Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen.

My new hero!

The Hard Choices

So, as of this past Monday my oldest daughter began taking some anti-depressant medication as prescribed by her primary care physician. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I know it really is the only option we have at this point. I mean, who wants to say that their daughter is on anti-depressants? It pains me to see her not fully experiencing her teenage years, and making so many poor decisions that could effect her future. Thinking back on my high school years (which were actually quite enjoyable), I know what she is missing out on by not being more socially active. With all that she has been through, I suppose we are getting off easy with only some minor acting out up to this point, but sometimes I see things churning beneath the surface. Things that worry me. Will she be equipped to be on her own when she's done with high school? Will she make it out of high school without ending up pregnant? Will she make it at all? I don't want her to be lost. I see so many other kids that are just...lost. I can only trust that we are doing everything we can to prepare her and that somehow it will come to the forefront when she needs it.

We didn't arrive at the option of medication quickly, but with the exhausted psychological care benefits we have we really didn't have much of a choice. I sat down with her a couple of weeks ago to discuss this option and told her it would be her choice as to whether or not she gave it a try. Luckily, she agreed, and so we are starting off with a low, 10mg prescription for generic Prozac. We went over all of the potential side effectsThe doctor said it would take about three to four weeks to build up in her system and to come back at that time for a checkup. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I want to say she's been more upbeat lately. Maybe I'm just fooling myself. I don't know. But I know that I love her, I want her to be happy and I want her to smile more.

Now comes the hard part: explaining this to her mom.

A forever kind of thing

I hope you read this, I really do. This is the kind of thing that is too complex to try and express in a 5 minute conversation while moving furniture. I’m really not even sure where to begin, so I guess one spot is as good another.

Your daughter needs you. You’re just now beginning to see the damage that a lack of attention/affection can cause. This last incident is only the tip of the iceberg. She is such a beautiful, intelligent girl and it pains me to think of what she can become versus what she will become if things continue the way they are. She so desperately needs a daddy I can feel it radiating from her every time I see her. She doesn’t need the disciplinarian right now; she needs a hug, a kiss, a whisper that she is beautiful, intelligent and truly matters. If you do not begin to provide these to her on a daily basis, she’ll soon find somewhere else to look for it. As hard as it may seem to open up and be sensitive, vulnerable and compassionate, the alternative is much worse. I look at all of you and there is such wonderful potential there, but potential that may be squandered if steps aren’t taken. By this I don’t mean baby steps. These are long, painful steps to be taken that must be taken. Gone is the time for half measures and band aids. I know that right now it may seem like the world is against you, but to her you and her mom are her world, and right now she is an island that’s slowly going to drift off until she’s too far to reach and all you can do is watch her spirit wither away.

I see in you so many wonderful possibilities. You have such passion and intelligence, and I envy that of you. I hate to see it wasted while self pity and doubt rule your actions. There is no room for get rich quick ideas and half baked home business endeavors. Once you have the solid foundation that your family needs, then you can begin to consider other options. But right now you stand on the edge of disaster and every moment of hesitation is a crack beneath your feet. I will be there to support you and council you, but I cannot be you. No one else can.

Your wife: There are so very few women like her in the world; Beautiful, intelligent women that will truly stand by their husband’s side through the worst of times. While you must bear the weight of the world on your shoulders, she’ll be there to encourage you, wipe the sweat from your brow, and sometimes take the weight from your shoulders for a while. Treasure this. Imagine the worst times of your life. Now, imagine those same moments without her by your side. What you two have is what most people spend decades looking for.

All of this will amount to nothing if the two of you are not supporting each other. Presenting a unified front to your kids is vitally important. Undermining the other’s authority or negating it altogether is disastrous to a family’s stability. Your kids have to know that dad’s word is mom’s word and mom’s word is dad’s word. There cannot be secrets or deceptions, even with the best of intentions. There cannot be a restriction placed on how much of a parent someone can be. You’re either a parent, or you’re not. The blame for the failure of a family cannot be placed squarely on the shoulders of one person. If it could, then it was never a family to begin with.

I think of all of you daily and I wish that I could do more.

About a girl

This was inspired by a conversation between parents last night over dinner.

