Years ago I heard the following story. A father was reading the newspaper one evening when his young son asked him if he could play a game. The father who didn’t want to be bothered took a page of the newspaper with a map of the world on it and tore it up in pieces. He told his young son, “take these pieces of the paper and put it back together. When you are done, come back, and then I will play with you.”

These last two weekends I have had the opportunity to play Mr. Mom, and I mean big time Mr. Mom with five of my eight kids (15 year old girl and boys that are 12, 9, 6 and 4). I’m not use to it, but it has been an experience I wouldn’t mind having more (but nobody tell my wife that). Not because I enjoy dealing with every sibling squabble, washing every dirty dish, delegating chores or even making sure everyone gets off to school without a hitch at four different times!

In watching this video you have to ask did this mother fail or is this 10 year old little boy just a “bad seed?” What type of leadership failure in a home would cause this? Is a mother really the boss of someone? Would it ever be okay to engage in this type of conflict (besides the slap of course) with an employee? And finally, is his name really “Dude?”

On Wednesday I posed the question, what kind of leader was your father? The response I got was great. Many of the comments were touching tributes to fathers who had profound influences.