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Fatherhood: Becoming a confident dad
Extract from Raising a Happy Child, written by Steve and Sharon Biddulph
If you are a confident father from the moment your first child is born, then there's something wrong with you!
It's true that men often feel that they are supposed to 'know all the answers' and 'be ready for anything'. To be a kind of an SAS man - supercool-high-tech-genius-father. Well, I have news for you - it isn't like that.
Fatherhood is something you get the knack of slowly. It comes to you from hanging around your children as they grow up through all the ages and stages. You start out clueless, you make all kinds of mistakes, and then one day you realise you just got through a whole day with the kids without any real dramas. Everyone is fed, in bed, warm, safe and with all their fingers and toes intact. Like any kind of newly acquired competence, it's a good feeling.
One day, when you see a younger dad, unshaven and red-eyed, struggling with a baby plus a toddler in the high street, you can grin at him sympathetically, and think 'You'll get there mate!'
There are naturally some obstacles to arriving at this happy state. Your own childhood is probably the biggest of these. If your father lost his temper a lot, or never played with you, then don't make these your limitations too. In a heated moment you might find yourself yelling just the same stupid things your parents yelled at you when you were small.
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