The Lighter Side of Teaching NFP
My wife promised to proofread this first. She was afraid it would be filled with tacky jokes, but I’m so confident that I can provide dry humor that I just slipped it into the CCL inbox. I’ve been a teacher for 20 years and I’m an engineer who takes humor very seriously. So, in the end, you can trust me, I’m professionally trained. I know what I’m Doering.
Being a Teaching Couple has been filled with lots of challenges. It never fails, but it seems everything goes wrong and we always fight more before a class. But to us that just signals we are doing something really good! The challenges are balanced out by those urgent calls and texts in the evening when a newlywed couple suddenly becomes very concerned that they are interpreting their Phase III correctly. It is an odd privilege to contemplate what happens after the phone call ends!
A Privilege
It is another joyful privilege to be the more vocal teacher as the husband in the Teaching Couple and as a coach with Fertility Science Institute. I’m still shocked by every female client who takes it for granted that a gangly dude with a black goatee is going to help her understand her fertility. I used to offer all these caveats and apologies for not being a woman and being interested in this, then I realized that I was the only uncomfortable one.
It’s similar to when I talk with new parents, and they are all embarrassed that they stopped paying attention to me in order to prevent their toddler from striking another child in the face with a block. We are both embarrassed when we don’t need to be. As I get older, my teenagers so rarely strike each other in the face with wooden blocks that I now routinely get to finish my conversations.
All those kids are another great source of humor. It’s hilarious how, once I stopped having kids, the company changed its paternity leave policy from one to six weeks. That’s 20 weeks that I missed out on! I watch these young dads disappear with envy and there are so few that understand my plight. Only twice have I worked with dads whose families were larger than my brood of five. It was unusual, but kind of fun, to be around guys who have more kids than I do. In those instances, I’m not the “weirdo” with the giant family – someone else is!
Costco Gets It
It is extra nice to share cubicles with dads who have large families because when we talk it is completely normal to think mini vans are too small and to discuss how Costco is our normal shopping destination. It’s great to be at a place where buying 36 boxes of mac & cheese is routine. At a grocery store, Family Size doesn’t cut it; our families are Party Size.
Being comfortable with intimate subjects, such as fertility and teaching NFP, is a blessing at home and at work, but I must ensure I have some boundaries. For example, I didn’t make jokes at work about menses. You can take that to the bank. That is ironclad. No menstruation jokes. Period.
We are very excited to announce that we have a new Teacher Training Session starting soon. We are open to receiving applications from students and promoters who are interested in teaching NFP to other couples. Also, we have a new opportunity for individuals to teach NFP as a paid FSI Instructor. Find out more at www.ccli.org/teach