The BAWB: June 2010

Hi Happy Family,

I just got done with my run and spent the whole time thinking and planning for the trip. Here's a few reminders/updates.

Yesterday dad and I bought the Disneyland tickets on line. We will pick them up in the park like last time. If I understand it right, each person needs picture ID to get their 5-day pass. Ben, Bret and Ivy are free! Wahoo!!

Yesterday I also spread out my thousand dollars in cash ($20's) and divided it into envelopes (I even decorated the envelopes) for each family for their food. We have $300 for Blaine's family, $220 for Nick's family, $100 each for Janey, Rosey and Max and $200 for dad and I. We will get these to you as we see you.

The Odyssey van (that has just had over $1,200 worth of work done to it to get it in shape for this trip, including 4 new tires) with dad, mom, Janey and Max is planning to pull out of West Valley City no later than 9 am next Saturday morning. We will pick up Rosey in Provo and head south. We're not sure if Blaine's family wants to travel together but we would love that. We hope to make a quick stop in Beaver at the cheese factory for some cheese curds. We also will make a quick stop for lunch somewhere along the line.

We hope to arrive in St. George in the early to mid afternoon. We would love to treat you all to the movie Toy Story 3. We would definitely want to get in on matinee prices and do around a 4 pm movie. Would Nick & Stef check into that for us? Thanks. Then we will have a delicious spagetti/salad/garlic bread dinner at the Yorgason home. Maybe we can even pick up some ice cream and have hard sauce that night. We are open to playing games since we would have already seen a movie that day. (okay, I admit, this is mom writing. Maybe dad would rather watch a movie and that's great, too.)

Sunday we will have a cold cereal breakfast and go to a 9 am church, sacrament meeting only. We could either find a building close to Yorgs or go to one in Nick and Stef's building. I haven't heard about your new ward so let us know what you would like to do there. At this point I think we ought to be ready to take off for California straight from church. Opinions there?

Here are some things you want to remember as you pack (pretty much this list is for Max so don't laugh at the detail. I use to make lists for the kids when they got old enough to pack themselves.)

undershirts, underwear and socks for 8 days
shorts 3 or 4 pair
maybe one pair long pants
plenty of golf/t-shirts 6 or 7
Sunday pants, shirt, belt, tie, socks, shoes
swimsuit
flip flops
hair stuff, toothbrush, deod, retainer, (whatever bathroom stuff you use daily)
scriptures
i-pod or whatever
book or something to do/read in the car
reusable water bottle
wallet with license, food money and extra money

Anyone care to add suggestions?

Love you all, Mom

To all you Father's and fathers to be...here some thoughts on fatherhood. Take em for what their worth.

I was fortunate to have a wonderful father. He did it all. He provided. He protected. He presided. He gave me what was needed so that I could go forth into the world, and become a father myself.

Today I honor him, and thank him for his sacrifice on my behalf.

A couple of thoughts on fathers.

What is a father

We often attribute the term 'father' to anyone who is the creator, or inventor of some new device, technology or field of investigation. Or one who had such a huge impact on the field that he is credited with defining the direction and it's survival. Examples include:

James Naismith is the Father of Basketball
Lord Baden-Powell is the Father of Scouting
Thomas Edison is the Father of the Phonograph
Juan Sebastian Bach is the Father of Music

Role of Fathers

In many respects, the Father is the one who had the vision, the drive, the resources, the wisdom to start something that would last for generations. The father is the creator. The one who begins the creation, then provides for it and keeps it going the right direction. He works to ensure that it has a place in the world to grow and to find its place in the world.

The proclamation on the Family says that fathers have 3 primary roles:

"By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. "

To Provide

To Protect

To Preside

He provides for his creation. HE provides food, recreation, safe home, societal experiences and resources sufficient to prepare their children to enter the world. Fathers often sacrifice personal ambitions in order to work in employment which will provide regular means to provide for his family.

He protects his creation. He teaches it how to survive in a world which is not revolving around the child. A father loves his creation. He loves it to the point he would give everything he had to it, to ensure It's success. If it is at risk, he protects it. If it is floundering, he provides it resources, even everything he has to it's success. Protection requires interaction, monitoring, and manipulating the outside environment to ensure a safe environment in which the creation will grow.

