Participants: Xavier Morales (Host), Gordon Fraser, Denry White
Series Code: AFH
Program Code: AFH000001A
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00:01 A good father takes time to play
00:04 He has strong integrity. He is truly someone who is dedicated 00:11 He's not afraid to show his love 00:15 He is a caring provider 00:19 And he's a kind spiritual leader 00:22 These are just a few ways to describe a father's heart. 00:29 Hi and welcome to A Father's Heart. My name is Xavier 00:32 and I'll be your host today. I am a father of two children 00:36 Two little girls. Unfortunately, kids don't come with manuals 00:39 So this program caters to the fathers that are out there 00:43 and we're here to talk about what it's like to be a father 00:46 What is it? What does it take? Do you have to have a manual? 00:49 Do you have to Google anything? And right now we're just gonna 00:52 discuss, and please join us in conversation today 00:55 for the topic of genetics. It's not your child's fault 00:58 With me today is Gordon and Denry. Welcome 01:02 Thank you, thank you. Thanks for having us man 01:05 Denry how many kids do you have? Man I have 3 children 01:08 3 children. 2 boys and a little girl. 01:11 And they are the delight of my life man. They bring me joy 01:15 and they also bring me gray hair but I love them. 01:18 And Gordon? I have 2 children. I have a boy, Justin 01:22 he is 19 years old, on his way to college and my daughter 01:27 she's 16. Both of them are the delight of my life. 01:31 Matter of fact I'm havin tears already in my eyes because 01:34 my son is gonna be leaving home soon, so. I love them. 01:39 Man, I'm looking forward to that day. 01:41 But he's closer to it so it's realistic for him 01:45 But for me I'm countin down. 01:48 12 more years to go, for one. 01:51 You wait until you get to that point, I know, I know 01:53 how hard it is, I'm gonna change my mind, yeah my daughter 01:56 my oldest is 4 years old and then I have a newborn and 01:59 I don't want to grow up. 7 years old, that's good enough for me. 02:03 and stay there, don't go any further. But it's just crazy how 02:06 have you ever heard when they say you know growin up at home 02:09 or anything like that, you know you're just like your father 02:12 Yes man, oh man, my mother Let me grab my pillow for this 02:17 my mother has told me so many times you remind me of your dad 02:21 or you're just like your father. Or you know she would say my 02:25 my dad's name, you're Delvin you know and sometimes in the 02:28 positive but a lot of times in the negative. 02:32 Lot of times in the negative. 02:35 So cast the blame, let's say you're to be blamed for all of 02:39 your father's mistake. And really as fathers we shouldn't 02:42 cast blame. We should be able to take the blame 02:45 from all of our mistakes in ourselves. I think what we 02:49 do as fathers is that we kind of project our mistakes 02:52 on the child and that shouldn't happen because that child 02:55 takes that blame throughout their lifetime. 02:59 And you know what it did for me was that, and my mother did it 03:05 in love, maybe just out of humor but you're just like your 03:08 father, even if I was datin a girl you know, my father was a 03:11 I guess a womanizer would you consider and so she was like 03:14 you know you remember you are your father's son. 03:16 And so the thought would always be in my mind, man even if I had 03:20 good intentions, or a pure mind set because she keeps sayin 03:25 you know you're just like your father maybe I should be more 03:29 like my father. Maybe I should be a womanizer. 03:32 And so those questions were always in my mind 03:34 am I being like my father or am I not? 03:38 So it really didn't help you. Not really, no. 03:40 And it's difficult because like my 4 year old daughter 03:44 she is from my previous marriage and a lot of times 03:47 you know unconsciously some of the things that she does 03:50 kind of play on my mind, I have to catch myself 03:53 because it's difficult you know to separate yourself from that 03:58 when you see some of the traits and everything, whether you 03:59 come from a, whether your child is from a loving, caring home 04:02 or comes from a divorced home it's difficult to be a father 04:07 when you see some of the traits from, you know, the mother 04:11 or anything like that and you have to catch yourself, 04:13 or even when you, like I said I resonate what you said 04:16 Denry because growin up, I grew up in a normal, typical home 04:20 and you know my dad, my mom but there's a lot of times 04:23 my mom would be like, you're just like your father. 