Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter Is Dad

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dad

Coney Enjoys Her First Hamburger

Other Books by David S Roberts

OUR DUAL CITIZENSHIP

An examination of citizenship in God’s Kingdom in the Old Testament and in the New Testament time periods as compared to the Christian-American’s Dual citizenship in both the Kingdom of God and in America including the rights and responsibilities of citizens in both Kingdoms and the unique responsibilities that are on those who claim to be citizens of both.

PREPARING FOR THE COMING COLLAPSE OF THE US DOLLAR

Common Sense strategies to prepare to procure food, water, and energy when the Quantitative Easing begins. Discussions on communicating in a post-Internet America and on protecting your life, limb and loved ones. Finally, there is a discussion on how to operate in a society when the dollar doesn’t work. Second Edition now includes The Last Domino and Blog Posts from God and Country Christian Ministries.

THE LAST DOMINO

The follow-up to Preparing for the Coming Collapse of the US Dollar. Issues such as medical needs, bugging out of the cities, purifying water and obtaining food on the run are covered.

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Dedicated to my wife, Julie who has endured much in the last several years, I mean look who she married.

Contents

Chapter One - My Father and I

Chapter Two - Learning from Our Father’s Mistakes

Chapter Three  - I Meet Pill

Chapter Four  - Through the Canal

Chapter Five  - Diapers, Cereal and Onesies, Oh My!

Chapter Six- Fatherhood and Discipline

Chapter Six  - Fatherhood in the Face of Ruin

Chapter Seven - Squeaky Arrives

Chapter Eight  - Squeaky’s Struggle

Chapter Nine  - Mister Mom

Chapter Ten  - Fatherhood and Loss

Chapter Eleven - Shortcuts

Chapter Twelve - How Not to Let Disappointment in  Yourself Rub Off on Your Kids

Chapter Thirteen - You’re What?

Chapter Fourteen - How the Girls are SO different.

Chapter Fifteen - The Law of the Third Girl

Chapter Sixteen - What I Hope I have Taught My Girls

Chapter Seventeen  - What My Girls have Taught Me

Chapter Eighteen  - Saying Goodbye

Introduction

Fatherhood, there is no silver bullet, no one piece of advice that can tell you how to act or be as a father. We have all had fathers good, bad or somewhere in between. And good or bad, everyone’s relationship with their father affects them in their life. Your view of fatherhood affects your relationship with God and with your children. You get your view of fatherhood, at least most of it from your earthly father. How you view your relationship with your father can leave an indelible mark on the way you behave as a child to your Heavenly Father and as a father to your children.

The Bible has a lot to say to fathers and to children. There are good examples to imitate and bad examples to avoid.  The lessons in this book have all sprung from what I have learned in my relationship with my father on Earth and my Father in Heaven and in my relationship as a father to my children.

Some of the lessons are personal and encouraging, others are humorous, some are a little sad but all are deeply personal.  All are balanced with what I have taken away from each experience as the silver lining. Whether it’s witnessing the birth of your children, teaching them to love God or using appropriate discipline fathers need a little help.

I am not writing this book as if I were an all-knowing Dr. Spock type, right now I am completely aware that I know just a little bit more than I did before when I was a young, clueless father. (I am now an older, clueless father.) You can use these lessons as a personal study, or a collective study for fathers in your church, either way, I hope that what I learned can serve to teach you and encourage you to reflect the fatherhood of God in your relationship with your children.

Chapter One –

My Father and I

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I will confess something to you here and now, it’s not something I am proud of, not something I strived for, it just happened. Are you ready? Here it is: I throw like a girl. I run like a girl. I play sports (any sport) like a girl. And not an Olympic trained, or seasoned girl athlete, or even a tom-boy girl. I play sports more like the cute pig-tailed girl in a pink dress and tassels down the street, the cute pig-tailed girl who just so happens to have facial hair. My father was the sports guy. He played football, golf, tennis, you name it; he played it. I however, didn’t.