A girl’s first love is her dad.
Dad is her knight in shining armor, her prince valiant, and her superhero rolled into one.
Dad is the one that will brave fire and death to save her.
Dad is invincible, super strong, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Dad is immortal.
Her first rose, her first door held open, her first chair being pulled out, should all come from dad.
Her first Valentine is dad.
Dad can breathe fire and kiss her boo-boo’s away at the same time.
Dad can fix anything. If he can’t fix it, then it’s not broken.
If her heart is broken, dad will give her his.
Dad will push her forward, and teach her how to pick herself up when she falls.

Dad is the rule by which all other men are judged.

I want my two dollars! (I'll settle for $1.50, though)

So, I've concluded my first week of "training" at my new job. Let me ask you a question, loyal readers: Have you ever completed a full week of work, looked back at the previous five days and say "They're paying me for this?!" That's the kind of week I had. I learned about this much about my job duties, folks. However, I did discover that my employer is probably using what has to be the last dial up internet connection on Earth. I kid you not, people, I haven't seen an internet connection this slow since the first days of the interwebs.

Altogether, though, they really are a good bunch of people and I think I'm going to like it here. Now, on to the good stuff. As I mentioned last week here is another installment of my adventures in the bloody trenches of parenting.

Shortly after putting up the previous post, I received a knock at my door. I checked through the peep hole before opening, on the odd chance that Lou Dobbs was staging a sweep of Santa Ana. Luckily, it was only the neighbors son, otherwise known by my children as the "neighborhood dream boat".

He asked to speak to Danielle, who happened to accompany me to the door. He then asked Danielle if she had seen anyone hanging around his backpack at school because someone had taken $1.50 from it. Without missing a beat, Danielle said she didn't know but would ask her friend Stephanie if she knew anything about it. That pretty much concluded the conversation and he went on his way.

Not one moment after she turned the corner, Kristine was all up in her shiznit...apparently, juvenile delinquency does have some benefits which manifest themselves into an uncanny ability to sniff out any bullshit within a quarter mile....I, on the other hand,was an Eagle Scout.

I followed her lead and unleashed my disapproving father stare of death on Danielle. Within seconds we had a confession from her (Guantanamo ain't got nothin' on us, yo'). I immediately marched Danielle back to the boys' house with an apology and the $1.50 she had taken. This would all be just the tip of the iceberg, though.

Once Danielle and I returned home, I immediately ordered her to grab some chair. I couldn't even begin to describe to her how disappointed I was in her actions. What had I done wrong that would make her thing it was OK to do this kind of thing? Her justification for it was that it was "just a joke" and that she had meant to give him back the money. Yeah, I could smell what she was shoveling too. Anyway, I let Kristine take the reigns on this one as my first reaction was to burn all of her possessions on my BBQ and confine her to her room until I had arranged her enrollment at a nunnery in Rome. Once I calmed down and Kristine had finished bringing half of the heavens down on her, it was my turn. The hardest part of all this was that she hadn't expressed any true indication of remorse for her actions. Part of me chalked it up to the rebelliousness of youth and the preteen years, but a bigger part of me wanted to breath fire and brimstone and make her see the error of her ways. That wouldn't work though, just telling her that stealing was wrong really didn't have the impact we were looking for. It wouldn't really get through that preteen wall of "Duhhhhh" that they all seem to have.

Kristine's solution? Call the police. How's that for hardcore? Well, not that hardcore because the police department advised me to contact her school.

I contacted her school and they directed me to their Assistant Principal. She advised us that the local police really wouldn't come down to the school for $1.50, no matter how awesome of an after-school special this would make. She did, however, offer to speak to Danielle personally and explain the ramifications of committing theft on school property. It was made clear to Danielle that normally she would be suspended for this, but in lieu of having a phone conference with us (her parents) she would suspend the suspension and put the paperwork in Danielle's school record.

Of course this hasn't ended her punishment for this...oh, nooooo sir. I've meted out all kinds of punishment for this infraction, folks. And no, I don't think we went too far at all. It's not like I'll be the parent to co-volunteer at the homeless shelter during the hygiene clinics we'll be sending Danielle to volunteer at (kudos to Kristine for that idea).

We've made it perfectly clear to both of the girls on several occasions that we won't tolerate dishonesty of any kind in our house, so they are well aware of what happens when they are caught.

