Legacy · Young Fathers · Read this first
Before you start
This book says your child and it says their mother, because that is true for most of the men who will read it. It is not true for all of them. So before anything else, some plain words about who this is for.
If the child is not yours by blood
You are a stepfather, or you married into it, or your girl had a child and you stayed, or your sister went away and you took her boy. Everything in this book is for you and there is no asterisk on it. A child does not learn what a man is from a birth certificate. He learns it from whoever is in the house. You are doing the hardest version of this and you chose it, which is more than most men in these pages can say.
When you get to Module 4 and it asks you to draw your family, draw two. The one you came from and the one you walked into. Both of them are in the room.
If you are the grandfather
More men your age are raising a grandchild than anybody talks about, and almost nothing gets written for you. This does. The child in these pages is the child in your house. Where it says their mother, read whoever you are working this out with, and keep going.
If your child is not living with you
With their mother, with your mother, with hers, with a relative, in a foster home, in a placement. The lessons still hold. Modules 2 and 9 were written with you specifically in mind, because access and paperwork are your whole battle and everybody else’s afterthought.
If there is a case open
A caseworker, a case plan, a court that is not the one about money. Say so to your facilitator in the first week, because there are dates in your life that this program has to work around, and because Module 9 has things in it you need sooner than the rest of the room.
You are not in trouble here for being in that system. Half of what this book teaches is how to be a father the record can see.
If you have been through a batterers program, or you are in one now
This is not that, and it does not replace it. Finish that one. This one is about the child and it is open to you, and a man doing both at once is doing exactly what he should be doing.
If you are older than the title
It says young fathers. That is who it was written for first, and it is not a rule. If you are thirty-eight and nobody ever taught you any of this, you are not late to something, you are early to the rest of it.
If you are out in the county
Some of the language in here sounds like a city, because a lot of these men are in one. If you are twenty minutes from a paved road it lands the same. The pressure is the same, the silence is the same, and so is the child waiting on the other side of it.
Where this book says her, and she is not in your situation, put in whoever is. The lesson does not change.
How the work is split
Every lesson ends with eight questions. Four are written down and they are kept as part of your program record. Two you answer in your head and nobody ever reads them, not a facilitator, not your officer, not a court. Two are a choice between four options.
You are told which is which before you write a word. That is on purpose. There is no honest answer to some of these questions if a man thinks somebody is reading it, and the honest answer is the whole point.
What this is, and what it is not
Twenty-four lessons, and one of them is going to be about you
Twelve modules, two lessons each. A video, then reading, then the eight questions, then three longer reflections nobody collects. Then one thing to do that week. Small, specific and real, and you say it out loud to the group before you leave.
This is not treatment and it does not treat anything. It is not a substance program. It is not legal advice, and Module 9 says so on the page. What it is, is twenty-four hours of somebody talking to you straight about the thing nobody sat you down and explained.
Module 1, Lesson 1. It is about the man, not the child. That order is deliberate, and everything after it depends on you not skipping it.
Written for fathers who are still fighting.
Legacy · Before you start