That was a source of conflict between my father and I. He just couldn’t understand that his son didn’t like sports. As it probably is with every boy born, my father had certain expectations and hopes for me that just didn’t materialize. Looking back on it, I know that he loved me, but I believe that he must have spent many long hours considering the possibility that I had been switched at birth with his biological son who is wandering around somewhere today, probably playing rugby. I would get that ‘look’, you know the one, the what the heck look when your dad doesn’t understand what you are doing. He took me to sporting events in the hopes that I would enjoy watching them. I didn’t.

I would be reading a book instead of watching the baseball game or trying to do anything other than sit still to watch a sport being played. What my father was expecting in a son, I think, was a little ‘him’, a little athlete, who loved watching and playing football, soccer, tennis, karate, or at the very least, golf. I know he was disappointed that I was not interested in the things he was. I hated sports, I hated recess, I loathed P.E. and only slightly tolerated watching sports on television. I was far more content to hide in my room with a book imagining myself being a part of the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy, Tom Swift, or the Three Investigators.

Don’t get me wrong, I know he loved me and I loved him, but I led a life that was diametrically opposed to the one he did. I was like the nerd that he used to beat up when he was in school. I was that guy in the classroom with the whiny tone saying, Teacher, teacher, you forgot to assign us homework over the weekend. Yep, that was me. I was the kid who busted the curve on the tests. I walked to school alone or with my sister because to me the school buses were the place I ended up being beat up on, and on a bus, there is nowhere to run.

At times, my dad could be stubborn, loud and obnoxious, traits that amazingly enough he says I inherited from my mother’s side. I still haven’t quite figured that one out. But those seem to be the only traits we have in common. He kept enrolling me in this sports program or that sports program, basketball when I was in Kindergarten, soccer when I was in third grade, tennis lessons in sixth grade, golf in the seventh and he wanted me to try out for the football team, but he knew that I wasn’t going to do that. To him, I didn’t like the sport because I didn’t practice it enough, if I would just work harder at it, I would love it. That, to me is like saying, ‘oh, the reason you don’t like lima beans is because you just haven’t eaten enough of them.’

I don’t have the natural hand-eye coordination that is required in sports. (I’m not really even that good at Pac-Man.) I am a book person, books, movies, writing; all of it was what I really enjoyed. I remember in junior high hiding in the restroom during Physical Education classes, at that time there were no A’s, B’s, or F’s in P.E. you either got a Satisfactory or an Unsatisfactory in PE, and since my grade was always a U anyway, I didn’t bother trying. (To this day I have a serious problem with grading a child on their ability to play sports.)

When I couldn’t sneak away to hide, I would forget my gym outfit and in the ultimate wisdom of my PE coaches, (if he doesn’t want to be here, we will penalize him by not letting him be here.) they would sit me down on the track outside by myself out of sight of all the other kids. The book I smuggled into the gym in my pocket kept me busy until the bell rang. This was their punishment. The result was the same either way, I got a ‘U’.

If I could avoid the other kids, I wouldn’t get picked on or beat up, which was a regular occurrence in all my schools. I was always the one they wanted to fight. I was like the Glass Jaw Joe in the first Knockout video game, easy to beat, so even amateur bullies picked on me. The alpha male bullies would always zero in on me until I fought them, which I never did or if I did, I would lose. It was at this time that I learned the value of blood and keeping it on the right side of my skin. I refused to do anything that MIGHT result in my getting injured. I was a chicken.

My father wanted me to learn to fight. Every father wants their child to be able to take care of themselves. He wanted me to fight another kid named David that for a full year was picking on and hitting me and I would always lose.

In fact, one day my dad invited David’s mother, (who would always dismiss my Mother’s complaints of David being a bully and just chalk it up to him being an overactive boy) and David over and kept her busy so I could fight him. I took him into my bedroom, closed the door, took a breath and hauled off and hit him as hard as I could, once. I braced for him to come back at me and fight, but he didn’t, he hit the floor holding his now bleeding nose and he did something he had made me do several times, he bawled out for his mother.

You would think that this would give me a little satisfaction. Here was this little brat of a spoiled child who had tortured me for almost a year, bleeding