By the way folks, I'll be finishing the third and final part of my longest post ever, very soon. I think it'll help tie all of these parenting columns together.

Let's see just how deep the rabbit hole goes...

Well, it's been a long two months with no new posts up on The Disco. The only people reading my blog now are spammers and anyone that's done a search for "Amy Winehouse licking Tyler Perry's sphincter". I aim to change all that folks! It's a brand new day under the Disco's bright lights, and I'm cleaning house. I'd also like to ask for input from any readers still stopping by to see what's new. I'm thinking of starting a parenting column relating my day to day experiences being a single parent and answering any parenting questions the blogosphere at large may have. What do you think? Of course I'll still maintain the same oh so hilarious posts you've come to expect from the Lord of the Disco, but I'd like to give something back to the blogging community that made me the white hot blogger star I was (for about 9.2 minutes).

As my regular readers know, I have two daughters ages 12 and 10. My 12 year old had her first school dance (which Kristine and I were foolish enough to volunteer to chaperone) about a month ago with her next one coming up this Friday. Wanna know what it was like chaperoning a dance attended by about 300 preteens? Imagine a herd of cattle jacked up on Mountain Dew & Sour Patch Kids being stuffed into an auditorium after running around a yard all day. Now play some of the shittiest hip hop on today's radio, add two bewildered parents and mix till sweaty and smelly. Now I'm no prude, but if I see another 12 year old girl freaking on another 12 year old girl, I just might tazer someone. As a matter of fact, if I see any boy or girl get within 2 feet of each other, I'm makin' with the pepper spray. Gall derned hormonal douchebags.

And now we're set to do it all over again. "Why, oh Lord of the Disco, wouldst thou invite such torture upon thine noble self?" you may ask.

Shit homey, I'm an awesome parent, that's why.

Wherein I wear my e-heart on my e-sleeve Part I & II

Part I

Hey folks, sorry that I have been MIA for a little while now, but my home computer recently crashed and burned and it’s been tough maintaining posts on even my personal blog.

However, I think it’s time that I finally disclosed to you the history regarding my relationship with my ex, and our two daughters. My ex and I got together when I was eighteen. We became serious fairly quickly and it was only a matter of months before she was pregnant with our first child, Danielle (GBP). Obviously, I was in no way prepared for having a child, but was so smitten that I foolishly agreed to plan a child with her. Yeah, it was planned. That was my first mistake. Needless to say, my mother was not very pleased with this, but she did help in whatever way she could. In retrospect I wish she had helped less, as it made it easier to for me to accept the situation when my ex became pregnant two years later with Marissa (Bruiser). How might I have felt if we had been left to our own devices in supporting ourselves and providing our own home for a child? I’m sure I would have thought twice about it. Most likely I would have run screaming from someone that would have a child when only one of us was working and we had yet to get our own place. In any event, we were thrust into parenthood, two teenagers blissfully unaware of the hardships and obstacles you place in front of yourself by becoming a young parent. To top it off, we rushed into marriage a few months before our second child Marissa was born. For me it was more out of a sense of guilt and pressure from our parents than any starry eyed vision of the legitimization of our relationship.

Within the span of two years I had gone from High School graduate, to father, to husband and provider. What was I to do? Wasn’t this what you’re supposed to do when you have kids with someone? I think “supposed to do” and “supposed to be like” were the mottos I lived my so called life by in those days. I trudged along, working a dead end full time job to meet my obligations with no hope of furthering my education or my development as a person. I accepted my lot in life, never even revealing to my then wife the thoughts that I had of becoming something more than I was, and how I resented her for being content with this life. I think I resented a lot in those days: I resented her for making me feel like she was comparing me to her father –“Mr. I Can Fix Anything”, I resented her for not working and complaining we didn’t have enough money, I even began to resent my father for not being around to teach me how to fix things: was I less of a man because I didn’t know how to tune up a car of fix a dryer? How much of life had I missed out by getting myself into this? That was a crushing thought. Somehow though, my ex seemed strangely at peace with her role in all of this. I suppose that having grown up in a broken home and having had to take care of her siblings had planted the seed in her mind that this is what little girls grow up to be: a woman whose sole purpose is the rearing of children, regardless of what she wants for herself while her husband toils away at a dead end job to bring home a paycheck.

