Jonathan Scott has been around kids all his life
- even to the point of sharing his childhood with four brothers,
plus a sister gained through his father's remarriage. The Sierra
Madre resident also has had experience at being a kid himself, growing
up with the modern-day malady of a less-than-close relationship
with a role-model father.
It was that relationship - or non-relationship - that prompted Scott
to embark on a seven-year labor of love that eventually became his
newly published book, "Fathering From Love." Scott's first
book is a welcome departure from the usual parenting manuals, ones
that either lament the absence of a parent's love through a "touchy-felly"
list of parental shortcomings, or act as a psychological thesis
on "how to parent."
Scott doesn't preach in "Fathering," and thankfully, he's
not whining either. What he's done is to clearly point out ways
that parents can connect with children, and painlessly build a relationship
that means something to both.
The author says he grew up with "everything … except a
real dad." His multi-millionaire father excelled in the boardroom
but faltered in the family room, according to Scott.
His father's 90-hour workweeks, and type-A driven-to-succeed personality,
left little, if any, time (let alone "quality time") for
parenting. Scott said time spent together with his dad resulted
in mixed messages, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and little
support for the individual person that the child was becoming. He
recalled that "listening" was superseded by his father's
"directing" toward "what's best for you." Fearing
that he was falling into the same patterns in his approach to his
own life and relationships with his own children, Scott reassessed
what was "most important in my life: and became determined
not to repeat the sins of his father. He found that the simple application
of time spent with his children - and lovingly communicating with
them - led to many truths in his quest to become a "real dad."
"The reason I wrote the book was to encourage parents to examine
their relationships with their children" he explains. "Whatever
their ages, it's not too late to mend a broken relationship. Kids
who feel disconnected are desperately searching for place to 'hook-up'."
The book is a smorgasbord of thoughts, insights, and even some of
the "right words" to help parent make the point that they
are there for their children, and committed to them with unconditional
love. It aims to reconnect parents and children, and reminds them
of the power that words have to destroy (or enhance) the closeness
between a parent and child.
Scott's "afterthoughts" to each of the book's short chapters
(which cover such subjects as expectations, mistakes, encouragement,
and forgiveness) provide hundreds of thoughts and messages a child
needs to hear from a parent that will help forge the close bonds
between his world and the parental world. There's lots of clear,
solid advice to ponder, too, on ways to establish those connections.
Scott, who is president and co-founder of the Proud Parent organization,
was recently nominated to the California Parent Leadership Team.
He created Proud Parent Publishing to be the vanguard for his helpful
insights. In addition to his burgeoning career as an author, Scott
remains involved in parenting and children's issues on local and
national levels.
"Fathering From Love" is being distributed through Baker
& Taylor, and can be ordered in a number of ways: through local
bookstores, by writing Proud Parent Publishing at PO Box 795, Sierra
Madre, CA 91025; online at www.proudparents.org or toll-free via
phone at 877-862-9247.