04:25 you know, you're just and it made me want to alienate myself 04:29 with you know as far as like my temper and things like that 04:32 my dad, I loved my dad but you know when they said that to me 04:36 why work on myself, why be better, why just not continue 04:40 I mean if I'm just like him why even try? 04:43 What's different for me in my home, my mom never said that 04:48 I was never told that but somehow you know as I got older 04:53 I realized that I'm just like him. You know my dad would 04:56 always have a whole bunch of stuff in his pocket 04:59 receipts whatever it is and it hit me I think I was about 05:03 20, in my 20s and I put my hands in my pocket one day 05:07 and I pulled it out and I'm like Wow I'm just like my dad! 05:11 But I never had that image imprinted in my mind 05:16 but I realized later you know that I'm just like him 05:19 and as a child what I remember clearly is not wanting to be 05:26 like him because he wasn't always home, he worked away 05:31 from home and he'd just come home on the weekends and 05:34 whenever he came home he still didn't have time for us, 05:37 he was out doing everything else. We went to church 05:41 and he was not an Adventist, so it was just myself, my sister 05:47 my adopted brother and my mom But I said to myself, I'm not 05:52 gonna be like him, even workin work ethic, workin all the time 05:57 no time for the family. You know what I realized, I realized that 06:02 even as a pastor I have to really force myself and check 06:09 myself so that I don't become like him just spendin all the 06:14 time workin, workin on this, workin on everything else 06:18 but my family. So I made the effort to slow down and 06:23 realize you know what, you gotta spend time 06:26 with the children. So even though I didn't have that 06:29 imprinted in me because I think it's something in the DNA 06:32 I realized that I have these tendencies as my dad's, I know 06:38 that we can throw it away, I think we need to realize 06:42 that and not blame our children but put the blame on ourselves 06:47 and realize you know what, this is me and I can make some 06:50 corrections here and I like to look to my Heavenly Father 06:54 because I think He doesn't blame us for anything 06:59 He takes the blame on Himself and I think that is what matters 07:04 we're takin the blame on ourselves. Yeah. 07:06 It's interesting he came from that perspective. 07:09 Like you know how much he was trying not to be 07:12 For me, I find myself a genetic match of my dad 07:16 A twin of my dad. I was lookin at a picture what I mean by that 07:20 lookin at a picture, years ago I was in Florida visitin relatives 07:24 my aunt, my dad's sister and opened up the album 07:30 and I saw a picture of myself and I was tryin to say to myself 07:34 when was I at this event, the event that was goin on? 07:38 Like when was this? My aunt was like that's not you 07:41 that's your father. And I was so shocked that I was lookin 07:47 at a picture of my dad but I thought it was me. 07:50 And it's so much, you cannot avoid it sometimes. 07:54 You just can't avoid being who you are. And so you use it 07:59 now I tend to use it now for good to bring out the good 08:04 in my father. The bad stuff like he said, I'll let the Lord 08:07 work those things out. But the good traits of my father 08:11 is humor, those things so now instead of saying I'm not gonna 08:14 be like my father, my father is in me which I had no choice 08:18 to be like my father. 08:19 I think we make a choice, we have to make a conscious choice 08:23 to say you know what, I'm not gonna go down this road 08:26 and a lot of fathers are not making those conscious choices 08:31 This is not where I wanna go, I want to be different 08:34 I'm going to model something else or someone else 08:38 sometimes we don't have that right image from our 08:42 biological fathers but we can find somebody to model 08:47 whereby we can choose to make different choices. 08:51 That's the thing you know, we have to you say come to a 08:55 realization of it because that's affecting us as fathers 08:58 Whether we like it or not it's affecting us consciously or 09:01 unconsciously and it's ok in a way to say, you know, it's there 09:07 but it's not ok to keep going with it. If we know it's 09:10 something wrong, especially where we raise our children 09:12 because then we keep that generational sin essentially 09:15 that generational mishap, you know, going with our kids and 09:19 you know I think about it with my dad, I love, like I said, 09:22 I love my dad, he was very authoritarian so it was my way 09:27 or the highway and for me I've taken a different approach 09:30 it's been difficult, it hasn't been perfect and I've had to 09:34 pray about it a lot and study a lot and really come to a 09:37 realization, you know, I don't want to make the same mistakes 09:40 kinda like what you said Denry, you know, you bring out the good 09:43 and my dad is great but I'm trying to do the good there, he 09:47 the good qualities that he has and I talk to my kids, I 09:50 dialogue with them and instead of saying my way or the highway 09:54 I kind of, even though she's 4 and my newborn she's goo and gaa 10:00 but my wife and I give her the attention recognizing that from 10:04 now we're giving you the attention you need 10:06 not perfect because I'm gonna mess up but at least I know 10:10 I can do better than what I did before and it's taking 10:13 a lot of work, you know men are prideful and we're father 10:17 you know, we don't make mistakes so it's different, I mean I 10:21 don't know, what do you think about that? 10:22 I mean what do you do with that? 10:24 Well in my case I'm torn between two worlds. 