Single Dads and Great Kids: Using Humor and Other Tools

By D. Keith Denton

Questions the Book Answers:

1.How to handle “the talk” to your kids about your divorce.
2.How to raise a great kid.
3.How to show them you love them.
4.Why you need to be the one who applies discipline.

5.How to better discipline your kids.
6.What you need to do when they are not acting great.
7.How to build a better relationship with your kids and stay connected.
8.How to be happier with yourself after the divorce.

9.How to change what you are doing so you don’t end up divorced again.
10.How to pick a better mate.
11.Why it is important to develop good relations with your Ex.
12.How to develop better relationships with your Ex.

13.How to deal better with your teenager.
14.How to deal with bullying.
15.How to deal with sexting.
16.How to find time to be a better dad.

17.How to better balance work and your family time.
18.Building better relationships with your kids when you live a long distance away.
19.Improve the quality of the time you with your kids when you rarely see them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Keith Denton
• Release date: May 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301620388

D. Keith Denton

D. Keith Denton, Ph.D., is the author of fourteen books and over 190 management articles. He has written extensively about improving process inefficiencies and decision-making in both the service and manufacturing sectors. Many of his books have been translated into over a half-dozen languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, Dutch, German and Korean. Over two dozen universities use his management simulations to teach graduate and undergraduate students how to better manage an organizationHe has also been international consultant and seminar leader in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. He has conducted numerous workforce management workshops and seminars in employee involvement and empowerment, team building, managing change, and customer service. Among his honors is inclusion in numerous editions of “Who’s Who in America.” and previously designated as a Distinguished Scholar of Management.He has provided consulting and workshops for, among others: J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc.; The Upjohn Company; Pacific Northwest Laboratories; Mobil Oil Corporation; Building and Land Development Division of Parks; The Durham Company; University of Michigan Medical Center; and Kraft General Foods among others.He participated as an international speaker for clients including Price-Waterhouse (Australia); Mobil Oil Australia, Ltd.; General Motors-Holden’s Automotive Ltd.; AT&T Network Systems (Great Britain); Peak Gold Mines Pty. Limited (Australia); London Air Traffic Control Centre (Great Britain); and the Ministry of Commerce, Energy and Resources (New Zealand). He has also conducted a management seminar for the top 100 governmental and business leaders in the Philippines.

Book preview

Single Dads and Great Kids:

Using Humor and Other Tools

D. Keith Denton, Ph.D.

Wendy Ryerson, MS, LPC

Single Dads and Great Kids: Using Humor and Other Tools

Published by D. Keith Denton and Wendy Ryerson at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 D. Keith Denton and Wendy Ryerson

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Dedication

You will have an enormous effect on your children's happiness. Being a good parent will be the most significant thing you will do in your lifetime. Work, wealth, health and friends will come and go but your kids and in turn the lives they touch will be here long after you are gone. So for that reason we dedicate this book to our children. Shane, Taylor, Cody, Lan and Tyler are making the journey worth traveling.

Table of Contents

I. WHAT’S CHANGED AND NEEDS CHANGING

Chapter 1 Shock and Awe

Sunsets and Rainbows

Keeping Your Sense of Humor

No Way!

Why Should I Change?

Studies On Aging

You Sure It’s Not an X

Life’s Good

Oh. No!

New Rules

What Me Scared??!

O.K, Let’s Talk About Fear

Chapter 2 Deal With Your Divorce

Who Are You Going To Talk To

Someone Who Can Help

What They’re Going to Talk About

5 Why’s

Is Your Picker Broke?

Delay Your Picking

Women Don’t Think Like You

Chapter 3 Feeling Better

Good Grief!

The Divorce Business

Make a Bad Thing, a Good Thing

The Five Stages of Grief

Grief Can Be Good, Only If You Learn

Five Tips For Handling Grief

Managing Anger

Stop Complaining

Help Moving On

Chapter 4 Kids and Your Divorce

Peace Talks

Having The Talk With Your Kids

It’s Her Fault Game

Kids As Carrier Pigeons

How Kids Use Your Divorce Against You

Co-Parenting

Chapter 5 Pushing Hot Button and Other Destructive Games

Turning Off your Switch

Playing 3 Card Loser

Playing Solitary 3 Card Loser

Stop Playing the Game

Chapter 6 The Other Woman And Your Kids

Dating a Barbie

Great! I Married My Dad

Think About It

Fish in a different Pond or Become a Different Fish

Kid Approved Step-Mom

Dealing With An Angry Ex

II. DAILY STRATEGIES AND TOOLS

Chapter 7 The Trivia Many: You’re Homemaking Skills

Male Nesting Instincts

The Dishwasher Incident

Get to Know Your Kitchen

Learn To Love Eating Out

Did I Just Poison My Kid?!

