15 Jun Loosening Control: Towards being a respectful Dad

Ron Schweitzer reflects on the way in which he communicates with his children.

In September 1991, I attended a counselling course that changed my life forever. While I found the ideas in the course generally very exciting, it was the session on ‘Men’s Violence At Home’ that absolutely blew me away. For the first time in my life, I heard the idea that men’s violence was about power and control, not about anger. I found this idea incredibly inspiring, and it had a profound impact on my life.

Professionally, this idea and others like it have taken me down a path of working with men who are violent and abusive. Personally, these ideas have had the effect of making me reflect on some of the practices I use at home with my children.

I started reflecting on all the times I have yelled and screamed at my children. I kept struggling with the idea that my yelling and screaming could be a form of control – a way of getting the children to do what I wanted – and that this could be a form of abuse. Could there be abusive yelling as distinct from non-abusive yelling? If I yelled at my daughter to stop her from running across the road, I didn’t think that was abusive. But how easy is it for us to justify all or most of our yelling in this way – that it is ‘for their own good’? My journey towards being a respectful and caring father accelerated as I came to this realisation.

Whenever I noticed myself getting angry and justifying my yelling and screaming, I would start thinking about the issue of power and control and would try a different path. This did not mean that I gave up my responsibilities as a father. But I saw it as just as vital that I didn’t use my responsibilities as a parent as an excuse to yell at and try to control my children.

One of the things that I concentrated on was observing how other fathers responded to their children during conflict – at times when I would have found myself yelling and screaming. I gradually built up a ‘bank’ of men who I observed behaving in respectful and caring ways with their children. They weren’t giving up on their responsibilities as fathers; they were teaching, praising, encouraging and directing in a gentle way. I would try to keep these images alive so that I could draw on them in times of need.

I also started reflecting on my parents. As I thought about my father, I could recall him yelling at home very infrequently. It made me wonder where my yelling came from. How could it be that, even though I came from a house where there was minimal yelling and screaming, and I was committed to not doing this, I still ended up doing it?

I thought about the effects of society on people’s thinking, beliefs, attitudes and ideas and how society encourages control by people with power over others in so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways. This also led to me reflecting on the difference between ‘respect’ (causing another person to feel valued and worthy) and ‘fear’ (causing another person to feel frightened). My clear preference was for a relationship with my children based on the former and not on the latter. I wanted to respect them and to be respected by them. To me, this meant that I had to do respectful things to earn their respect rather than assuming that I would be respected merely because I was their father. This clearly included finding paths that deviated from yelling and screaming.

So what did I do? I had some conversations with my wife about this different direction. I did a lot of soul-searching. I kept reflecting on my model fathers. I kept thinking of the consequences of my yelling and screaming and the effect that it would have on my relationship with my children. I compared this vision to the relationship that I wanted to have with my children: being there for them, them feeling able to talk to me about important things in their lives, me continuing to play an important part in their lives. I wanted to have a significant relationship with my children when they were older. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if they spent time with me when they were teenagers because they actually wanted to?

I also started reflecting on the traditional image of the father coming home after a hard day’s work wanting peace and quiet and to be left alone to read the paper, watch TV and put his feet up.

So I changed my ideas and expectations of what was meant to happen when I got home from work. Rather than being a time of peace and quiet for me, it became my special time with my children. These hours were what the rest of the day was all about – I worked so that I could be with them, listen to them, and find out about their days and the important things that were going on in their lives. I decided that my peace-and-quiet time would have to wait until they had gone to bed.

At first, I thought of this time with my children as my second job, then I started to think of it as my first job, and then I decided that the word ‘job’ was totally inappropriate. So I now think of my children as the first priority in my life.

An unexpected benefit of my reflections on my fathering is that it has brought me even closer to my father. Thinking about the relationship I wanted with my children led to me thinking about the relationship I had with my father and to appreciate some of his efforts and struggles in being a father.

One thing that I always keep in mind is how easy it is to slip back into the old, unwanted ways. The yelling and screaming still raises its ugly head on occasions – less frequently than before, but still more than I would like. So I remain constantly vigilant.

I don’t know what would have happened if I had continued down the old path: probably an increasing distance and separateness. What I do know is that I really love the way I now relate to my children, and I think they love the way they relate to me.

This is an edited version of the chapter ‘Loosening Control’ by Ron Schweitzer from Journeys in Fatherhood – an anthology published by the No To Violence Male Family Violence Prevention Association.