"When you're young, you think your dad is Superman. Then you grow up, and you realize he's just a regular guy who wears a cape."
This quote, attributed to David Attell, came to mind as I interviewed our children, Bronwyn and Chas, for a Father's Day blog. I wanted to honor my husband, Charles Llewellyn, who was a great dad and still is.
I asked the kids what Charles was like as a father. They each shared an anecdote or two, delightful memories that sum up what he was like as a dad.
Bronwyn described Charles as a father with this story: "When I was about nine, my dad took my little four-year old brother and me rock climbing. He wanted to climb, too, so he had me control the ropes when he climbed and I only weighed about 75 pounds, so he tied me to the bumper of the car."
"I love this memory because he gave me such empowerment. I was in charge of his life. I was there to keep him from dying; he put his trust in me. He was teaching me to be capable and brave and to trust in science. If he fell, I could save him but I would be lifted into the air with the car, so I also learned technical skills and a little physics."
Chas summed up Charles as a father with a trip we took to Peru in 2016 to revisit some places we had lived and traveled when Chas was an infant and toddler. When we planned the trip, Chas expressed a strong desire to explore the northern Peruvian desert searching for sites of ancient civilizations that archeologists have discovered in the years since we lived in Peru.
I had no interest in this adventure. Charles told Chas that the two of them could stay on an extra week to go exploring after I left. In a way, they would be re-living Andean adventures Charles had when he was Chas's age, but also searching for new remote sites he had never seen. So, in a way, Chas was inviting Charles to be the Andean explorer again, creating new stories, added to the ones that have become family lore. Chas was inviting his dad to do a little re-seeding with his son.
Chas told this story to his sweetheart, Katerina, and she recapped it for me in an email. "Chas said that the Peruvian desert trip was one of the two best trips of his life. He took me through the photos of the trip, the running theme of which is him and Charles pointing at things in museums and in the dessert. Every snap was a story that Chas was inspired to tell. His eyes were shinning as they do when he is excited, he alternated between his photos of the dessert mounds and aerial views of the ancient civilizations and temple outlines on Google Earth.
He is still buzzing from the exploration and adventure of that trip. When Chas talks about the ancients, he is truly magical - he has command of time and is able to reconstruct and call forth images with the power of his imagination and attention to detail. I wonder if this is something he inherited from his father, who has such a passion for ancient civilizations and their textiles.
"It is clear from the photos of the Peru trip that both Charles III and Charles IV were having THE BEST TIME. Even in the photos of the stranded car, its wheels buried deep in the sand, they are laughing. When Chas speaks of getting stuck in the sand, these are minor incidents, even though the first day they were stuck for hours and had to walk miles and miles to get help."
“Getting stuck in the sand is a recurrent theme for us,” he said.
Both kids said that Charles inspired them to appreciate the natural world, that he also loved. "We remember being outside with him, doing adventurous things." Charles is the reason Bronwyn chose the environmental work that she does. Bronwyn said, " I will always remember him turning over rocks everywhere we went and catching creepy crawlies; and putting them in the hood of my sweatshirt. He had a sense of humor and adventure."
Hobie Fun!
Skiing across Andorra
In Ecuador searching for lost Inca Gold with Dad
Mountain Biking in Nepal
Growing up, the kids saw how Charles was looked up to as a foreign service officer and diplomat, serving his country and what that all meant. Bronwyn said, "My dad is extremely well regarded throughout the agency and this has stuck with me. I am an environment officer at USAID because of him."
Chas shared a memory about a family trip to Yosemite Falls that illustrates Charles's dedication to natural preservation and true boy scout spirit. At the bottom of the falls, dozens of baseball caps, which had blown from the heads of visitors at the top, were trapped in the plunge pool below.
Charles climbed down and waded into the water to gather the hats. Chas said, this was not a single incident but a continuous effort, wherever we went." Chas gets his deep set respect for nature and alertness to its signs from spending so much time in the outdoors as a child with his dad.
Bronwyn and Chas appreciate the practical skills Charles taught. Bronwyn said, "No gift that I received was put together. Even my first tricycle and wagon. He taught me to use tools and included me in whatever work he was doing in the house, to teach me how to fix things." She went on, "A father is somebody who equips you for life. He gives you the physical tools in a tool box or more figurative tools of how to deal with life.
Not many girls have a tool cabinet like this one. The fix-it skills her dad taught enable her to make many of the repairs on her 1890 Row house in DC.
Chas applies his love for complex technical construction in his art - an interactive art exhibit and puzzles of a Ukrainian Wooden church that he and Katerina visited are examples.
