A Tribute to Allen, My Unsung Hero of Parenting.
By: Pam Winter
Tags: Parenting, Life, Discipline, Human Behavior, Husband

While they were dancing the father daughter wedding dance, I was watching with tears in my eyes while the memories ran through my mind… You see, I know the whole back story.

Allen dancing with our daughter at her wedding 2014'

Soon after she was born we nicknamed her Bear. After that, we became the three bears, but she was the only one who held onto it throughout her formative years. Her friends teased her about it, but they soon used it too and that nickname stayed on the back of her many softball jersey’s until she finally gave up playing.

Our daughter and her dad, Allen, have always had a close relationship. In fact, he is still her favorite parent and I’m totally okay with that. Starting around the age of five, I watched them leave together many Saturday mornings for a bike ride. She would climb up behind him on his motorcycle and she’d excitably tell me they were off on “an adventure.” They shared a lot of father/daughter times back then. For example, he would also take her out to breakfast alone every few weeks for bonding time and he coached her softball teams. but then she hit that damn snarky age of twelve.

Even though I had primarily raised her up until then, I decided due to her ever changing attitudes and the fact that she and I were mixing like oil and water, I asked Allen to take over. You can’t imagine my elation when he agreed. I did the best Happy dance and I couldn’t wait to show her how the Ying and Yang in her life had eclipsed. From then on whenever she came to me wanting this or that I got to say, “I don’t know, Bear. Go ask your dad.”

Up until then she had used divide and conquer on us, but now it was just she and her dad and I’d given him carte blanche’ and she didn’t like it at all. I didn’t even care if he checked with me first, unless it concerned some really big thing.

Since Allen was a business manager in the aircraft industry with many underlings, he excelled in the art of negotiation and he began to employ those same tactics with her. While I on the other hand, had tried the old fashioned, ‘you will do it because I am your mother and I said so’ which I warn you now isn’t a good idea.

So he began, but it wasn’t a smooth road. I would hear them arguing back and forth in our home office and many many times I overheard pleadings and outbursts of, “that’s not fair!” But in the end, they would either reach a compromise, or she would succumb to utter defeat.

This shift in parenting was helped by the fact she has always been a daddy’s girl, but he later earned her respect as he was the one who stayed up till all hours waiting anxiously for her to get home when she was in high school. On the other hand, I would sleep with one eye open while he did the heavy worry lifting until she’d show up. Different strokes.

He was also the one who would just sense he needed check on her in the wee hours of the morning when her bedroom was downstairs and she was having a friend stay over. He was right to do this too as sometimes she and her friend weren’t there. They had sneaked out and were, god only knew where?! It was after those moments she learned that he could turn her life into a living hell, if he wanted to.

Allen was also creative in his role. I remember when she was in high school with her own car and she would speed through the neighborhoods as she was always running late for school. We have a lot of younger kids around so I became very concerned. So without my knowledge or consent, he called the police and set up a ruse to teach her a lesson. A cop soon came to our house and asked if she lived here and if she drove the white car parked in front. My husband yelled her name and when she appeared the officer told her a worried neighbor had called complaining about her speeding through the neighborhood. She began to feign innocence, but Allen was prepared. “Hey, don’t give me that! We’ve seen you tearing out of here and I’ve warned you so give me your keys.” She was dumbfounded. “But dad…” “Your keys Right Now.” The officer’s left (walked off stage) because he’d done his part. She went off to her room to pout while he filled me in on what had actually just happened… Hmm, why hadn’t I thought of that?

We agreed on her punishment that she had to ride the bus to school for a week and when you’re a popular high school girl that was a fate worse than death. No, we didn’t allow her to ride with her friends either. Well, lesson learned as she slowed down and bore the responsibility of being late for school, if she failed to allow herself enough time.

Then there was the Summer evening fishing trip she and her precocious girlfriend cooked up. He had warned her, while he gave her his fishing pole, “those small lakes over there are on private property so don’t go there.” “Oh we won’t. I’ve found a place not far away and we’ll be fine.” She said. Well, he was no fool so he followed her like a seasoned FBI field agent and sure enough they went right where he’d told her not to go. He parked a block behind them under a tree and took out his night binoculars and waited until they had their poles in the water and had produced a couple of beers, he figured they had sneaked from her friends house. Then he put them under a huge spotlight he had with him and in a disguised loud, deep, authoritative voice he yelled, “what are you kids doing out here? This is private property…”

He told me later, “they scrambling up so fast it was hysterical. I saw them throw the beers in the lake (because they were underage at the time), but they grabbed the poles and ran all the way to her car yelling ‘we’re sorry. we’re leaving.” I could only laugh and shake my head at the scene he’d painted. Later though, he grounded her for lying to him and for the drinking.

This was all back in the nineties before cell phones, but she eventually got a pager so she thought she was Cool. We were fine with it because dad had his own idea of what she could do with it. She had a curfew when she was out with friends and if she was running late she had to page us with, ‘on the way.’

She also knew the porch light would be on and her dad would be antsy until she arrived, but not me. I knew she’d do whatever she had to do to make the curfew rather than face a lecture, or god forbid another one of her dad’s creative solutions. On those rare occasions when we didn’t hear from her and the curfew was approaching, he would page ‘911.’ That was code for ‘get home now or your ass is MINE.’ We had a lot of fun with that one.