What’s A Lint Collector?

Check References-You’ve Got a Kid

Another Trivia: Don’t Worry About Whites and Darks

Look For Survival Shortcuts

Please-PLEASE Don’t Want Your Mommy Too Much. A Divorced Dad’s Prayer

Kids Are Color Coded For Easier Handling

Keep Your Solutions Simple

Chapter 8 The First of Your Critical Few: Give Time and Attention

Where You Start is Not Where You End

Disengaging

Detaching

Cats in the Cradle

Close Encounters Of The Dad Kind

Don’t Blame Your Parents Or Anyone Else

Give Them Your Time

Our First Vacation

Mud Puddles

Chapter 9 The Part-Time Dad Fallacy

It’s Never Too Late

Staying Connected

Practice Good Handoffs

Managing long-distance Relationships

Take The Time, Don’t Be A Runner

Chapter 10 The Second of Your Critical Few: Show Them Love

Tell Them You Love Them

Daddies And Daughters

Your IQ Is Directly Related To Your Kids Age

Remember When You Were Tall, Smart and Relevant

How Did I Get This Short?

Chapter 11 Busy, Busy, Busy

Be Nosey

Keep Your Head Out of Your Uh, Sand

Build Your Relationship

Personality Types

Know What Makes Your Kid Tick

Stay Calm

Give Your Kids Some Way to Control the Stress

Chapter 12 The Last of Your Critical Few: Discipline and Rules

Disneyland Dads

Man Up!

Accept Your Role

Top Of The Rocks

It’s P.G., not C.G. (Child Guidance)

A Princess Should Do A Little Serf Work

My Own Princess and Prince

Words Need Consequences

When You Mess Up, Admit It

Mountains and Moons

Chapter 13 Dealing With Teenagers

Start Building Relationships Early

Stress and Teenagers

Bullies and Being A Bully

When Your Son or Daughter is a Bully

Look in the Mirror

Your Teenagers Wired World

Sex and Sexting

Smart Phone, Dumb Move

Sexting Bullying

Legal Issues

Put Restrictions On Their Internet Use

Booze and Bad Behavior

Pick Your Battles and Stay Cool

III. BEING BETTER

Chapter 14 What Do You Want To Teach Them?

A Song In His Heart

Preparing Them For The Real World

Teaching Empathy

Do What You Preach

Make Them Stick It Out

Show Them How to Work Hard

Teach Consequences

Action-Reaction

Chores and Fun

Stick To Your Guns

Teach Self-Reliance

Chapter 15 K.I.D. (Keep Involved Dads): Eliminate, Simplify and Combine

Number 1: Eliminate What You Can

Number 2: Simplify Your Life

Number 3: Combine Your Tasks

Chapter 16 Preparing Your Flight Plan: 5 Successful Strategies

Aviate, Communicate and Navigate

Testing My Own Immortality

Strategy 1 Stay Connected

Strategy 2 Spending More Time With Your Kids

Strategy 3 Work On Developing A Good Relationship With You Ex

Strategy 4 Fish In A Good Pond

Strategy 5 Mirror Mirror On The Wall

About The Book

This book is about change and what you are going to do with it. Often everyone from friends to many counselors and churches see divorce as a failure. It’s not. It’s like any change and your future depends on how you handle it. Handle it well and things will be better. Handle it poorly and then it falls into the failure category.

Well here you are. The odds are that you will eventually remarry three or four years after your divorce and you’ll probably be remarried before you’re ex. But what do you think the odds are that you will be getting another divorce a few years after that second marriage? They are much higher than your odds of getting the first one. According to divorcestatistics.org, there is about a fifty percent chance your marriage ends in divorce but a sixty to sixty seven percent chance your second one ends in divorce. In fact there is a seventy to seventy three percent chance your third one ends in divorce!