Much of the resentment I felt manifested itself in my daily behavior: lack of interest in helping her father with odd jobs around his house, spending more time at work and less at home, the inability to face the responsibilities of being a parent. I should have communicated how I felt, but I think deep down I knew it would fall on deaf ears. Suffice to say, these warring emotions and the immaturity brought on by my age resulted in one thing: I was a shitty husband. There’s a feeling of a burden being lifted in being able to freely admit that, now that I can look back on it objectively and through the eyes of my own experiences and maturity. In any event, the marriage was seemingly set to self destruct mode from the very beginning. The relationship got worse and worse, culminating in no small amount of infidelity on her part with someone she had met during her brief stint as an employee at a makeup counter at local mall that resulted in a terminated pregnancy that she admitted to me, and then a child. He also had a wife and two children at home.

I’m a very patient person, but this was something that I could not and would not put up with. Even after attempting couples counseling (prior to the second pregnancy) at my request (of which she only attended one session and I continued to see the therapist for my own sake); she seemed to not care whether the relationship could be salvaged. We even tried a “roommate” situation, where she did her thing and I did my own, but I found I could live like that only so long. It did frustrate me when on “her” weekends, the girls would wake up to no knowledge of where their mother was—only to have her return later on that afternoon.

The last straw was when she admitted to being pregnant with his child again. At that point, I’d still thought we were “trying” to work things out. I knew only one way to deal with this: I moved out. Let me preface this by saying that despite all that was going on, I loved my daughters with all of my heart and the one of the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life was to leave that house knowing that I would not be there to see them every day, to kiss them goodbye in the morning, and to tuck them in at night. It was like tearing out two pieces of my heart and leaving them behind. It was one of the few times in my life that my daughters have seen me cry. If you can show me someone that can look their children straight in the eye and tell them that they are leaving the house and not cry, I can show you someone that probably has no business seeing them in the first place.


I moved back in with my mother, brother and my mother’s partner at their house in Buena Park, CA, and thus began my tenure as a weekend parent. I saw the girls on weekends and alternating holidays. Any single parent will be familiar with the pro forma visitation schedule: pick them up after work, keep them for the weekend, and bring them back Sunday evening. Wash, rinse, repeat. What some of those single parents may not tell you is how god damned fucking horrible it is to watch your kids cry because they don’t want you to leave, watching the tears well up in their eyes as if they’d never see you again and the “daddypleasedon’togoiwannastaywithyouwhydoyouhavetogo”…If I ever go to Hell, I’m sure I’ll be made to relive that particular memory for an eternity. As hard as it was to leave the house, nothing could prepare me for that weekly heartbreak and the 45 minute drive home with only my thoughts and the image of their tear-filled, red rimmed eyes replaying in my mind. I missed them terribly when they were not there, but at the same time dreaded Sunday nights as I packed their things and got ready for the drive. The pain got lesser and lesser as the weeks, months and eventually years went by and we became use to the routine. Being that I was the weekend parent now, I was no longer there to play with them daily, watch them grow, or be there for them when they got hurt. I did talk to them at night on the phone, usually about two to three times a week (more if I wasn’t working late) but it was obviously a poor substitute for being there, and having to answer the question of “When are you coming home, daddy?” was like having my heart ripped out of my chest and tossed onto a freeway. Nightly. Try and explain to a 6 year old that you don’t live with her and her sister anymore because mom cheated on you. On second thought, don’t unless you want to screw your kid up even more. My answer to them was something along the lines of “It’s something I had to do, and it’s something you wouldn’t understand right now. It’s not your fault, ok?” As I said before, for them it got a bit easier as time went on, although for a while the tears turned into attitude and I had to turn on the stern father voice to get Marissa out of the car on occasion. For me, my one constant was the inability to make eye contact with their mother for very long without that white hot ball of hostility and anger flaring up inside of me and clouding my thoughts. This too, passed, although I can still feel it rolling around inside of me to this day.

