Welcome to my Brand-New Blog!
For years, decades even, I have immersed myself into the multi-faceted world of healthy parenting and what it means to be a parent and what exactly our job and responsibilities are. Along my journey, I have come across an immeasurable amount of fathers and step-fathers who are wholesome, well-rounded, morally grounded and polished men who want nothing but the best for their children and give it, what they wholeheartedly believe, to be their absolute best effort in being the best father their kid needs to have the best chance at success in life... broken, beaten down and in spiritual and emotional shambles because the "Traditional," structure, discipline for bad choices, rewarding good choices and integrity based format in which they feel their child needs most is rejected by everyone in their lives. From the school counselors, teachers, peers, coworkers and even their child's mother, the entire idea of "Traditional Parenting," has become Taboo. Outdated. Obsolete. Barbaric, even. Work ethic, respect and morals have all been evenly swapped across the board for things such as entitlement, laziness, dishonesty and disrespect.
Well, the good news, Dads, is you aren't going crazy at all. That feeling of helplessness, failure, depression, anger, powerlessness and spiritual brokenness is actually far more widespread than one might think. The whole motivation behind me starting this Blog in fact, is me being completely fed up with watching strong willed, polished, solid grown men break down in tears, with sagging shoulders and their head held down in defeat, because everything they prepared for, dreamed of and worked so hard to become, to raise a solid young man, is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole in today's society and culture... I wanted and needed to find a way to connect with more fathers, stepfathers, role models and men to let them know that this uphill, near impossible battle they're fighting is a war being waged on almost every single American family in America, but you're most certainly not alone.
From the chemical cocktails they prescribe our children to try and damper the personality trait dumpster fires that emerge when you take away accountability, structure and discipline, to the small army of "professionals" that are standing behind your child, wielding their pens like a sword, ready to chop down what tattered shreds of a family household you thought you had left because you used emotionally scarring and damaging words with your child such as, "no." How dare you hold your child accountable for their actions and implement varying levels of discipline into their lives to teach them how the cause-and-effect world of legal and illegal works when they reach adulthood. How dare you not bend to the will of your child and refuse to relinquish all power to thine new dictator and ruler as the new rules have been written?!
In my own, very humble and very personal opinion, the tides started to drastically change in the opposing forces direction as it pertains to what raising a child looked like when they started to implement "Participation Trophies" in sports and other competitions and completely removed the necessity, desire or drive to push oneself to build, grow, improve and compete on a healthy level to achieve and accomplish what we wanted through hard work, discipline and perseverance. When they started to not only give trophies to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, but also 4th, 5th, 6th and every single other player/team that competed, just for showing up, no matter how good or bad they performed, they took away an entire pillar in the foundation we try and build within our sons that make them solid, polished grown men.
There are several pillars I will write about in this new blog. There are several different angles, perspectives, real life examples and personal experiences I will also write about throughout the course of this chapter of my life, however long or short it may be. By no means am I a professional writer, so I apologize in advance to any of the fathers reading this who are grammatical geniuses with OCD. I am sure to have you on the edge of your seat, teetering on the brink of a panic attack at times, especially when I really get deep into my thoughts and get on a roll with typing and start a string of grammar or punctuation errors. But I assure you, the goal of this blog and of my mission is much bigger than any comma, sentence structure or run on sentence could ever be. My ultimate goal is to bring a sense of unity, understanding, solidarity and backbone back to the community that is so aggressively being shoved out of societies syllabus... Traditional Parenting.
There will be several people, and probably organizations, that completely disagree with my perspective and opinion on parenting and that's just fine. That's the world we live in and that's just fine. At the end of the day, this is just that... my personal opinion and perspective, derived over the years through my own personal observations, experiences and studies. Additionally, my blog is going to primarily focus on parenting as a father, raising a son. For several reasons that we will get into in other blog posts down the line, but primarily because that is where I have the most experience and that is where the biggest wedge is being driven into our homes and the most separation is being pushed and promoted with the new agenda. And genetically, fathers are wired to teach discipline, structure, protection, providing and how to be a man, which are all attributes being frowned upon in today's world by this new culture whom are labeling everything masculine as toxic and barbaric.
Another major topic I will be writing several entries about is step-parenting and the unique set of challenges it presents in and of itself, coming into a family that is already structured and built on a foundation of beliefs and morals different than your own, the struggles of adapting to that new environment and the extra height and degree of difficulty involved if and when you try to implement your own progressive, positive and morally grounded standards or beliefs in said pre-existing family structure.
I will close my first entry with this... The term "Traditional Parenting" itself implies or gives an aura of vintage or old. There is nothing outdated or obsolete about raising our children with healthy, morally grounded attributes and personality traits that set them up for the best chance at success at life when they cross the threshold into adulthood. This is, in fact, our one and only true responsibility as parents. To equip our children with as many useful tools as possible to help them overcome life's obstacles, make healthy, productive and safe decisions and not only succeed at adulthood and life, but be able to achieve true happiness and peace. So, from this point on, we will not be referring to it as Traditional Parenting, but rather Healthy Parenting. Because at the end of the day, that is exactly what it is and that is exactly why we need it back. The future is bleak, to say the least. These children are not going to understand life itself when they become adults, let alone be able to run our country, culture and society with any level of success, because they are being robbed of their opportunity to acquire the necessary tools to do so and it's not fair to anyone involved. Period.
Until my next entry,
Thee Donnie Lee.
P.S.
Please, feel free to write me a note or a full-blown letter on how you feel about my blog, my opinions, your experiences, suggestions, comments or anything else at theedonnielee@gmail.com. I would be grateful and honored to read and respond to your email.
