Category Archives: Fatherhood

Is Your Child Ready for School?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 27, 2004

She is a precious little girl posing for the camera with lunch box in hand.  Her short brown hair curves inward, a wisp blowing around her full cheeks to touch her dimple.

In the background, her friend watches by the bus as mom finishes snapping the photo.  It’s the first day of school, and you feel this mother’s anxiety as her baby heads off for first grade.

The picture accompanies an article that is a must-read for parents of young children.  It offers a list of homework assignments for parents to complete if they want to make sure their children are ready for school:

  • Review and update immunizations.
  • Take care of doctor appointments (e.g. braces) that will interfere with school.
  • Get rid of junk food.  Stock up on healthy snacks.
  • Make sure school programs offer gym activities…and that your child participates.
  • Set up a space and time to review homework with your child.
  • Monitor bedtimes to ensure enough sleep.
  • Review your child’s daily trip to and from school and be alert to dangers to avoid.
  • Connect with other parents and school friends to form support systems.
  • Lay out a plan for hours when you are absent and your child is at home.

The article is also a must-read for parents of teens.  Read through the list again.  Are you surprised to realize that each of these suggestions is also required to ensure a healthy, happy school year for our teens?

How quickly we grow comfortable with our teen’s independence, assuming they can operate without us! It’s an easy pattern for both parents and teens to fall into.

This is a great time for parents and their teens to regroup and renew their connection with each other.  The start of a new school year is a new beginning…new clothes, new backpacks, fresh paper and pencils…and a perfect time for high school “kids” to share time with mom and dad.

Research proves that the involvement of parents with their teenagers is the single most important factor in protecting them from involvement with drugs, tobacco, and sex.  Your teens need you.  And they’re the last ones to let you know.

In her book EPIDEMIC, Dr. Meg Meeker sounds a wakeup call to parents about the devastating sexual epidemic threatening the health and welfare of our young people.  She writes, “I believe that, as parents, we simply run out of steam.  Or we back out of our kids’ lives fearing we’re being too oppressive, overbearing, or overprotective.”

It doesn’t have to be that way.  The good news is that the teen world has a lot to offer both teens and their parents.

Dr. Meeker tells us, “If you want to develop connectedness with your teen, start by getting to know the world he lives in.  Where he goes at night and who comes home with him after school.  Who his friends are, what they do when they’re together, and what he likes, dislikes, his dreams, wishes, and wants.”

Take your teen out for sodas.  Arrange a family bowling night.  Make banana splits together for dessert.  Sell pop with the parent club at the football game snack bar.  Pick something, anything, and do it together.  You will be building a safety net to help protect your teens during their high school years.

The first day of school is a great time to reassess and establish new patterns…five years old or fifty years old…for both our children and us!  You are the key ingredient to your child’s success, whether it is in first grade or twelfth grade.  Start now and make the most of it.

Is your child ready for school?  If you are, then he is.  Have a great year…both of you!

 

Meg Meeker, M.D., EPIDEMIC: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids, Washington, D.C.: Lifeline Press, 2002.

See Archives for past editorials.

The Marrying Kind

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

August 6, 2004

James Bond epitomizes the modern manly hero, all about love and nothing about marrying.  Big screen or small screen, Hollywood romance bypasses the altar and goes straight for the bedroom.

This is hardly new.  Since the dawn of human history, the foot-loose and fancy-free male has always been a part of the landscape.  What has changed in today’s world is his apparent total lack of interest in “settling down” in front of the homestead hearth with wife and children…a family.

Bond is not alone in his quest for independence.  Everything in America seeks to convince us that marriage is an anachronism, like scuffed shoes thrown in the back of the closet waiting to be tossed out with the next spring cleaning.  Why would any young person, especially a young man, want to get married, we ask ourselves.

A recent study has tackled that very question.  And it has given us both surprising and encouraging information about the marriage goals of the modern male.  Its conclusion?  “Most men are ‘the marrying kind.’”

The study underwritten by the National Marriage Project looked at men ages 25 to 34 who were married or who planned to get married.  What were they looking for in marriage?  Why did they get married?  Did they find what they were looking for?  Were they happy?

Yes, the study reports, they are happy.  “The overwhelming majority of married men (94 percent) say that they are happier being married than being single.”

As we might expect, the men say that marriage has helped them become more financially stable.  But they also have a lesson or two to teach Bond.  Because in spite of Bond’s on-screen dalliances for sexual pleasure, seventy-three percent of the married men in the study said that “their sex life is better since getting married.”

In general, life improves for men when they marry, setting them on the road to healthier and more productive lives.  Marriage is a “transformative event.”

Men benefit from marriage, and so do the rest of us.  We benefit from men who set aside risk-taking lives to adopt higher levels of accountability, sacrifice, and commitment toward their wives…and toward their children.

Marriage is good for men.  Indeed, marriage is good for everyone.  Married men who commit to loving and supporting the mothers of their children form a foundation for the future health and happiness of the next generation.

Thankfully, the “Marrying Kind of Men” are at the forefront of efforts to define and defend marriage.  Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage, experienced firsthand the hardship of living without his father.  Daniels’s mother, abandoned by her husband, was unable to leave crime-ridden Harlem, where she and Matt were both violently attacked in separate incidents.