Well, the months passed and we all acclimated to the situation and I found out something that I may have forgotten in all the animosity and name calling: I’m a damn good father. While other single dads may have been content to ask someone to watch their kids while they ran errands, I took the girls with me wherever I went: the mall, the market, friends houses…you name it. If I was invited somewhere, I made sure I was able to bring them with me. I played with them, read to and with them, helped with homework, took them to parks, and made sure they knew they were loved every day they were with me, even when they weren’t. In actuality, they fact that they were not with me during the week allowed me time do something I hadn’t had the time to even consider prior to all this: I rediscovered myself. I was finally able to sit back, take stock of myself, and actually enjoy life. As selfish as this may sound, I was grateful for the time I had away from them as it afforded me the time to decompress and focus on things that were not necessarily more important, but important in a different way. Things like actually finishing my education, taking a different career path, getting back into the social arena of dating, and reconnecting with old friends seemed possible now. In fact, I can remember a conversation I had with their mother one day when I was taking my daughters and my nephew out to lunch: I had received a call on my cell phone from her as I was at a drive thru window. Apparently her and her boyfriend had gotten into some kind of argument and he asked that she call me (why, I can’t seem to remember), but after realization the inappropriateness of carrying this conversation on in front of the kids and that this was really a pointless and insane conversation anyway, I actually thanked him for taking her off of my hands*.



Part two on Friday

*To clarify, the kids didn’t know who I was talking to as they were in the back seat playing with their cousin and a large portion of the conversation was me listening to her boyfriend prattle on about something ridiculous.

Part II

Sorry for the delay folks, but I was out of town this weekend and I wanted to polish this up before posting this. So...

Fast forward about 1 year. My mother confides in my brother and me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer some time ago but she was, and would continue to, actively pursuing treatment. So, this was quite a lot to digest within the span of 1 year after moving back in to her house. I know now that she didn’t hold out much hope for her own survival after looking back: the expensive family trip to our hometown of New York that she knew my brother and I could never afford, making sure my brother and I tied up any of our smaller financial loose ends, and just making sure our lives were generally in order. After she passed, it was left to me, my brother, and my mom’s partner to take care of the house and ourselves. It’s funny how even a houseful of people can seem empty at times. It was months of just going through the motions, watching the loss eat away at Liz, and wondering how long we could keep this up.

The loss of my mother was especially hard on her partner, Liz. As far as I know, my mother had been her only significant relationship. I know she must have felt lost, and incredibly alone. Not too long after my mother died, pictures of my mother that were once featured prominently around the house began to disappear. A handmade pillow with my mother’s photo on it vanished. I discovered later that all her old things had been packed away and put in a storage box in the garage. I couldn’t help but harbor not too a little resentment towards her for this. This was my mother, and to me it seemed like she was trying to forget she ever existed. A few months after that, issues of finances began to drive a wedge between everyone. It became commonplace for my brother and I to avoid Liz completely simply because it became too difficult to even carry a conversation knowing that the slightest thing could set her off. Eventually my brother moved out and into his now wife’s mother’s home. Now how the hell did I get stuck living in a house where I felt like a visitor? A sense of loyalty to the person that had been the only other real parent I had ever known, I suppose. But even that would only last so long. As time passed she made it known to me that it was becoming an impossibility to maintain the house with only her income and the meager contributions I could make after paying my own bills and support for the girls. So it was that in the month of August of 2004 that I moved out and moved in to a two bedroom apartment with my friend Torre and his girlfriend at the time, Michelline.

It wasn’t the ideal solution, moving in with Torre and Mish, but it was the only option I had at the time. I certainly couldn’t afford rent on my own, and they needed help as well. It was a draw-win situation, I suppose. They got help with bills and rent, and I did have my own room, but I had to share that room with two growing girls every weekend. They knew I had kids, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was imposing on them every time the girls came over. Things went as well as they could: I was eking out a meager living as a sales rep in the sales pit at a somewhat shady company. My income was just enough to meet my support obligations, pay the bills (usually) and have a few dollars left over if I felt like splurging on a burger at AM/PM, unless my roommates took pity on me and paid my way to a club or bought a couple of rounds at a bar. Yeah, it was just as depressing as it sounds. This was another point in my life where I was existing simply to continue my existence. I was working another dead end job at another dead end company, but oddly enough there was no end in sight.