10:28 my biological father and then my step father. 10:31 Actually, three worlds. My biological father, my stepfather 10:35 and then my Father in heaven 10:37 Hmm. Right. But my biological father, genetically, 10:42 things come out. Uh huh. And he's not around you know, so I 10:46 want to ask questions about certain things, my temperament 10:49 and these things but he's not around, so I can't ask him 10:53 But then I noticed I've adapted things from my stepfather 10:58 who's not my biological father but because he was around 11:02 he's the one who raised me, you know, I found myself 11:06 patterned and I said the same thing to God, I don't want to be 11:09 like you when I grow up. 11:10 Because there were some things goin on in our home 11:12 and I find out I'm just like him, so I'm like my biological 11:17 father, I'm like my stepfather both for some of the good 11:20 and some of the bad. And I have to consciously, literally 11:24 just like man, it's almost like you're saying to yourself 11:29 who am I going to be today? Who am I going to be today? 11:35 I'll tell you. this is kinda tuggin at my heart's strings 11:40 and I'm tryin to hold it together 11:44 I love my dad and so let me just put this disclaimer out there 11:50 But there's things he did, how I was raised, he was never 11:57 bein there, he was never there 11:59 I resented that whole, my father for a long time 12:09 to the point where when he got sick 12:17 I now didn't have time for him 12:19 Wow, wow, wow 12:23 I did everything not to be available 12:28 Then he got blind and he needed me and would call me 12:33 yeah, it affected me and I didn't know how much 12:38 it affected me. I literally had to look outside of my father 12:46 and outside of the pain and really ask God to 12:51 change my heart because my heart was real locked 12:56 where my dad was concerned. And it's just because there was no 12:59 time. There was no time. I mean we would go ridin in the car 13:03 we would go do some things but it was different, we were always 13:06 goin to somebody's house and there it was just me over there 13:11 and my dad is doin what he needs to do, 13:13 so I was always by myself. So when you get to that point 13:18 when I'm grown I don't have time for you when you need me 13:24 The older he got, he got sick, in a nursing home 13:30 I wouldn't go. God had to work on my heart. 13:35 I had to start to see my father through the eyes of my 13:38 Heavenly Father and I thank God that I was able to come to grips 13:44 with that. And were able to go to the nursing home, singin, 13:50 prayin and talk to him and develop that relationship 13:56 that we really didn't have and I really had to forgive my dad 14:01 to move forward or I'd never be able to move forward 14:05 So the genetics really played into my life and the one thing 14:11 that I definitely wanted to make sure that I'm not in the same 14:17 place with my son and my daughter. 14:19 So I do everything that I can. Am I perfect? No. 14:23 I make mistakes, yes but I share with them 14:28 I talk with them, we have fun and I spend that time because I 14:33 want this generational issue to stop. 14:37 You know it mustn't go past me. Because I don't want them to 14:40 feel and experience the pain I experienced. 14:42 I've been sharing a word with my son - legacy. 14:46 My older son I've really been on him about this. What is the 14:51 legacy that you are creating for your children? 14:56 The next generation, even for your brothers and sisters. 15:00 And a lot of times we look at our dads and we feel like 15:05 that's when the world started. Our dads, We forget they had 15:09 a father too. Yeah. And they had a grandfather and sometimes 15:14 we have good legacies that are continued or bad legacies. 15:18 My step dad, right, similar to Gordon, deep tissue moment here 15:23 my step dad, he, he and I love the guy. I love him 15:29 I love him. I love both of them 15:32 But he took the time, for him to come into my life 15:36 and take me on as his son, it took a long time but I didn't 15:39 I didn't see that because he got married to my mother when I was 15:44 about 11 years old so I expect him to become this father 15:47 champion to take me up to the playground, take me everywhere 15:51 teach me how to play bat, all these things that I wanted 15:53 but he didn't do that. He was actually neglecting me 15:58 and I was blamin and I was mad and resentful, I was resentful 16:03 he used to call me when I was in college he wanted me to fix 16:06 the computer or say something, I hated his answers, his phone calls 16:10 but I come to find out, his real father, we had a heart to heart 16:15 and he told me his real father his biological father 16:20 totally neglected him and the guy only lived maybe less than 16:25 50 miles from him and up to this day would not pick up the phone 16:29 to call him. But now my father and I, I mean we're like, I'm 16:35 like buddies and anytime he calls me I can call him 16:40 and it's like a good dialogue 16:41 because we've had that heart to heart. 