Today Daniels leads a broad coalition that works on a wide range of legislative initiatives to give public support to marriages.  The Alliance for Marriage supports efforts to eliminate penalties for welfare recipients who marry, reduce what is often called the “marriage tax'” and make the workplace marriage-friendly.

The work to defend marriage today is no less of a fight to save the world than James Bond’s 1962 mission to save the world from Dr. No.  Daniels and the many other men leading the charge are the real heroes who outpace 007 in courage, character, and vision.

If the world is truly going to survive, it will depend on the faithfulness of these men and those who cheer them on.  We owe our future to the men who sacrifice it all…

…who put it all on the line,

…who are content with the thrills and chills,

…of being husbands and fathers,

…The Marrying Kind.

 

 Last Week’s Question:

Q:  Did Bond ever marry?

A:  James Bond marries La Contessa Tracy de Vincenzo in the movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Diana Rigg as ContessaService.  But the marriage was short. Tracy was killed by a drive-by shooting on their wedding day. Her character was portrayed by Diana Rigg.

    • Wedding Date: January 1, 1962 at 10:30 a.m.
    • Wedding Location: British Consul General’s drawing room.
    • Planned Honeymoon: Kitzbühel in Austria.

Me Jane, You Tarzan

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

June 18, 2004

Growing up as a Jane, it was inevitable that I would be “married” to Tarzan by proxy.  Jane was an uncommon name, and it seldom went unnoticed.  “Hey, Jane, where’s Tarzan?”

Tarzan played by Johnny Weissmuller was the dream man for many a woman in the 30’s and 40’s, a man’s man for the guys.  A stud of the first degree, Tarzan trained elephants, fought hostile natives, battled a giant octopus, rescued fair maiden Jane, and…raised a son.

In the 1939 film, Tarzan Finds a Son, Cheetah rescued a baby boy, the only survivor of a small plane crash in the jungle.  And for eight movies Tarzan and Boy were inseparable, a duo, a team, a flash of figures flying through the jungle air together.

Boy was played by another “Johnny”…Johnny Sheffield.  Already a professional actor at the age of seven, he was one of over 300 boys who answered the casting call.  “I’ll never forget going with one of the world’s all-time greatest swimmers to the Hollywood Athletic Club for the test,” Sheffield tells Matt Winans many years later.  “Big John knew I couldn’t swim; that didn’t make any difference to him. He knew Tarzan would have to teach Boy how to swim anyway.”

When Little John arrived at poolside, Big John dove into the deep end of 10-foot tank and swam out.  “He told me to jump in and come to him. I took a big jump and when I reached him he had his knee up to form a bench for me to sit on. When I sat on his knee, it was like a concrete abutment and I knew I was safe even though we were in the DEEP end of that BIG WATER FILLED TANK! I was secure even though he was treading water! Johnny was smiling at me.”

Swimming was just the first of many adventures for Little John.  “The soundstage was fitted out with all kinds of vine-covered ropes and rigging and I, for the first time in my life, got to swing on vines….Tarzan taught me to eat when I was hungry and sleep when I was tired. There weren’t any arguments; I did what Tarzan told me to. He gave me values. He taught me to tell the truth; Tarzan hated a liar.”

While we remember today the jungle stories of Tarzan, it is touching to hear what Sheffield remembers about his real Jungle Father.  “Johnny Weissmuller was a Star (with a capital “S”) and he gave off a special light and some of that light got into me. Knowing and being with Johnny Weissmuller during my formative years had a lasting influence on my life.

“The most important thing was that Johnny Weissmuller had time for me.  This man might well have been aloof and not had any time for me other than what was written in the script. This was not the case. Johnny Weissmuller loved me and I knew it and I love him. When I was near, he always had a kind word for me when I might easily have passed by unnoticed.”

Big John loved golf and always had his clubs in the trunk of his Lincoln Continental.  On the set, he would call Little John over to “hit a few balls” together, and they improvised an early form of “Frisbee,” flying the top of a 35mm film can lid.  “It was fun doing things with Big John….He encouraged me always. He instructed me and said, ‘You can do it, Johnny; go ahead and try.’”

If art imitates life, we can be grateful for the relationship of a grown man and a young boy that translated into the fantasy of Tarzan and Boy.  “I learned spiritual things from my jungle father… When Boy got out of line, Tarzan was there to point it out. ‘Boy, Bad!’ Then in a twinkle of dad’s eye I was forgiven and we went on to experience more of this life adventure.

“From these events I learned spiritual values. From the things I could see, feel, hear, and touch, I learned about what I could not see, feel, hear or touch. I learned that I had a spiritual father who loved me and that I could always count on him for guidance and protection; all I had to do was call. I learned then and know now when and how to call for backup, thank God.”

Today, when we turn on an old Tarzan film, it’s a good reminder of what really matters. In eight movies, Boy mastered the art of living in the jungle.  Better still, in real life with Big John, he learned the art of living period.  No wonder.  He studied with the best of jungle-dwellers… a man of character, a friend, a dad.

Happy Father’s Day!

 

To read the full on-line interview of Johnny Sheffield by Matt Winans, go to: http://www.tarzanmovieguide.com/sheffint.htm

 See Archives for past editorials.