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| |    Examining Your Relationship with Your Father by Armin Brott reviewed by Laura Jana, M.D., F.A.A.P. Most dads, as they grow and develop as fathers, often find themselves spending a lot of time thinking about their own fathers. Was your dad someone you want to use as a role model, or was he exactly the kind of father you don't want to be? Did he support you and nurture you when you were a child, or was he absent or abusive? These are things worth considering, because the truth is, the relationship you had with your father when you were young is going to influence your relationship with your own children. This is either good news or bad news, depending on your perspective. If you're satisfied with your relationship with your dad and you'd like to be the kind of father he was, you've got nothing to worry about. Simply having had a good role model when you were growing up has given you some of the skills you need to raise your own family. Of course, you may do things differently, but you'll feel confident that you know what to do. On the other hand, if your relationship with your father wasn't everything it should have been, you might be afraid that you're somehow destined to repeat his mistakes. Worse yet, you may have started to react to that fear, perhaps withdrawing from your child out of concern that you'll hurt him. If you find yourself doing--or not doing--things with your child out of fear, take a step back and try to relax. The fact is, you still have a tremendous amount of choice in how to parent your child, no matter what your relationship with your dad was like. And most fathers who had less-than-ideal childhoods are able to absorb whatever good stuff they got from their dads (and moms) and simply toss out the bad. In fact, researchers have found that men whose fathers were distant or cold often end up providing particularly high levels of care for their children's social, emotional, academic, and intellectual development in adolescence, says fatherhood researcher John Snarey. Click here to join the discussion on Fatherhood
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