Dad Rage

Fatherhood

A young mother recently posted a video about something she called “mom rage.” She described the moment she spanked her daughter harder than she meant to and the wave of guilt that followed. I’m not a mother, but I understood exactly what she meant.

When I was young and had my first child, I spanked a few times. Not often, at least that’s how I remember it,  and probably more out of fear than intention. I was drinking back then. I can’t honestly say whether I minimized it because alcohol dulled my judgment or because I truly believed it wasn’t a big deal. That was over twenty years ago. My oldest son is now 29.

Fast forward to five years into sobriety, and I found myself raising two young boys again. I hadn’t had a drink in years. One day I raised my voice,  I’m not even certain if I moved to spank,  but I saw something in my son’s eyes. Fear. It pierced me in a way I can’t fully describe. It felt like it hit my soul.

In that moment, I knew I never wanted to see that look again.

I don’t want my children carrying that kind of memory. I don’t want to be the source of fear that lingers long after the lesson is forgotten.

That doesn’t mean I don’t wrestle with discipline. I do. I wrestle with being firm. I wrestle with teaching respect. As a Christian, I’ve wrestled with the phrase “spare the rod.” I’ve turned it over in my mind more than once. But something inside me, deeper than culture, deeper than tradition,  told me this was not the way for me anymore.

Is that sobriety?
Is it maturity?
Is it simply age and perspective?

Maybe it’s all of it.

What I do know is that men rarely talk about this. At 48 years old, I can’t remember ever hearing another man openly speak about losing control, feeling guilt, or changing his approach to fatherhood. We talk about providing. We talk about protecting. We talk about being strong. But we don’t often talk about the internal shift,  the moment we decide strength no longer looks like force.

I changed my approach immediately. And yes, I sometimes question whether I’ve swung too far the other way. Am I too soft? Too cautious? Have I overcorrected?

But if I’m going to err, I’d rather err on the side of love.

Just because something is what we experienced doesn’t mean it must continue. Just because it was “normal” doesn’t mean it was right. We evolve, or at least we’re meant to. Yet so often we cling to the past: our upbringing, our culture, our religious interpretations, the voices that shaped us. We hold on to what was once accepted without asking whether it still aligns with who we are becoming.

I believe there is an internal voice inside each of us. Call it conscience. Call it the Spirit. Call it the goodness of God within. Whatever the name, it nudges us toward growth. It invites us to evolve.

But growth is uncomfortable. Change feels like betrayal to the past. Sometimes it even feels like disobedience to tradition.

Still, that inner voice persists.

I’ve noticed something when reading Scripture. I can read the same verse ten different times throughout my life and receive ten different messages. I believe that’s what it means when we say the Word is alive. It meets us where we are,  not where we were twenty years ago.

Too often, we let others tell us what a passage must mean. We adopt their certainty and silence our own wrestling. In doing so, we sometimes miss the evolution that God may be stirring within us.

This is why I’ve come to believe that prayer is less about speaking and more about listening. Less about asking and more about aligning. It is in the quiet that we hear the correction. It is in stillness that we recognize when something we once justified no longer sits right in our spirit.

Fatherhood has changed for me. Or maybe I’ve changed within fatherhood.

Either way, I am grateful for the piercing moments,  the ones that expose us and invite us to grow. They hurt, but they refine. And if becoming a better father requires humility, reflection, and the courage to do things differently than I once did, then that is a change worth embracing.