I know what you’re thinking, OK, I will just live with her. Actually, couples that live together or co-habitat have a greater risk of getting a divorce than those who don’t live together before they get married. Now you may be thinking, Damn I will not get married again or maybe I’ll become a hermit or a monk. Let’s not over react here. If you want to know how to get it right the second time and have a ton of fun raising your kids, then read on. In golf and in raising kids a mulligan or do over’ is only good if you change something.

First, let me say, if you’re a female and you picked this book up out of curiosity, quickly put it down. This book is for men only. I repeat, this is for men only. If you read too far, you may do irreversible brain damage. You don’t want to end up thinking like a man do you? It’s okay if you don’t want to think like a man. We don’t want to think like a female. It drains too much energy. We only watch chick flicks to score points. As a rule, we believe the more touching the movie, the more points we should get. Buying jewelry and listening should be worth quite a few points, too. Unlike women, most guys normally don’t want to see touching movies or hear touching stories. Now, if there are some explosions or pyrotechnics that’s different. Is there cool fighting? Why on earth would we want to see something that would make us cry? Weird! So if you are a female you can pick up the book, but don’t read it. If you want, you can give it to your single or remarrying ex, he could use it.

If you work out the numbers for divorce in the U.S., you’ll find there are about 1.7 divorces every minute of every day of the year. In the time it took you to read that last paragraph one or two people got a divorce. You read slower when you’re thinking, so for women still not listening to my warning there may have been three or four couples getting a divorced. By the time you read this paragraph, depending on how much you’re still thinking about it, another one or two couples will have gotten a divorce. That’s going to mean a lot of kids are out there with divorced dads and moms. This book is about what you need to do to raise a great kid and what to do if they are not behaving so great.

So you’ve got a lot of changes you will be going through over the next four or five years. It is going to take about a year for the divorce to be settled. You can expect a pissed off Ex. Your kids might have trouble for a bit. You’re probably going to lose you’re married friends, at least until you remarry. It is evidently for the best, an article in the Huffington’ Post said people who maintain friendships with divorced people are one hundred forty seven percent more likely to become divorced themselves. It was a single study but it was what they call a longitudinal study lasting over thirty two years. Maybe your married friends just see how much fun you’re having and decide to join in the fun.

No one and I mean no one, likes change. But it is coming, so you might as well take advantage of it and turn a bad thing into a good one. See it as a chance to reset your life and that of your kids for the better. The Ex will remarry and if studies are true she will actually be happier than you. As you will see later, a happy Ex is a good thing for both you and your kids.

So let’s begin. This book is both a story of the stages kids go through and also what you can do to be a great dad. It draws on the personal experience of a single guy going through the experience and the lessons learned from dealing with hundreds of divorces with dads and kids going through them. It’s written from a guy’s perspective with our unique view of reality. A central message will be you’re needed in more ways than you can possibility imagine. It will show you how to focus on the big picture and not get distracted with the details of your life. Having a kid should be a fun process, regardless of your marriage status. If you’re not laughing and learning along the way then something’s wrong. In the end it’s about doing this change right so you get a happier life and a great kid.

Chances are you will remarry, you may not think so now but it will happen. About eighty percent of both men and women remarry within four years of divorce and will regain their standard of living. But here is the rub, unless you do this right the odds are even greater your second and even third marriage will also end in divorce. As the mistakes pile up collateral damage will occur. Kids are resilient but they are not bullet proof. It’s all about learning. Mark Twain, the American author was quoted as saying, good judgment comes from bad judgment. It is OK to make mistakes, you will make a ton of them, but it’s not OK to not learn from them. You can also have a ton of fun while you’re learning. If you approach it that way you’ll enjoy a lifetime of great kids.

No doubt, there are going to be some rough spots but this too will get better. Since Dads usually remarry first, that means ninety percent of children live with their moms after a divorce. So what your kids are going to see is that their mom is not happy about you getting remarried again. This is going to be true even if she initiated the divorce and that’s the case in about seventy two percent of all divorces. It will be the case even if she left you for another man. Even good women can react that way temporarily. If you don’t set your priorities right you can permanently weaken your relationship with your kids. This book is not just about you and your kids. It’s about how to deal with the Ex and your kid’s new life.

