What are your kids learning from you?

Right or wrong, I have a worldview I’d like my kids to start with, even if they reach different conclusions as adults. I believe our lives are what we make of them – through the good and the bad we all face, the failures and the triumphs that make up a life worth living. I believe their lives will be the consequences of their choices, and that recognizing this early on will dramatically increase their odds of being happy, productive adults.

So how do you get that message across? I’ve found that what works best is giving your kids a little more choice and a little more consequence as they go, pointing out the connections between the latter and the former at every possible opportunity.

Some examples: We’ve all seen people fight with their kids about eating this or that, or rise from a full dinner table to make macaroni and cheese for poor Timmy who “won’t eat anything else.” This drives me pazzo, and it doesn’t happen in our house. The reason is not because we’re great parents, or because our kids are better than Timmy. It’s because we use this as an opportunity to reinforce an important lesson.

After toddlerdom, we don’t argue with our kids about eating dinner, or make them something else if they choose not to eat what’s being served. We establish the rule that whatever’s been prepared is what’s for dinner, and – after advising them to eat, and clarifying the consequences if they don’t – let them decide if they want to eat or not. Easy enough, right? Well here’s the hard part: If they choose not to eat, despite our best advice and encouragement, they can’t eat anything else until breakfast. Period. Each of them has chosen not to eat dinner a couple of times, and later complained later that they were “starving” when they went to bed. Please. Each survived this “starvation” just fine, and now – for the most part – they know the deal, and they eat without complaint.

Same with bedtime. In the summer there’s the inevitable appeal to stay up until 9:00, or even 9:30. We let them decide whether they want to do this early in the summer, on the absolute condition that there’s no whining or complaining when they have to get up for camp in the morning. As long as we hold the line on this, everybody wins, either way. In order to maintain the later bedtime they work hard to get out of bed, dressed and downstairs on schedule in the morning. If they start to find that too difficult, they are the ones who choose to hit the sack early in order to get the sleep they’ve learned they need.

The consequences of bad choices obviously get more harmful as kids get older, but that’s kind of the whole point. Before your kids reach the stage of life where bad choices can have lifelong consequences, you’ll have taught them an important lesson within the relative safety of the world you control on their behalf.

What lesson do you think is most important for your kids? Why is it so important to you?

Social Networking can be a great tool for any Dad or Mom for that matter to get where their kids are and know what they’re doing. Some of the most successful people in the industry use this same method to network and grow the number of people they come in contact with. A tip I leave many in PR or Marketing is that in order to get a Blogger or Reporter to take interest in your product or story is to get where those people are, interact with them through those means, and truly show interest in them, and they’ll eventually reciprocate. Then, when they know you and you are friends, it’s easy to share something with them and have them actually listen. Not only that, but you’ll know them better and you’ll know how to approach them in the future because you know what they like and dislike.

Bloggers are Like Kids (or was that the other way around?)

Yes, it’s true (and I’m one of them!). Isn’t it funny how this same approach could be used with our kids? Social Networks like Myspace and Facebook provide a unique means to getting to know our children. Too often we think of these places, or the latest fad of network as “childish”, or just a place for our kids to hang out. (Well, perhaps unless you’re a geek or early-adopter, but that’s besides my point.)

The best recommendation I could give any Dad with teenage children (I’m not there yet, but I’m getting very close!) is to follow your children on Facebook, or whatever Social Networks they belong to. Some might say, “but that’s stalking them! My children will never let me follow them on Facebook!” You’re approaching it wrong if your children give you that reaction.

With Social Networking, Famous People Aren’t so Foreign After-all!

I like to compare our kids with some of the more famous people you’ll come in contact with on Facebook or Twitter. For instance, how many of you follow Robert Scoble? How many of you have had him talk to you? How about Chris Brogan (who runs this site)? How about Louis Gray? Or Jeremiah Owyang? Of course, those are the easy ones, but similar strategies of trying to get to know each person, becoming friends at the locations they are, and showing interest in them can get any individual to reciprocate the attention you’re giving them. You’d never get to talk to these people if it weren’t for Social Networking.

With Social Networking, Kids Aren’t so Foreign After-all!

The same principle you can apply to “non-approachables” that are adults can also be applied to our kids. If you show genuine interest in your kids, go where they are, join the social networks they are on, all of the sudden you become human to them, and they become human to you. You know what’s going on in their life, and they see you truly care. They’ll share more with you and learn more of who you really are.

If you’re looking to build a stronger relationship with your children, know who they are, and what they’re doing, join up and add them as friends on the Social Networks they belong to! You never know what relationships can be forged ahead by doing so. In the 21st century, this is the best way you can listen as a Dad.

I’m considering doing more of these on Fatherhood and Social Networking. Let me know if this is of interest and I’ll keep sharing more!

Jesse is a father of 4 children, living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He blogs regularly at http://staynalive.com

Photo courtesy http://wesleying.blogspot.com/2007/08/helicopter-parents-use-facebook-to-f-up.html

I grew up interested in politics.  And it has to come as no surprise when you consider I was born on the date of the very first televised presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon. It was October 21st, 1960.  I just had to be a political animal with that birthday.

I remember very clearly sitting at the dinner table and listening to my parents discuss and cuss politics during the late 60′s and early 70′s.  The Vietnam War was going on then.  And of course there was the election of 1968. I was only 8, but I remember it clearly.  Then there was Watergate and the resigning of a president. Politics for the most part is not much different now as it was then.  The only thing that has changed are the names of the players.

Fathers, sons and politics

As you may remember from my first post here on Dad-o-Matic, I have 4 wonderful children. Four sons to be exact.  And they range in ages from the oldest who is 25 now and married.  The twins are 23 and my youngest is 15.  From as long as I can remember back in their childhoods, I have always encouraged them to discuss their own political views. And I always tried to not sway them to my way of thinking.  What I have always demanded from them was one thing. If you are going to take a position for either a conservative or liberal political view, educate yourself on the issues. Know what each side stands for by doing your own independent research and learning.  Don’t just read and listen to what the mainstream media has to say. But actually pick up a book, yes god forbid an actual book, and read what people have to say.

This election season has been interesting in the Griffiths household to say the least. My youngest is perfect of course and sees things the same way I do.  So does one of the twins.  The other twin, just looks at the TV and says what a bunch of crap.  You know, I think of the 4, he is probably the only one who actually gets it.  The oldest, sees things completely different then I do.  That does not upset me nearly as much as a statement he made a week or so ago. I asked him a question in an effort to get him to consider the issues and facts. And he simple said, “you know I don’t really watch the news and don’t really know what I am talking about or why I feel that way.”  I felt like I had failed as a parent. Not that he disagreed with me. But that he was an uninformed voter.  We discussed that very issue again and he promised he would do better.

I know my oldest has had a very busy year with graduating with his Masters. Getting married and moving to Florida. Getting settled into a new home and new life with his lovely bride. But, there is still that responsibility we all have, and that is to not just take a position and vote for the sake of voting. We have a responsibility to be educated voters.
There will always be disagreements in every household over politics.  And there will always be heated discussions.  But, keep them as discussions and not as a division between any of the members of your family.  If there is one thing I can leave all you fathers with on this subject. Encourage the discussion. But even more, encourage, no demand, that your children be informed. They will be better voters for it and the discussion will be so much better.