I do not. And what's really frustrating is I don't know how to get along with him, nor he with me. Things have really blown up the last couple weeks to the point where I just don't even want to talk to him anymore. I have 3 younger brothers and they all get along with him better than me in varying degrees. It's just like from my perspective, the man has never, ever offered me any grace what-so-ever. When i was young, any little misstep was automatically a spanking, then when I hit my teens any little bit of attitude resulted in him blowing up at me, and now as i near 40 years old, it's still just the same as it was at 14. I'm either too quiet and something must be wrong, or I talk and i say the wrong thing, or i say the right thing the wrong way.
When I had my first kid, he mailed me a book, he said it helped him with us. I started reading the book and didn't get through the first chapter and thought, OMG, this is horrible. the book should be titled "how to beat your child and call it Biblical" and we're avid churchgoers and i certainly have spanked my kids, but I've found that's kind of the easy way out, i'd rather sit there and have a discussion about why my kids did something wrong, and talk about consequences the next time it happens. I know that sounds foo-fooish, but my two boys are better behaved anywhere, anytime than me and any of my brothers ever were.
He lives in this world that everything today should be the way it was when I was a kid, and we go fishing and camping a few times every summer. I don't like fishing, i grew up fishing, and the man was, and to this day, remains absolutely obsessed with walleye, and he has no idea how to actually catch them, and we'd sit in the hot sun all day long not catching any fish. I want my kids doing sports, so we do baseball, and here soon we're starting up football, and ya, it's busy, but I love every minute of it, and my boys are outside playing with their friends at the ballpark all spring and summer long, whether it's on the ballfield, or at the playground next to the ballfield, and i really just don't feel like i should have to apologize for living a life different than the one he thinks we should be living.
Alright, i'm off my soap box, just been spinning around in circles the last week and half and really don't have anyone to talk to accept my wife, and she's great, but her being a daughter, i don't think she really understands the dynamic.
