Читать книгу The Complete Parenting Collection - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 73

Several years ago, a man called Don came up to me after a lecture, and told me this story. Don was a truck driver and, a year earlier, his son, aged eight, had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Don read the diagnosis and, for want of better information, decided it meant his son Troy wasn’t getting enough attention. That, surely, was what ‘attention deficit’ meant!

Don set himself the goal of getting more involved with Troy. He had always taken the view that raising children was best left to ‘the missus’ while he worked to pay the bills. Now all of that changed. In the holidays, and after school when possible, Troy rode in the truck with his dad. On weekends, whereas Don had often spent the time away with mates who collected and rode classic motorcycles, Troy now came along too.

‘We had to tone down the language and clean up our act a bit, but the blokes all understood, and some started bringing their kids, too,’ Don told me with a smile.

The good news: Troy calmed down so much in a couple of months that he came off his Ritalin medication – he wasn’t ‘ADD’ any longer. But father and son continue to hang out together – because they enjoy it.

Note: We are not saying here that all instances of Attention Deficit Disorder are really Dad-deficit disorders – but quite a lot are. (For more about ADD, ADHD and boys, see Chapter 10.)

Sadly, many dads don’t get this aspect of their role. I’ve seen dads come in to this conversation and say, ‘Why are you picking on the kid?’ or ‘Why are you making such an issue of it darling?’ or ‘Hey you guys, I can’t hear the TV!’ These dads are undermining their wives. This is a disaster, when a mother is doing the hard stuff, and the father cuts her legs out from under her. These men are in for a terrible time. The gods, and the women, smile on those men who stand alongside them without getting too heavy, and just add their support to the situation.