When Chas was small, after watching a TV program on secret passageways, he ran to Charles to ask if they could build one in the house. "I have been waiting for you to ask this. We already have a secret passageway," said Charles.
Chas searched the house, including the attic, the main floor and the basement. Finally, back in the basement, having learned a thing or two from the program, he began to feel the wood paneled walls. Two panels were slightly raised. He found the hinge.
He ran back to Charles, triumphant. Father and son returned to the basement and Charles turned the framed image of Machu Picchu and the door opened to a fireproof door and that opened to the treasure. Chas spent much of his childhood summers looking at the artifacts and textiles in the vault with Charles, rebuilding civilizations from their fragments.
There lies the root of Chas's passion for archeology and his talent for well-timed reveals. Like his dad, Chas knows how to keep a treasure and mature a secret for the perfect opportunity, In the nick of time.
Today men are more actively involved in their children's care and development. For good reason, because we know the benefits. Findings from the rapidly growing science of early childhood and brain development show that a father’s active participation and emotional engagement with his children leads to improved social, emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes.
The research confirms that a father’s emotional engagement — not the amount of time he spends with children, rather how they interact with them — leads to multiple positive outcomes, and serves as a significant protective factor against high risk behaviors in both girls and boys. (Fatherhood project at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Back when Charles and I had children, parenting was traditionally a mother's duty, with fathers spicing things up through a little rough play. While I was pregnant with Bronwyn, I read that dads typically spend about three minutes per day in active, engaged involvement with their children. We knew our kids would benefit if Charles was equally involved in their care, and if both of us were seen in roles of both nurturing care and stimulation.
We had to make up the rules as we went along. For example, we decided that when our children were hurt or stressed, we would take turns responding. We would involve the kids in our interests and passions. We would not change our lives; we would simply take the kids along with us as a family. We decided to alternate nights for reading bedtime stories, each selecting books we liked.
Bronwyn vividly remembers all the books her dad read to her, especially CS Lewis and Tolkien. "My love for science fiction, adventure books and mysteries came from the bedtime stories he chose to read to me." Charles read Treasure Island, Jurassic Park and The Rings Trilogy to Chas. I read books to them in the genre of Frog and Toad and Charlotte's Web, sweet stories with lessons for life. Charles's stories were themed around the magic of adventure, creative worlds of possibility. Our children gained very different experiences on alternate nights when dad or mom closed their day with a story, and settled them for slumber.
One thing that impressed me about Charles was his spontaneity. When Charles returned from the office, and the kids called for his help, he never said, "Give me a few minutes." Instead, he dropped his briefcase and immediately gave the kids full attention, joining in with their activity, be it homework or play. Our kids benefited from our different personalities, set of skills and styles of interaction.
I always believed that parents should give their children roots and wings. Charles was really big on the wings. The kids took the roots for granted but the wings live vividly in their consciousness. Adventuring, even risky pursuits, give them thrills. Thankfully, Charles's safety consciousness taught them how to use effective caution when dare deviling.
As a professional parenting educator, I used mom's groups as a way to empower women through promotion of good parenting practices to husbands, neighbors and extended family members. In male dominated cultures, I initially saw fathers as an obstacle to child wellbeing, especially when they diverted family funds needed for the kids' good nutrition and schooling. But over time, I saw fathers as key to promoting women's empowerment and child development. I took those lessons not just from research, but from my own parenting experiences at home.
I'll recap the parenting strategy I developed with two Australian colleagues and funding from Plan International Australia. I'll mention how father's got involved, how they changed, and the joy they expressed with their new, engaged parenting role. The relationship with their children made them feel hopeful and motivated to overcome life's challenges.
We began with mother's only groups. In some cases, such as tribal areas of India, we had to give a sample parenting session to the men, in order for them to determine that it was appropriate and useful for women to attend. The men determined that learning how to better care for children was a harmless activity so they gave permission for their wives to attend.
The women were learning more than childcare. Because men were not present, the women were more confident to speak up and express ideas. The empowerment strategy involved exploring new ideas, sharing their experiences related to the topic, trying out the new practice at home, and then telling what happened at the next group meeting. Equally important, women were asked to talk to their husbands and extended family members about what they learned, with the concept that children benefit when all adults in the household are on the same page in guiding children.
In some cases, women wanted their husbands to have a similar experience. So, once each quarter the women identified their favorite session, and then they invited the men, and led that session, with the trained parenting facilitator acting in support, but not leading. In other cases, men requested their own parenting group, when they saw how much their wives were enjoying them. If nothing else, the parenting groups were seen as entertainment in remote settings where there wasn't much to do outside daily work.
