My name is Daniel Worthing. I am 27 years old and I am living in New Kensington, PA. I am currently a single parent of two children Isabella and Darron. Isabella just turned five in July and Darron will be four in September.
They are some crazy kids but are both extremely animated and have great personalities. Isabella loves to be the center of attention. For example, she will stop EVERYTHING that is going on just to show us how good of a dancer or singer she is. Some people would say she looks exactly like me and I would not disagree, although I do see a lot of her mother in her too... more her attitude than anything. I love her attitude! Isabella lives with her mother Amber and her Daddy Mike. Does it bother me that she calls another man her daddy? Of course. But as I will explain later in this introduction, MY actions and choices played a large part in this.
Darron is a lot more conservative. I see my personality in him most of the time. When I say this, I mean I see his anger, his smile, his laugh, and most importantly his sense of humor being identical to mine. He enjoys everything that a boy should (in my eyes) such as video games, sports, and horse playing. I lived with Darron all of his life, except for most recently, in which his mother Becky and I did not work out as we had planned and I was forced to move in with my parents. This was not the first time I moved in with my parents while we were on and off for the past five years.
As most of you may know, parenting is not easy. I myself still have the world more to learn about being a parent, and this does not include on how to be a good parent. There is no perfect parenting. Kids have all kinds of different personalities in which parents need to adapt to so that they can effectively parent their child(ren) and or make their kids lives happy as well as their own lives. This is much easier said than done. Sometimes I think I have figured this out and other times I haven't. Regardless, it is important that we as parents understand that our kids happiness comes wayyyyy before our happiness. I have not totally adapted to this either.
The first couple years of my daughters life, I was barely, if ever involved with her. I did not pay my child support. I did not spend much time with her. I was what many of you women would call a "dead beat dad". Am I proud of this? No I am not. I think about it often. How different would my daughters life be had I been there? Would she have ever had a stuttering problem? Or, most importantly, had I been around more often, would her mother and I worked things out so that we could be the definition of "family"? Regardless of these thoughts, what has been done is done. There is no looking back. There is no changing it. Because of these actions, my daughter thinks that her Daddy Mike is in fact her real daddy. Yes, she calls me daddy, but when she is upset and wants somebody to comfort her, it is not me that she calls for. It is her Daddy Mike. This kills me emotionally. Being a man, I do not show this emotion because of my "pride". But it hurts.
My son on the other hand, because I was involved in his life, knows who his daddy is. There is no replacing me in his eyes. Has his mother tried? Yes. You want to know what that guys name was to him? Guy. His real name was Branden. This makes me feel like the greatest dad ever to him. I only wish that I had spent the time with my daughter that I did with my son so that she would know that I am her one and only daddy.
In conclusion, I do not tell you guys these things so that I can have a pity party or so I can get attention. I tell you all these things so that you know that I am not perfect. None of us are. I am not a professional in this field one bit, but I can tell you that I can relate to each and every single parent who has either been through this, is going through this, or is simply a parent who may feel the type of shame or discomfort that I do regarding this subject.
This blog is not meant to tell anybody how to parent or what a parent should be. What this blog is for is to help us parents, single or not, through the struggle of parenting. You have a problem? Tell me about it....I would love to hear and sympathize with you.
Thank you for reading my introduction and I hope that through this blog, we can all grow as parents and help each other. The end product of all this? To make our children happy. That is what is important, right?
Daniel Worthing
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