At least during the time that I lived at my mother’s house, I could entertain the thought of having a social life: I had some extra income, a house that I often times had to myself, and definitely a more positive outlook on life. Now, it was a struggle simply to keep my head above water with a fluctuating income, the cost of feeding two extra mouths, and an increasingly negative outlook on life. I can’t even recall the actual number of times I had to forego eating in order to make sure that there was enough food to provide for my daughters when they were with me. In fact, on more than one occasion, I had to inform their mother that I could not in good conscience bring them over simply because I had nothing to feed them. I don’t know if there is a worse feeling for a parent to have than the uncertainty of not knowing how you were going to feed your children.

Now it was around exactly the time that Mish moved out that I had begun to date Kristine. I decided to chance a date with her after scraping together some extra cash, and having some extremely stimulating phone conversations with her after meeting online. I held no real hope for a long term relationship, though. As a matter of fact, I had actually made mention of this to her after one of our dates. In hindsight, this was probably not the smartest move for me to make considering I hadn’t gotten any action in…well, a while. Strangely enough, she decided to continue seeing me even after my admission that I had no intentions of having a girlfriend as I didn’t feel I had anything real to contribute to a relationship. As the days went by and we spent more and more time together, things began to change. Simply being around her made me more confident: she laughed at my jokes, she encouraged what few dreams I still clung to, and she made me comfortable with just being myself. I realize now that she was everything I had ever wanted to find in a person to share myself with.

Of course, this all begged the question of how I would introduce Kristine to the girls. I had never before allowed them to interact with anyone I had dated before, simply because I knew that none of the prior relationships had any chance of becoming anything serious, and it wouldn’t be healthy for them to see me with a different girl every time. They were still too young to understand, and still held on to some hope that their mother and I would reconcile. However, I knew that my relationship with Kristine was special, and I wanted her to be in my life, and that meant bringing these two worlds together.

The Parenting Trap Part II

Recently, a tape of a voicemail actor Alec Baldwin left for his daughter Ireland was released to the public. The voicemail goes as follows:

From The Evil Beet

“You have insulted me for the last time,” he says. “You don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being — I don’t give a damn that you’re 12 years old or 11 years old or that you’re a child or that your mother [Kim Basinger] is thoughtless pain in the ass … You have humiliated me for the last time … You’ve made me feel like shit, and you’ve made me feel like a fool … and this crap you pull on me with this goddamn phone situation … I’m gonna straighten your ass out. I’m gonna really make sure you get it. So you better be ready to meet with me … I’m gonna let you know just how I feel about what a rude little pig you are. You are a rude, thoughtless little pig.”

Some facts about me:
1. I have physical custody of my two daughters.
2. They see their mother every other weekend and alternating holidays.

Now, I don't do celebrity gossip at the disco, and I don't plan on ever doing it. But I heard this message on a morning radio show and it disgusted me. I would like to address this from the standpoint of a parent.

I know how difficult it can be to keep a civil relationship with the other parent. There are parts of you that feel outrage, betrayal, contempt, even outright hatred for the other person.

But you know what? Be a goddamned grown up.

Your kids look up to you, whether you know it or not or want to admit it or not. Using that kind of language, in that tone, is inexcusable. You're teaching them that it's OK to be abusive, vile, and unstable. There are times when I want to lash out at (my daughters') mom. Hell, 99% of the time, I want to put a brick through her face for what she's put them through. But I don't. You wanna know why? Because that would set a bad example for my kids. As corny and PBS special as that sounds, it's true. And any parent that doesn't believe that their actions influence their kids should get a visit from Social Services. Not to put too fine a point on it, you always have to keep that screen in place between your brain and your mouth to keep the hurtful, mean, damaging stuff from slipping out.

There are a lot of tough decisions you have to make as a parent: punishment, admonishing, new clothes versus new toys, television versus communication, etc. However, what is not a tough decision is "Do I want to fuck up my kids?". The answer to that should be a resounding "No". If not, you can turn in your parent status and send your kids to live with a pack of hyenas, because they're less likely to make such a bad decision. If not, then at least your kids life will be mercifully short. It's preferable to continuing the kind of existence predicated on abuse.

The Parenting Trap

I haven't put much thought into this one as it was inspired just this morning by two fellow bloggers: TK and Chez. Chez's (?) blog about his relationship with his wife inspired TK's blog about his relationship with his parents which, naturally, inspired me to blog about my experience BEING a parent. It makes perfect sense once you slam your head onto your desk five or six times. Try it.