16:44 We've talked about the bad legacy and now we decided 16:47 we want to establish a new, good, sound legacy 16:51 in Jesus Christ. Hmm. 16:53 I like that because again we are genetically predisposed to 16:57 somethings you know but it's up to us not to blame our 17:00 children, I mean it's not their fault. It's not their fault 17:03 the way they are. There are some things they're gonna do 17:05 because they have the character like my daughter Ann 17:09 when I deal with her sometimes it's like a reflection of myself 17:13 It's frustrating. I'm like I wanna Ahh and then I'm like 17:17 wait a minute. What did I do when I was a child? 17:19 Ok I did worse. Never mind, let's talk about, it's difficult 17:23 you know but I look at it as, ok you're genetically predisposed 17:28 you have the DNA that's just how it is from both mom and dad 17:32 so a lot of the traits that she has are my own. And like my 17:35 parents told me you gonna pay for the things that you did 17:38 when you were a kid. I see it. I'm like Lord did I, I did worse 17:43 I'm like what do I do with this what can I do with this? 17:45 And I try to address her, you know, in a way she'll understand 17:49 and maintain discipline but at the same time it's difficult 17:53 because nobody comes from a perfect home 17:57 Hmm. Nobody. And we have to turn, it sounds cliché but 18:02 it's true we have to turn to the Father, you know, God the Father 18:06 to understand you know that our kids are not going to be what 18:12 we necessarily want them to be a 100%. But they're gonna be our 18:16 kids no matter what. You know even after death we're still 18:19 gonna be remembered as the father of this child. 18:21 And it's just hard. It's difficult because again 18:26 all you wanna do is, you're just like, you're just like 18:29 as a cop out, not to deal with the issue. But you're hurting 18:35 your child and you're just alienating your child and I just 18:38 you know, what do you do in situations where you know, 18:42 your temper is up because your child is doin something that you 18:46 know they're doin, do you ever take the time to think that 18:49 maybe you did that or worse? What do you think? 18:52 I think you have to take time out when your tempers are up 18:55 and you're about to really go into your child. Uh huh 19:00 Maybe it's best at that point when you're upset 19:04 to back out, to just pause and say, you know what I'm gonna 19:10 deal with this when I'm calm because if you deal with that 19:14 child when your temper, you know when you're flaring 19:16 let me take you into a window of my little life 19:22 ummm, growin up, that little readin book and for some reason 19:28 I couldn't get this word Joe and I would say 19:34 Mr. Toe builds a house instead of Mr. Joe builds a house 19:38 and my daddy, if I'm readin, he's there, he would just 19:44 be so mad and he'd go in and I tell you that would just freeze 19:52 I mean lock me up and for a long time readin became a problem 20:02 because all I would feel is hands comin or and I think 20:11 it's the same thing when we're upset instead of takin it out 20:17 on the child, pause, take a moment, walk away 20:24 then come back and deal with the issue. When you're calm, 20:28 when you're more rational, your thoughts are clearer 20:31 then you can actually deal with the issue. Instead of 20:35 right there in that moment because what you do you can 20:38 can cause traumatic effect to, to really affect the child 20:45 I'd really just pause, walk away 20:47 Man, I have made so many mistakes by just being a father 20:56 I have made so many mistakes by tryin to not be like my father 21:01 Oh Lord. Both of them. And just like, similar to you 21:07 I have done that where I have reprimanded my child or uh uh 21:12 you know he's havin a hard time readin and because I'm bein 21:16 impatient, yes, and it's for my glory, not for his benefit 21:22 because I want my son to excel, I want him to be this A+ student 21:28 in school, I want him to be the spelling bee champion 21:31 so that I can look good and feel good about myself 21:34 I'm bein impatient with him and so when he's readin and I'm like 21:40 how many times are we gonna go over this word? 21:42 you just said this word. But I'm forgettin he was a child 21:46 and I sometimes, you know the funny thing that God does 21:49 with us, we have flashbacks sometimes of our childhood 21:52 My word was "the" I couldn't get that word "the". Two words 21:59 the and the number 3. I'm West Indian so sometimes I have 22:03 difficulty in sayin the