I Neanderthal part 3: control your impatience and even worse your violence

This story came out in June of this year and I don't know why I have to dwell on it because it just saddens me no end every time I look at it.


That is the other reason men can not become good fathers.  What is it?  Why so much violence?  Maybe it is still from the hunter

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gatherer days of battling woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers for food before we settled on the farm.  The violence in men is certainly Neanderthal.  (Now someone will come to tell me that actually Homo Sapiens are much more violent than Neanderthals.  Well, it could be)

 While no doubt, women can also be violent, probably more so with verbal violence rather than physical violence, make no mistake about it, the overwhelming amount of violent crimes, homicides, rapes and abuse are committed by men.  I could take time to research and present you some numbers, but... I think it`s a no brainer, everybody pretty much knows that men are more physically violent. Prove me wrong!   But where does this violence come from?  That is the more necessary question to research as it could help in the settling and calming of men`s temper.

These days I am hooked up on the question of DNA quite a bit, so I am apt to say it is some sequence in our DNA which triggers violence.  But I have been warned by geneticists not to place too much emphasis on DNA as a a causation for what happens in our life.  In other words you don't become a writer or mathematician because you have some sort of DNA.  Beethoven did not write his heavenly 9th symphony because he had some DNA which caused him to do it.  I disagree at this point in time, but I will have to give it more thought and research and not stress DNA as I am not a molecular biologist and I was sent  a lengthy article on the pit falls of pinning too much to DNA.  If you are a good reader here is the article.  Basically it says that lay people (that would be me) mistakenly and sometimes detrimentally attribute too much to DNA when there is in fact no connections.  People like me say this and this is caused by DNA when it in fact can not be proven.  So....  Admittedly I have fallen in that trap, but I should at least warn you about it.

Where was I? Oh yes the violence of men.

While I have always thought men (and women) can become good or even great parents with little or no training, this is one area in which I would in fact espouse a training camp to become a better parent.  That is, a class to control your violence and  promote and nurture PATIENCE.  I have said it from the beginning that the three P s of parenting are essential.  Patience Patience and more Patience.  In so many stories or interviews I read about Stay at Home Dads, there always comes a point where the Dad says something to the effect that he wished he had more patience.   It is always there.  It must be in every man.  Realize that.  Your patience can snap or dissipate or disappear and then ...

The extreme is what happened here.  This poor beautiful girl lost her life.  Look how happy and bubbling with life she was in some of the other pictures.  (Crap, here come the tears again).  As much as I am devastated by this violence, I know exactly how it happened and what was going through the perpetrator`s mind when he basically beat the sh.. out of her (a two year old!!) and broke most of her internal organs along with her ribs.  I don't think he was an abuser or violent person, he just snapped.  She was crying incessantly, and yes while I did not have thoughts of beating or even hitting my child, I have been there too.  When the crying gets going and goes and doesn't stop it can just make you lose it.  You want it to stop, you have lost control and you want the control back, but it is not happening and then it is possible at this moment that you can break in a very bad way.  That is when we need training on how to deal with it. 

For this reason, and in this case I would recommend a class being set up to help parents, Fathers AND Mothers deal with a potential violence, or the loss of patience.  I guess there are anger management classes, but its not the same, and its for a different type of person.

At the very least Dads out there, see it in yourself and realize that the worst CAN happen and try to educate yourself and know a little about how to control it and know when it is coming.  Learn Patience.  I am sure there is a better way to say this... I hope you get the idea.  But also, look into the kids who you might get to babysit your toddlers or kids.  Do they have training?  Do they know how to control their violence?  Are they patient?  You don't want to leave your most precious things in life in the hands of the Tasmanian Devil. (I`m referring to the cartoon character from Bugs Bunny, just so you know I have nothing against Tasmanians)

OK, I will say a prayer for this girl for the next several nights and hope I can get it out of my brain, or at least hope she is in a better place.  Perhaps she was spared much sadness and all the travails that life can be.  I will leave you with a picture of my daughter`s Tai Chi class because she wanted to learn it and I want her to be able to protect herself.