…to all Fathers, relax and enjoy your day.  One of the best Father’s Day gifts I ever bought was the book How To Father by Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson. Even though I was not the father, I read and reread it from cover to cover.  My child raising years were the early 60’s and the one book we all read was Dr. Spock.  However Dr. Spock was great for fevers and sprains and rashes but a new wave a books were coming out about how severely we might damage our children’s psyche if we raised our voices, spanked them or made them do things they didn’t want to do.  My sons were around two and four and I was reading books by Dr. Hiam Ginott and the like and fearful that I was the worst Mother in the world as I was not raising my voice and was not stifling their creativity, therefore I had a two year old and a four year old that were totally out of control. Along came Father’s Day and I spied How To Father, that’s certainly an appropriate gift.  I got it home and started reading it, I barely put it down long enough to wrap it and present it before I curled up again and read.  I fell in love with Fitzhugh.  He explained so much about the nature of children.  An example was a child will crawl to a light receptacle and reach out…you will remove him and he will crawl right back.  You figure he is not listening to you, but he is learning.  If you notice when he crawls back he is using his other hand to see if he gets the same reaction.  The book just opened my eyes plus he was not opposed to raising your voice and tapping them on the bottom.   These methods were to be used when danger lurked.   Their little lives changed the day I got the book and I really thank Dr. Dodson for the confidence he gave me when raising them.  I would use Fitzhugh Dodson’s name a lot to my friends, my husband and also to them.  Sometimes when disciplining them I would say Fitzhugh Dodson says this is OK, I can raise my voice.  I realized what an impact he was having on our sons when one day I piled them into the back of the Volkswagen Bug and was driving down our street.  I noticed that our neighbors, who had children our sons ages, had gotten a new car.  I remarked that oh look, Wendy’s parents got a Datsun.  I hear two little groans from the back seat.  I asked what the matter was and they said is it like our Datsun.  I said no no, we have a Volkswagen.  With that my older son said, no we don’t we have a Fitzhugh.  I think I stopped using his name so much, but not his methods, and I also think my sons are better off today because of the way I approached child rearing.  That and they had a very good  Father that was an important part of their lives.  Wishing him and all Fathers, a very happy day.