L

et’s get one thing straight. When a man approaches you, he doesn’t see anything except what’s in front of him— how you’re fitting into your jeans, what the shape of your leg looks like in those heels, how your lips look with that lip gloss shining, how beautiful your eyes are with all those colors around them. We don’t care if you use M.A.C or Bobbi Brown, Maybelline or L’Oréal. We don’t care anything about where you live, who you used to be with, what kind of car you’re driving, how much money you’re making and spending, or even who you’re spending it on. And we especially don’t consider whether you have kids and what that would mean if

we were in a relationship with you. In fact, if we’re about game and our game goes right, we never make it to the kids; we figure we’re going to have dinner a couple of times, maybe catch a movie or go bowling, and be in a room with a bed frame and a mattress in it in a matter of days if our game is proper, or a few weeks if you’re playing hard to get. Kids? Please. Some men don’t care any which way about your kids. The guy you’re trying to hook up with won’t be any more interested in your life as a mother than what color toenail polish you’ll ask for at your next pedicure appointment. In fact, if a guy is in it for one thing—if he’s a game runner looking for nothing more than your cookie—then the plan is to never meet the kids. And once he gets what he was looking for, oh, you can believe he’ll be plotting how to move on.

What’s most likely to happen is you’ll follow the time- honored single mom tradition of dating a guy, all the while keeping him as far away from your home life as possible—partly because you want to get clarity on the relationship and the di- rection in which it’s moving, partly because you don’t want to introduce your kids to any man unless you’re absolutely, 100 percent sure that he’s in it for the long haul. Once you’ve con- vinced yourself there’s long-term potential with the guy in question, then you invite him home to meet the kids.

Stop right there. I’m here to tell you that you’re going about this all the way wrong. You can’t become emotionally attached to this man and

make some kind of verbal or, especially, physical commitment to him, and then finally drag him to the house only to find out he doesn’t like your kids, and your kids don’t like him. You’ve gone and got this guy all hot and bothered thinking you’re some sexy vixen who’s fun and interesting and wild and willing and able to swing from chandeliers, and once you walk into your living room, he’s tripping over Tonka trucks and mashing crayons into the carpet while your kids are begging for potato chips, crying loudly, and telling you the baby’s diaper needs changing? This is not a good situation, ladies. Not a good situ- ation at all. In fact, the introduction is late—much too late.

See, a man needs to be able to see what all he’s going to be responsible for up front; if he sees you in the role as a mother, he’s going to immediately try to figure out if he sees himself in the role as a father. He’s going to evaluate if he can afford those children, if he wants to be bothered with the drama that comes when a baby’s daddy is likely lurking in the background, whether he can handle any animosity that might come his way when the kids get wind of him, and, finally, if he wants to play second fiddle to the children, whose needs you surely will meet many moons before his—all of these things and then some will be taken into account. And if you hold back key information he needs to assess his potential life together with you, and pop it on him when he’s not expecting it, he’s not going to receive the information well—plain and simple. In fact, he’s likely to think he was duped—duped into thinking he had one woman, when

clearly he’s involved with someone who comes with a whole different set of obligations, responsibilities, and potential re- quirements. (Note: Telling him you have kids is not good enough.)

Besides that, the longer you hold off introducing him to the kids, the more he’s going to think there’s something wrong with them—that you’re hiding the kids for a reason. And that will only make him more apprehensive about that initial meet- ing; in his mind, you will have elevated the get-together to the level of a G8 summit, giving the introduction way more power than it needs or deserves. He’s meeting the kids, for goodness’ sake—they’re not sitting down to a state dinner at the White House.

So, to avoid all of this, you need to get the kids in the game early; a natural, casual introduction early in the relationship will set all of you up for a much healthier connection. He should be sitting across the room or at the park or at the ice cream parlor with those kids right around the time you start develop- ing emotional feelings for this guy beyond “I’m attracted to him.” If you’re starting to wonder whether this guy is right for you, then you might as well see if he’s right for the kids. Let him see you and them in your natural setting—in a mother- child capacity. He should see you feeding oatmeal and fruits to the toddler, and braiding the seven-year-old’s hair, and folding the ten-year-old’s laundry, and cheering the fifteen-year-old on during football practice. He’ll be looking at all of these things

to determine what kind of mother you are, and whether he’d like to have you be the mother of his children. This is hugely important, ladies, because we men recognize that some women aren’t cut out to be mothers—that there’s no automatic mother- ing gene that kicks in for women just because she has the equip- ment to carry and birth babies. Just as some women can’t drive, just as some women can’t do math, just as some women can’t cook, some women aren’t good at mothering. And a guy wants to see that the potential mother of his children is at least decent at it, that she can be kind, compassionate, creative, and stern. He wants to see that you can handle matters without unravel- ing—that the stress that comes with marriage and family is something you can handle with decent skill—because the one thing we men do know is that marriage and family equals stress. So we’re looking—looking to see if you can handle having to make dinner for the kids, while helping one with the home- work, tending to the other who’s had the flu for a week, helping one get on the Internet, and kicking the other off the Internet’s inappropriate sites, all at the same time, without strangling anybody.