Men and women learn differently and enjoy different kinds of groups, according to male parenting experts that we contacted during our program's development. We found that a popular way to start men's sessions was through toy making. The dads were able to make a toy, such as a spinning top or sticks and stone game, as the facilitator talked about the different ways toys stimulated child development. After the session, the dads gave the toy to their child as a gift and played with the child and the new toy. They couldn't believe how happy this made the child and how much fun it was for the two of them. In many cases, the father had never played with the child.
In Indonesia, the community facilitators developed content for father's groups by going to places that men convene socially and asking them what they wanted to know about child rearing. Then the fieldworker responded that they would hold a parenting discussion group specifically on the topics men identified, rather than those in the parenting curriculum. In these cases, all the men showed up and some of the Iman's in the mosque were so enthusiastic that they started running fathering sessions. We soon added this strategy to father's education in other countries.
In India, the men attending the parenting groups gradually took charge of their own group chats. They elected a leader and discussed their own issues together, unscripted, and came to some decisions about how to handle a child-rearing matter. While the solutions might not have met all the criteria for a good parenting manual, the process itself did. Men were demonstrating that their children had value and that their active engagement in recognizing childrearing concerns and addressing them was something they could accomplish with group support.
They were building relationships and skills. The leader of one group had four-year-old twins with disabilities that he had never taken out in public. He started bringing one child, who had to be carried, to each session, and the next time bringing the other. He received so much support and admiration from the other men, he no longer felt embarrassed by the children's disability.
Katie, my Australian colleague, and I had hoped to see this men's group in action when we were conducting program impact evaluations. However, the men's scheduled parenting support group had been cancelled due to a soccer game between two villages. The group leader told Katie and me that they would convene the group for a brief session to share their stories about how the parenting group had impacted their fathering. With a caveat. The foreigners had to then go with them to watch the match. We learned a lot and had fun. Similar to the findings of the dads in the support group.
In Bolivia, community facilitators engaged dads by organizing quarterly family days, run like a festival, and held at the community health center. They set up learning stations such as toy making, parenting demonstrations, health activities, and kids' playhouses equipped with homemade toys, where parents could watch how their children play.
Each family brought a locally available cooking ingredient that was used in a cooking session where a new dish, with special appeal to kids, was introduced. For example, they learned to use quinoa to make crispy snacks or quinoa burgers, as an alternative to making the daily quinoa soup. The parents made the new food together, and enjoyed eating it at the end of the session. The Family Day activities helped men and women enjoy co-parenting. I am told that everyone in the village comes.
Both at home and in my work abroad, I could see the "father effect", the benefits of paternal presence. "Fortunately, modern fathers want to be more involved and, increasingly, society expects more of them," says John Badalament, head of the Fatherhood Project. This wasn’t always the case. That’s why the emerging consensus on the importance of fathers during every stage of a child’s development is worth monitoring.
According to www.fatherly.com, research has shown us that kids who grow up with a present, engage dad are less likely to drop out of school or wind up in jail, compared to children with absent fathers and no other male caretakers or role models. When children have close relationships with father figures, they tend to avoid high-risk behaviors and they’re less likely to have sex at a young age. They’re more likely to have high-paying jobs and healthy, stable relationships when they grow up. They also tend to have higher IQ scores by age three, and endure fewer psychological problems throughout their lives when fatherhood is taken seriously.
The message that reveals itself from my overseas parenting education experiences, my readings on fathering, and my experiences co-parenting with Charles is this:
Children have a way to lighten the most challenging times. They give moms and dads a unique purpose for living. Your children make you feel heady with greatness, if you do it well, and sometimes, even when you bungle a bit.
They are your legacy and greatest endowment for making the world a better place. Children benefit from a little yin and yang in their life, the balance of mothering and fathering, the different paths they offer for growing up.
I asked Bronwyn to share some of the characteristics she admires most in her dad. She said, "I admire his extreme patience and determination. He is a good male role model, strong and physically capable, chivalrous, helpful and generous. He pays attention to details of protecting those who are vulnerable. He stands up for himself. It's hard to get a rise out of him, but…."
Chas says that Charles is the best father there could be. As he thought about his dad, he realized that they share a love and talent for misadventure.
It's an enigma to me how this so tantalizes Chas, but then again, so be it with his father. Perhaps because a good story slides easiest from the mishaps in the journey; and as great storytellers, they cull these to the fullest.
The children's stories about their dad remind me that lessons for living are not taught; they are demonstrated. Fatherhood gave Charles the responsibility to help our children navigate and live their best lives and the unfathomable joy of watching them grow to capable adults.
Indeed, Charles has always been a dad with a cape.
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