Are You a Bad Father?

Are you a bad father? How can you tell? What are the ways? Here are some ways to tell:

1) Have you ever beaten your children? Have you used a belt, or a switch or anything like that? What was your intent on doing this? To teach them? To learn them? To do what your father did? To get them to behave or settle down or mind their mother or to just show them who is boss? You are are bad father. This is not meant for you to wallow in guilt. This is meant as a wake up call. You can stop this terrible behavior right now. You can quit doing this immediately. You probably have your reasons why you felt like this was the punishment method that was right for the time. But whatever the reason, it was wrong. Hitting a child is always wrong. The only way you can make amends is to stop doing it and start down a more peaceful path.

2) Have you ever spanked your child with your hand? Some people consider spankings to be an acceptable form of punishment. I don't agree. It is just a milder form of beating. Even if administered with so called love, it is a beating. Most of the time, these spankings are you just acting out your rage and frustration. You do not have to continue to do that. I spanked my son and yelled at him and threw him down on his bed when I was at the end of my rope with my wife. I was upset over her and took it out on him. It was all wrong.

3) Do you yell at your children? Why? What have they done to deserve such harsh treatment? How is this helping them to think of you as a kind, decent, loving father who accepts his children unconditionally? How does this make you feel better? How does yelling ever help anyone? It doesn't it. It only hurts. It is a form of abuse.

4) Do you use other forms of verbal putdowns like name calling, excessive sarcasm, ridicule or any type of verbalizing that is not right? What are you trying to do? How is this helping your child? It isn't. It is just teaching them that you are just as bad as a person as the next idiot who does this.

5) Do you provide a decent home? It is your basic responsibility to take care of your kids, not mine. You have to do it, even if you don't want to. This does not have to be that hard. Just work and earn a living. Live within the means you have available. Make it is nice as you can with the money you have.

6) Do you provide food and clothing? This is all you again.

7) Do you live in a safe area? If they cannot play outside safely, you have to move. You have to live in a place that you all feel safe in. Maybe you outfit your home for more safety with guns and such. But what I really mean is the people you live around must not be prone to violence. Violence in your area means you have to move.

8) Are you a person they can look up to? Are you working towards improvement or are you sliding backwards.

9) Are you strong? Often a woman will bring down a man who is not overly strong. That is what happened to me. My wife was making my life a living hell and I was sliding farther and farther down into being too weak to do much of anything. The only way I could become strong again was to leave her. I summoned up enough strength to leave her and have not regretted that decision once second.

The first step to being a good father is to stop being a bad father.

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