He presides (gives it direction and ensures it does what it should to fulfill the measure of it's creation) over his creation. He gives it the skills necessary for it to sustain itself in the world. The father is the intermediary force between the creation and the world in which the creation will take root and grow. He ensures the soil is sufficient. That the placement is proper. The father determines the direction that the creation is inclined to grow, to move, to change.

Mothers and Fathers

A mother is the one who gives birth to the creation. She nurtures it. She feeds it. She cares for it's daily needs, and teaches it.

A mother focuses on the inside.

A father focuses on the outside.

The mother and father must both exist. A creation will suffer without both parties working together for the benefit of the creation. One caring for the nourishment and proper care of the creation, the other watching out for the protection of the creation.

Examples of fathering can be seen in the natural world:

For some animals, it is the fathers who take care of the young.

Darwin's Frog (Rhinoderma darwini) fathers carry eggs in the vocal pouch.
Most male waterfowls are very protective in raising their offspring, sharing scout duties with the female. Examples are the geese, swans, gulls, loons, and a few species of ducks. When the families of most of these waterfowls travel, they usually travel in a line and the fathers are usually the ones guarding the offsprings at the end of the line while the mothers lead the way.
The female seahorse (hippocampus) deposits eggs into the pouch on the male's abdomen. The male releases sperm into the pouch, fertilizing the eggs. The embryos develop within the male's pouch, nourished by their individual yolk sacs.
Male Emperor Penguins alone incubate their eggs; females do no incubation. Rather than building a nest, each male protects his egg by balancing it on the tops of his feet, enclosed in a special brood pouch. Once the eggs are hatched however, the females will rejoin the family.
Male beavers secure their offsprings along with the females during their first few hours of their lives. As the young beavers mature, their fathers will teach them how to search for materials to build and repair their own dams, before they disperse to find their own mates.
Wolf fathers help feed, protect, and play with their pups. In some cases, several generations of wolves live in the pack, giving pups the care of grandparents, aunts/uncles, and siblings, in addition to parents. The father wolf is also the one who does most of the hunting when the females are securing their newborn pups.
Dolphin fathers help in the care of the young. Newborns are held on the surface of the water by both parents until they are ready to swim on their own.
A number of bird species have active, caring fathers who assist the mothers, such as the waterfowls mentioned above.
Apart from humans, fathers in few primate species care for their young. Those that do are tamarins and marmosets.[28] Particularly strong care is also shown by siamangs where fathers carry infants after their second year.[28] In titi and owl monkeys fathers carry their infants 90% of the time with "titi monkey infants developing a preference for their fathers over their mothers".[29] Silverback Gorillas have less role in the families but most of them serve as an extra protecting the families from harm and sometimes approaching the enimies to distract them so that his family can escape unnoticed.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father#cite_note-0>

Sacrifice is an important trait of fathers. They give time, thought, resources, work, and energy to the protection, providing and presiding of their family.

With Father's Day coming up on June 18th, I thought it might be a good time to focus on fathers and to look at some of the research findings related to being an “effective” or “good” father. While each father is a unique person who parents in his own style, there are some characteristics that effective fathers have in common:

*They are involved in the day-to-day lives of their children. They help their kids find answers for problem areas. They are interested in what is going on at school. They participate in community and extra-curricular activities with their children.

They are a presence in their kids' lives.

*They demonstrate unwavering love, communicating to their children in words, affection, smiles, and actions just how special each one is. And letting them know that their love for them will last forever, no matter what.

*They provide support for their children – financially, emotionally, mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually. They encourage and assist their youngsters in the development of all aspects and aspirations of life. They are not ashamed of their children.

*They practice appropriate discipline, taking into account the age and personality of each child. Fathers discipline with love and respect, the goal being to help socialize their children in positive ways. Good fathers set limits and are firm. They let their children know their beliefs and expectations but rely on explanations and reasoning rather than force.

*They schedule time on a regular basis to interact with their children. They really listen to their children, trying to be sensitive to the meaning of the words spoken and the emotional feelings behind those words. They realize that their time with children is really an investment in them. Taking time for the child when the child needs that time will be much more important than taking time for the child when it is convenient for the father.

*They provide consistency in their children's lives, providing a stable environment that children can depend on every day. Fathers set certain standards and values which they teach their children and which they, themselves, adhere to.

