Families with young children

After the lecture on Tuesday, I found myself thinking about how I was when I was a kid and the way my parents brought me up. My father was always the one who would play with me and my sisters when we were kids, like playing monster in the dark before my mom had dinner ready in the winter and going outside for baseball, football, Red Rover and every other outdoor game in the summer. It actually kind of reminds me of that commercial we saw at the start of class where the dad joins in the imaginative play and the mom is the reality of the world. I could never picture my mom joining in when we would play pirates or cops and robbers. I guess it never really occurred to me until recently that even though my dad was always the serious and stern one, he was also the one with the most imagination and willingness to join the kids for a night of playtime. My parents raised my sisters and I with an authoritative style, so I felt a strong connection to both my parents. I could trust my mom with serious issues and go to her for comfort and love, while my dad was always the one to crack down on me so I was always afraid to tell him anything first, usually letting my mom be the one to do that so she could soften him up before he got to me. However, I realize now that my dad was more than the stern no-nonsense person I always thought him out to be. I unconsciously put aside the fact that he was my dad when we played together, and he just became another pirate on the ship or robber trying to escape. Looking back now I did take him for granted back when I was a kid, just thinking that was what every dad had to do, not realizing he did it because he wanted to, not because he had to.