The good news is it’s never too late to start doing it the right way, it’s not about the time you have with your kids it is about what you do with that time. It comes down to knowing what tools and strategies to use with this change. You will learn there are only three critical things to remember as you are laughing and enjoying your kids. The trouble you’re having with your kid is indirectly proportional to the fun and laughter that exists in your house. Of course the life of a single dad is not all sunshine and rainbows, but it is what you make of it.

The statistics on divorce can be scary. It can feel like pure terror if you’re a single dad and you want to do a good job raising your kids. So much so that I am absolutely convinced that many people with kids stay together not because they are happy, but rather each person is scared of what might happen to both themselves and their kids.

Divorce is not to be taken lightly. Kids are normally better off if you can stay married and can be reasonably happy. They are not better off if you and the kids are miserable. My parents stayed together for forty two years in part for the kid’s sake. But it was a terrible marriage. Just do some soul searching to make sure it is your marriage and not your own outlook on life that is causing the unhappiness. If you’re an unhappy person, just changing partners won’t help. Unhappy single people will do at least as much harm as unhappy married couples. But, if divorce is your last resort – and I do mean last resort – and if you have kids, there is a positive way to get through it with you and your kids’ happiness reasonably intact.

Remember your children are getting divorced too. All that they know is they are being uprooted. Those same feelings that you are going through - the hurt, anger, confusion, betrayal, worry, sadness – your child is also going through. Divorce is change and change is always scary. Even if the marriage wasn’t great – it was familiar. Kids have their own fears, concerns, anxiety and this book will show you how to handle them.

Raising a good kid requires focusing on priorities and using good problem solving skills. Thank goodness it’s not so much about touchy feely stuff as good leadership and management skills. Moms are not better biologically at raising your kids than you. Study after study shows that when dads are given equal time with their kids and when they are not having to shoulder all the financial burdens alone that dads are just as nurturing, attentive and involved as moms.

Any divorce or break up needs to be about your kid’s health. Focus on what’s important and don’t worry about little stuff like cooking (there are microwaves for that) cleaning the house, separating the whites and darks, painting your walls or watering the plants. The big stuff is setting aside time, showing love and applying discipline. It also means taking your responsibilities seriously, but not yourself. Keep a healthy perspective and remember this stress too will pass. A split up should not mean you’re losing all the cool things about having a kid and being one yourself. Quite the opposite, you can actually see all of this as a way of becoming a better Dad. Laughing and learning is essential to having a good kid. It is something every dad can do.

Clearly, divorce can have a ton of disadvantages but it can also have some advantages. There are single and remarried dads that turned out to be better at being part-time dads than full-time dads. It might not be right but that’s reality. When you’re married you tend to move into a comfort zone with household duties, chores, paying bills and tending to the kids. There’s homework, afterschool activities and bedtime routines. Once you’re divorced there isn’t any more comfort zone and it’s all on you. One Dad told me he never realized how creative and witty his nine year old son was until the divorce. He traveled or worked late and missed out on the bedtime routine. Now he lies with his son and his son tells him a bedtime story that he made up. That’s the way to do it. Divorce or separation should be all about your kids.

Throughout the book and the supporting website you will find useful tools to help you be a better Dad. A good marriage is all about compromise, now with your kid you don’t have to compromise. You may only have your kid fifty percent of the time or only on occasion week-ends, or only a few times during the year but you do have them one hundred percent of that time. It is just your kids and you. The book shows you how to make good use of that time. If you’ve been a good dad to them, they will be good to you when you are old and gray. If you take time to spend with them, to laugh and love them, then they will take time to be with you.

You can contact either one of us though our e-mail at [e-mail] or [e-mail] about questions or comments. There is also a supporting website with more information at http://www.dkeithdenton.com.

Chapter 1

Shock and Awe

I had been divorced for about four years. On my birthday, my daughter, who was about 6 at the time, told me a story. She had said to her friend Brooke that she could see sunsets and rainbows any time she wanted. She could look through her Daddy’s sunglasses and see sunsets. At first, I thought she meant that they were reflective. We were coming home from swimming lessons and she showed me what she saw by putting the glasses on me. Then, she showed me that the daylight, seen when you look through the glasses, looked a lot like the colors you see at sunset. I wondered how she reasoned that out. She also told Brooke that her Daddy could make rainbows any time by turning on the sprinkler and the light coming through would make rainbows.