Pasted from <http://jackson.ces.ncsu.edu/content/ParentingCorner:CharacteristicsofaStrongFather&source=jackson>

Father absence

When the research on father absence began in the 1940's, there was a tremendous concern that the absence of a father would have major effects on boy's sexual adaption. So the primary focus of this research initially was on whether or not boys would be adequately masculine if they were raised without fathers. It took about ten years for people to realise that actually fathers were equally likely to have sons and daughters, and that they might want to consider the fact that father absence would influence girls as well. And so from around 1950 there was an increased interest in the effects on children of both genders.

The effect of father absence that we see in the United States, and I would guess in Britain, are highly controversial. I believe that there is now substantial evidence that father absence, on average does affect children's development, and it does affect their development in a variety of domains.

The effects of father absence are:

psychological maladjustment
academic / school under-performance
antisocial behaviour
difficulty establishing and continuing intimate relationships

On average, children raised without fathers are more likely to show signs of psychological maladjustment, they are more likely to have difficulties at school, difficulty in getting even to underperform, or to drop out of school early, to have less school completed. They are more likely to be represented in the statistics on delinquency and unconventional social behaviour, and they seem to have difficulty establishing and maintaining intimate relationships, particularly heterosexual relationships once they move into adulthood.

The important question it seems to me is not, whether or not these factors are associated with father absence, but how we go about interpreting them. There has been an effort to interpret these in terms of the absence of the male sex role model, and indeed there are many .. who would argue that the reason why boys show these deficits is because they lack access to a male sex role model. My reading of the literature is a little bit different. I actually see very little evidence that the absence of the male sex role is particularly important in these cases.

Father absence represents a number of things to a child.:

At least in the United States, and I believe to some extent in the United Kingdom, single parenthood is associated with tremendous economic disadvantage. In the United States, single mothers with children are the most disadvantaged segment of our society, and the economic consequences of father absence play a tremendous role in explaining why some of these disadvantages are seen on the part of children who are raised in single parent families.
In addition single parenthood is associated with a substantial degree of emotional isolation, conflict between the two parents, particularly around situations of divorce. And there is a substantial body of evidence suggesting that conflict between parents before, during and after separation, has a toxic effect on children's adjustment. That characteristic too is an important factor to bear in mind, which helps us understand how father absence influences children.
Children who grow up with only one parent are raised by a person who lacks somebody to back them up, to give them time away from parenting, to share both the burdens as well as the enjoyable aspects of being with and raising children. And that sense of being overwhelmed as a single parent, translates into difficulties in parenting which too have an effect on children's development.
The flip side of this is that children in these situations are deprived of another intimate caring relationship with somebody who is deeply interested in their own development and care. One developmental psychologist has argued that all of our collective knowledge about developmental psychology can be summarised in the notion that 'what each child needs is somebody who passionately cares about them'. And I think that I would only change that to say that 'children feel better when there are two people who passionately care about what happens to them'. And what helps to compound some of the effects of father absence is the fact that children are raised without one of those persons, and with another person who is dealing with a substantial degree of stress - emotional, psychological and economic, at the same time.

What's important then in understanding the effects of father absence, is to recognise that when a father is not present in the home, it is not only the male sex role that's absent, there are all the other aspects of the father's role that are not being fulfilled in the same way. The breadwinning, the companionship, the support for the mother. We need again to recognise that fatherhood is not a uni-dimensional role, but one which has multiple facets, and that when fatherhood is not exercised in the family, the effect on the child can be damaging.

Pasted from <http://www.spig.clara.net/ippr/lamb.htm>

To conclude then, if we go the question I was given as the title of my talk: "What are fathers for ?" We find that fathers have lots of different roles and functions. I've listed them here in alphabetic order, rather than in any order of importance.:

care provider
companion
economic provider
educator
lover
model
mother's support
protector

The point I want to emphasise though, is not so much the specific roles, but the fact that there are a diverse number of roles fathers represent, and to emphasise that all of these are roles that can be, and are often, filled by mothers as well. And to emphasise, as I said at the beginning, that we can't identify a single father's role - one singular in terms of the characteristic of the father that makes him important, nor singular with respect to a culture as diverse as this one.

Pasted from <http://www.spig.clara.net/ippr/lamb.htm>

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Only 1 More Week (Mom)

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Happy Father's Day (Dad)

Unlearning (Dad)

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Big Move (Stef)

Monday, June 7, 2010

Stef