This is the first in a series of posts that describe my experiences as a teacher to incarcerated dads. They are all under the category: Incarcerated dads.

Me and a handful of other people work for Utah State University as Fatherhood Education Coordinators, a fancy title that means we teach fatherhood education. More specifically, we teach incarcerated men how to be good dads.

Our curricula consists of 12 classes taught once or twice a week. Each class lasts about two hours depending on the number of students attending. A full class has 10 students – more or less.

Our jobs take us to the State Prison and many of the county jails in the state of Utah. I have taught in five county jails and in the State Prison, myself.

How Students are Selected

The men we teach are selected by Case Workers or Program Directors. Care is taken not to mix members from different gangs, as that might result in fights.

I’ve taught gang members, former gang members (those who want out), and people who have never joined a gang.

Inmates agree to attend class for various reasons, but two reasons stand out: 1) They want to be better men and better dads. 2) It gives them a break from the monotony and “drama” of prison life.

Their Offenses

Over the years I have taught hundreds of inmates who are serving time for any number of offences. I make it a point not to ask what brought them to jail, but some will volunteer that information.

Without elaborating, their offenses include about anything you can imagine. A high number of offenses have to do with drugs: drug trafficking, drug distribution and drug use. Many (I would say most) of my students are drug addicts.

Some of my students are incarcerated for only a few months, while others have spent most of their lives in and out of jail. For example, it’s not uncommon for a 40-year-old man to have spent 25 years in juvenile detention and behind bars.

Their Children

Most of my students have multiple children from multiple women. They refer to the mother of their children as “Baby Mommas” or “BMs”. Some don’t know how many children they might have fathered from all of their sexual encounters. One student told me he fathered 17 children from 10 baby mommas.

I get the feeling that some of my students consider it a badge of honor, and enjoy bragging about how many women they have “conquered” by impregnated them.

One of my students told how he had sex with a 20-year-old when he was 15, and got her pregnant. He appeared to feel pretty proud about it.

With that said, many of my other students have only one, two, or three baby mommas. And to be fair, some of my students are married to the mother of all their children.

As you can see, these men come from many situations where they fathered children. But here is something I found very interesting.

In many cases, when a student held his newborn baby for the first time, he felt an overwhelming feeling of love; something he had never experienced, and vowed to raise that child the best he could.

For these men, having a baby turned their lives upside down and made them want to change their lives. These are the kind of guys, who I believe, benefit most from taking the class.

Their Backgrounds

Here’s where things get really interesting.

There are a small number of my students who grew up in a functional family where they were raised by what you could call, “good” parents.

But most of my students come from a very different background full of childhood trauma and abuse.

Although I don’t make it a point to learn about my students’ offenses, I do make it my job to find out about their childhood experiences.

In class four, I ask my students 13 questions. I ask them to raise their hands if they can answer “Yes” for each question, and to keep track of how many times they raised their hands. This exercise is very illuminating. Here are the questions I ask.

Before you turned 18 how many of you experienced:

1. Emotion abuse (constantly being yelled at, criticized or threatened)
2. Physical abuse
3. Sexual abuse – by anyone
4. Neglect (left alone – feeling like no one cares about me, abandoned)
5. Seeing your mother treated violently
6. Watching a sibling being abused
7. Watching violence outside the home
8. Having a family member who was depressed
9. Having a family member who was addicted to alcohol or drugs
10. Having a family member in prison
11. Having a parent leave due to separation, divorce or deportation
12. Being in foster care
13. Living in a war zone

My heart sinks each time they raise their hands as I go from question to question.

At the end of the questions, I ask,

• “How many of you raised your hands three or more times?”
• “Four or more?”
• “Five or more?”

I keep going and many of the hands remain in the air.

At the end, many of my students have raised their hands 10, 11, 12, even 13 times!

Each of these experiences is called trauma.

Each traumatic experience creates feelings and emotions. These feelings and emotions drive behavior.

I ask my students to name those feelings and emotions and I write them on the white board. They include:

• Feeling abandoned and being unloved
• Feeling worthless
• Anger
• Hate
• Guilt
• Sadness
• Loneliness
• Depression
• Regret
• Fear
• PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Then I ask what behaviors are driven by these feelings and emotions? Here’s a partial list of what they tell me:

• Violence
• Drug & alcohol addiction
• Casual sex
• Uncontrolled anger
• Acts of defiance
• Crime
• Depression
• Pornography
• Failed marriages
• Child abuse
• Thoughts of suicide

I tell them that when kids experience trauma or abuse, they suppress those negative feelings; they bottle them up. They try to drive those feelings deep down inside so they can’t feel the pain. But the pain never really goes away.

I tell them that each time they experienced trauma or abuse, it was like putting a brick in an imaginary backpack. And after a young lifetime of filling that backpack with painful emotional bricks, that backpack gets pretty heavy.

And they carry that backpack around 24/7, everywhere they go. And that is mentally exhausting.

I explain that the weight of that emotional pain can have a dramatic effect on their relationships and the choices they make.

I tell them, for some dads, the only way they know how to raise their kids is the same way they were raised. Now it’s time to break that cycle of abuse and learn to be good dads.

Moving Forward

Before I end this post, I want to make clear that no matter what my students have experienced in the past, I have love and respect for them – each one of them.

I can only imagine the trauma and abuse most of them went through. And that has given me a whole new perspective on incarcerated men (and women).

It is an honor to teach these men how to be good dads.

I want to take my message to other dads who are struggling, whether incarcerated or not, on a grand scale – reaching dads throughout the world.

This website and my book, The 7 Essential Dad-Skills, are the beginning of my mission.

The next post is about why and how I make a connection with my students during the first class. To go to it, click here.