number 3 I say tree. Hmm. And even now 22:09 while I'm tryin to say it I have to think about making sure I'm 22:12 I'm sayin it right. And so my mom was like you know having a 22:16 difficulty with me but now my son was having difficulties 22:19 and instead of me bein patient and rememberin how hard it was 22:24 when I was tryin to read now I want my son to just overnight 22:29 get it. So that you can make me proud and I can walk around 22:33 with my chest high. But God wants us to be patient, He's 22:36 patient with us. Yeah. But we don't want to be patient 22:39 with our kids. 22:41 Yeah. One Sabbath morning, well after church, sorry Sabbath 22:45 afternoon my son did something he was very young 22:52 and I got real upset, that flashback that was my dad 22:57 kind of flashback. And I you know, Lord forgive me but I 23:04 used the rod and I spanked him so much 23:11 that he actually cut his feet. Mercy! 23:16 On the side of the bed. I'm not proud of it. Mercy! 23:20 And he was bleedin. Mercy. And I didn't stop 23:27 To think of how much it affected him. And I prayed he doesn't 23:33 remember the stuff, you know. My wife had to come and say 23:37 that's enough. He was a child. And I stopped. 23:43 Never ever when you're angry or upset spank your child 23:49 Walk away and then when you're clear you can come back 23:54 and deal with the issues. Yeah. 23:58 It's a lot. I mean you do that you get angry, you wanna as men 24:03 we wanna react, we wanna stop, we wanna discipline the child 24:07 make sure they stop but like you said, never, never ever 24:11 hit your child when you're angry you know and do anything like 24:15 that. Don't discipline, just walk away, take a breather 24:18 come back when you have your head right. 24:21 And then you'll see you know, cause other times when you 24:24 spank your child or discipline you know, you regret it later 24:28 you know it hurts. Because you are like you know, I probably 24:31 should've done that differently but again we're mimicking what 24:36 we grew up with. It goes back to the whole genetic predisposition 24:39 and we were doin what we were taught to do. 24:42 So I don't know. Anybody out there have you gone through 24:45 anything like that? Ha ha ha I'm sorry I'm not laughin 24:49 at you, I'm laughin because you know this is right on. You know 24:54 And I'm not tryin to be philosophical or psychological 25:00 But I wonder sometimes the reason why we're so hard on 25:04 our children is because of some insecurity that we have 25:08 of ourself. Hmm. We're trying to make them and mold them to be 25:14 perfect because, you ever hear of you know like the dads who 25:19 take their children to the playground, first they're just 25:22 having fun but after a while they're gettin them into high 25:25 school volley ball or football team and they're tryin to 25:28 relive their dreams through their child. 25:32 And they push them harder than their coach or their trainer 25:36 why you, why did you drop the ball? I remember watching the 25:39 show a long time ago and the guy had a fumble in the game 25:43 and everybody forgave the guy I mean the team they got the 25:48 ball back but the father was so hard on the son for fumblin 25:52 the ball. Later on in the story to find out the father failed 25:57 he got kicked off the team because of his drinking habits 26:00 and he was like tryin to relive his complete, his, his past 26:07 through his child. And so a lot of times I feel that that's why 26:11 we are so hard on our child because we're insecure of our 26:15 failures so we try to make our children perfect 26:18 But I thank God that's not how God treats us. 26:22 I thank God He don't treat us that way. 26:24 I don't think that the only thing is insecurity though 26:26 I think it's because sometimes what we have actually learned 26:34 from our parents, from our fathers that we project 26:39 that on our children and some men are sure about themselves 26:44 but we don't know how to do anything else, you know, we just 26:48 don't know how to. I'm not proud of some of the things 26:51 that I've done to my children especially my son, because 26:57 he was the firstborn and I wanted to sure that he was solid 27:02 you know, so I poured everything negative and positive into him 27:06 If I can take some of the stuff back, I would 27:10 I think for our viewers at home being a father is not easy 27:15 it never was meant to be easy 27:17 but it's not impossible. We have a Father in heaven 27:21 who deals with us on a constant basis when we're disobedient 27:26 we're rebellious, we're messin up. 27:29 He never deals with us in anger, if He did 27:31 you know we'd need more protection. 27:34 But we have a Father in heaven who loves us 27:37 And even though we're not perfect, He is and He's willing 27:41 to help to be the best fathers we can be. 27:45 So please take some time, take some time with your children 27:49 and love them the way God loves you. 27:52 Thank you. |
Revised 2016-11-21