Sunsets and Rainbows

That afternoon I put those sunglasses in a big treasure box where I keep of all her things. O. K., it’s only a big plastic tub, but when she is grown and with her own kids, it will be important. I recommend you get your own treasure box so you can store your treasures. It’s where I store the wood she broke when she was going for her black belt. It’s where I put her piano recital leaflet. It’s where her poems and stories reside. Being my birthday, that night I went outside and gave her a star. It was the brightest one I could find in the sky. She remembers that, too.

I wish I could always keep a perspective on things. Dads need that, especially divorced ones. I wish I could see the future. Often, the worst things that happen to you turn out to be the better ones. If we could see the future, see that there will be a lot of sunsets and rainbows, you could get through all the storms. If you could keep focused on someone or something besides yourself, you might not react the way you do.

Tonight, I was thinking how lucky I was to have such a wonderful child especially since she was the product of a divorce. Tonight it was good and I was thinking of her, but that’s not how it started.

Keeping Your Sense of Humor

Did you ever hear the story about Little Johnny having a wife? It seems at his Sunday school they were discussing how God created everything, including human beings. In the kindergarten class Little Johnny seemed especially attentive when they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam’s ribs.

Later in the week his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and said, Johnny what is the matter?

Little Johnny responded, I have a pain in my side. I think I’m going to have a wife.

The first and perhaps the hardest lesson to learn for a single dad is keeping your sense of humor. Humor is important to a single dad. It is important because you are going to make a ton of mistakes. Thank goodness no parent, single or otherwise, has to be perfect. It’s been said that a married man should forget his mistakes since there is no use in two people remembering the same mistake. So true but the rules have changed now. You’ll make a lot of mistakes, but it’s important to learn from them. The most important thing is to just keep trying.

Being single and a parent today is a common occurrence, but when I was a kid, it never happened. You stayed together because of society, obligation, or simply because there was no other choice. All of that of course has changed. Each divorce for dads is unique, but they all share one common thread. No one, and I mean no one, is prepared for being single with a kid. You’re not even prepared if you have spent a long time having kids in traditional relationships. I myself had been married for many years and helped raise a son. More precisely, I was the male role model and I think a pretty good Dad. I was gone a lot, I made mistakes, but I was there with the big stuff time, love, and effort.

It was a pretty traditional marriage. I worked full-time and went to school part-time to get a better job. We started out with nothing but slowly collected cars, loans, bills and payments. I was the primary wage earner, took care of the payments, mowed the lawn and did some stuff around the house. We actually got to where we had enough money to go on some family trips.

But sometimes things change, I changed and she changed, we grew apart. The primary glue that kept us together was our kid, inertia and financial concerns. It takes money to get a divorce and someone who is driven by desire for it. We were just trying to survive. I also did not want my son to grow up in a divorced home. I had gotten married when I was very young to my first girlfriend, but it was not to be a fairytale ending. Eventually my son was grown and I was just out of gas. I had spent almost my entire youth married but felt I had missed out on a lot.

I was the one that asked for the divorce. We had always had a fairly detached relationship. There was no fighting but very little passion or for a lack of a better word, sincere love at least from me. I felt bad and guilty about asking for the divorce but I was just burnt out being a caretaker and provider. I felt my obligation was finished and my son was grown. I could have stayed married forever but I wanted more out of life. Some would even say it might have been the mid-life crisis that seems to affect a lot of men and women. I just wanted to stop looking for something different, so despite the pain it caused to her, I left.

Getting a divorce is one of the top two or three hardest things you will ever do. Divorce, along with death in your family, is always going to be right up there. So with a grown son, I was really ready to focus on being a kid.

No Way!

I did eventually remarry and, yes, it was to a much younger woman. Hey, I didn’t say I was smart – just capable of learning. I had no idea how much learning I needed to do about myself and about how to be a good parent.

After I got married again, I assumed it was going to be a life full of travel and fun. My kid was grown and now it is just time for adult fun. But, you see, marrying a much younger woman carries some serious risks. Yes, younger women can be pretty, but they are also pretty much in a different world, both physically and psychologically.

Before we had