Let me recap for you real quick style. I have two daughters ages 11 and 9 that, as of two years ago, live with me full time. They came to live with myself and my fiance by way of a court decision involving their mother. I'll go into that some other time.

Prior to my daughters living with me, they visited with me every other weekend and on holidays. This is the way it was for several years. Needless to say, it took a bit of adjusting on my part to dealing with them on a daily basis. Not to mention the stress it put on, and continues to, my relationship with my fiance. She has never had kids before, and I only had them on weekends.

I'm going to skip delving into these aspects of our relationships in lieu of discussing the concept of parenthood. Again, I'll go into the former topic at a later time.

There are parents (and non parents) out there that will tell you that being a parent is all about self sacrifice. That now your entire reason for being is to provide for the care, and well being of this tiny creature that you brought screaming into this world. Forget about your own wants and needs, your dreams, your desires. All that takes a back seat to diapers, Underoo's, and college tuition. At one point in my life, I agreed with them

They're wrong. On some levels.

Through my daily dose of parenthood, and with an enlightened perspective on my own mothers maternal habits, and a much needed Chuck Norris style metaphorical roundhouse to the head from my fiance, I've come to a realization. Parenthood is not all about a constant nurturing, coddling, and protecting your child from the big bad world. It is in my opinion, the process of preparing your child for separation. The separation of them from you, their umbilical cord for the last 16 years (yeah, 16 , people). I've seen the folly of parents that continue to be the safety net for their children. Although I doubt you can rightfully refer to a 30 year old as a "child". Always being there to catch them when they fall, pick them back up, and put $20 in their pocket. It's the psychological equivalent of hamstringing someone.

For a while, I was hamstrung. I know this now, looking back at my early teenage years. My mother, recently come back into my life after a drug related absence to retake her parental duties. She was fantastic. She bought me whatever my brother and I wanted, made sure we had nice things, and a nice place to live. I never wanted for anything. Including motivation. Why should you work towards something when it can be handed to you if you whine long enough? Sure, I got a job when I was a teenager. Someone had to fund my underage drinking.

I think at some point she realized what she was doing was hurting me as much as it helped. Handouts became fewer and far between and rent was mandatory. She focused more on my independence and self sufficiency. For this I will be forever grateful.

Now, back to the chi'rens.

We (by that I mean my fiance and I) focus on teaching my daughters independence, and self sufficiency as a way of life. To be a strong, independent, and productive person. We've removed television from our home as an impetus for reading, discussion, and creativity. On a side note, I cannot begin to tell you what a boon to my life my she (Kristine) has been. There are people in this world that just have a way of touching your life in such a manner as to expose your previous existence as inconsequential, and empty. Kristine is the epitome of this. I weep for the emptiness and banality of my life prior to meeting her. If not for her, I would have lost all hope for a better life. Not just for myself, but for my daughters. I marvel at the changes and progress they have made since knowing her.

There is, however, another part of parenthood that had eluded me up to a point. For a long time, I had lost myself in the endeavor of parenthood. I was existing only to continue my existence so that I could provide for my daughters. The quality of my life was non evident. I simply continued to draw breath so that I might continue to draw a paycheck. What was I doing? What is the point of any of this? Maybe I should just end it now, I mean, I'm insured so I'm worth more them dead than alive, right? These were thoughts I entertained on a regular basis. Then I met Kristine. She has taught me the value of expanding my own horizons, encouraged my dreams, and at the same time kept me grounded and sane.

Yes, a parent can and should be selfish from time to time. Your children don't own you, and you don't own them. Both are there for the mutual enrichment of the life of the other. How can you teach your child about the wide world outside of your home when you are a burnt out husk of a person? What joy can you take in teaching them, when you haven't felt joy in your own life? Parents are the windows through which a child sees the world. What kind of world view will they have if the window is clouded with sorrow, and regret. Worse, what if there is nothing outside the window? What if all your child sees is a barren existence spent slaving away at thankless jobs and demeaning relationships?

A parent owes it to themselves and their children to be the person they want their child to be, not just preach to them the virtues of being worldly and good. Too many parents see their children as a means to correct the mistakes their own parents made and are at peace with that. Teach them to be more by being more yourself.

Alright, I'm spent. If you have any issues with the comments or opinions expressed by the auther of this blog, you may leave your comments at the sound of the beep..................................