More important, you should introduce the kids to the man you’re dating so that you can see him in a fatherly capacity. Walk him into your house, introduce him to little Taylor and Brianna, and then sit back and observe; you will get the purest and truest reaction from him when you do this. If he actually knows something about kids and likes them, he’ll be able to

start and hold a conversation with a six-year-old; the biggest test of someone’s children skills is whether they can talk to kids in a way that will keep them engaged and elicit a response. If he freezes up and acts like he’s on the witness stand—he just can’t think of anything to say or ask—then chances are his intense reaction is a sign he’s just not all that good with children. Simi- larly, if he’s completely defenseless against the powers of the wicked little kids who are liked by no one but their mother, then that’s a potential problem, too. The guy who can’t hold his own in those situations—who can’t use humor or compassion or square his shoulders in a take-charge way to deflect any at- tempts by the kids to do damage or harm to him—may have some issues, too. After all, you want your potential man to be able to be, well, a man around your kids—someone who can take charge when the kids act like fools and they need a man to set them straight. Kids, after all, respect authority.

All of this, of course, will tell you a lot about this guy— about the kind of father he’d be. If he’s comfortable with the kids, can entertain as well as give them advice, and give you solid advice on how to troubleshoot, too, then he’s showing you the traits of a potentially good father figure for your child. Like- wise, when he sees you with your children—nurturing them, feeding them, and keeping all of their needs satisfied, you’re showing him not only that you’re a good mother to your own children, but that you’re potential mother material for any chil- dren he already has, and any babies you two might make together.

Sure, how your kids feel about this guy should count for something, too. Children have an uncanny ability to pick up on when human beings mean them well or harm; if they’re younger, they have no ulterior motives about not liking some- one, especially if you introduce him as “my friend Mr. So-and- So,” just like you would any female friend of yours. But know, too, that if your child’s father is in your kid’s life, your child may not necessarily have the most warm and fuzzy feelings about the new guy—and that’s natural. In these cases, your child isn’t exactly going to make it easy for the new man to get close quickly. But this isn’t necessarily going to scare a man off. (First off, how would a grown man look being scared off by a child? If he runs, let him.) Oh, the new guy might raise an eyebrow or two if he keeps running into problems with Little Chucky—if on the first date, Chucky forgoes a handshake for a swift kick to the shin, and on the second date, the little monster purposely rides his bicycle up the side of the new man’s ride, and on the third date, he “accidentally” spills his fruit punch all over your man’s nice white linen suit. But if you’re worth it, he’s going to stick it out and see if Chucky is truly insane, or if he simply keeps catching him on his bad days. He’ll try harder to win Chucky over, and give the relationship more time to assess whether Chucky is bearable.

And teenagers? Oh, men don’t even see them as a problem; no man walks into a situation thinking they’re going to be best friends with the teenager in the house. Even their biological parents can’t stand teenagers, and vice versa, sometimes, so the

odds are low that the new man is going to have a kumbaya moment with a sulking, hulking, attitudinal older child. The beauty of teenagers, though, is that they tend to make them- selves invisible. As a result, your new man might actually be able to focus on your relationship without the distraction of a misbehaving kid. But a man who genuinely wants to be in your life will try to be a part of your teenager’s life—he won’t be deterred. He’s expecting that a teenager will be a jerk to him. What he’ll try to determine is whether the jerkiness is an act to be mean, or if that’s truly who this kid is.

Now, we all understand your need as a mother to protect the emotions of your children and your reluctance to let them get attached to someone you can’t guarantee won’t disappear and take your kids’ hearts with him. Likewise, we understand how important it is for you to not look like you’re fast and loose, running men all through the house like your living room is a bus stop. We also know this violates every single rule you’ve had hammered into your head about such introductions. But my goodness, I’m not talking about bringing everybody to the house. I’m talking about the guy that you think might be seri- ous about you. And don’t worry about whether he’s going to think you’re trying to trap him or you’re just looking for some sucker to take up where your kids’ daddy failed. Single moms all over the planet have convinced themselves, with their natu- ral instincts as nurturers and protectors in full gear, that bring- ing men they’ve just met around the kids is unsafe. But, ladies,

here’s a secret: that’s exactly what the players who wrote the rule book you’ve been following want you to believe. Women live under that fear because the men intent on playing the game tricked you into thinking this way; as long as you believe it, we get to keep the game alive until we get what we want, without any obligations.

If you really want a good man in your life, if you’ve asked God to give you a family, you’ve got to stop all this foolishness and introduce this man to your kids so you can figure him out. The sincere men among us know that women with kids are a pack- age deal, and we’ll understand that you are a mother with obli- gations to your kids first, especially if you lay that out up front. Tell us straight up: “I’m not just looking for a mate for myself; I’m trying to form a union with a man who will be willing to be the head of this family.” You know what a declaration such as that is? That, sweetheart, is a requirement. You’ve told him in a nice, not-so-subtle-but-sweet way that the only way a man is going to be a part of your life is if he agrees to be a part of your children’s lives, too. A real man is going to be okay with that because you’ve told him that if he’s going to be a part of your life, you and the kids are a package deal, and that he will get dismissed quickly if you feel like he’s not right for or good to the kids. With that information, with your requirements so clearly laid out, he’s going to either run for the hills, or try to figure out how to make this thing work. Go ahead, invite him to come with you and the kids to the zoo, or invite him over to

your mom’s house for a family barbecue. See what he says— what he does. If he says, “Nah, I ain’t going over there, I got to watch Monday Night Football,” and it’s Saturday, then guess what? He’s probably not the one for you. Usually, how a rela- tionship starts is a good sign of how it’s going to end up, and if a man starts out not interested in your family, what makes you think that after you sleep with him, he’s going to suddenly de- velop an affection for your family? But if he brings a game of Scrabble or Monopoly over to the house and sits down on the floor and plays for an hour or he invites you and your family to join him on an outing, then he just might be a keeper.

For those of you who are thinking strictly from a safety standpoint, please know that I’m not telling you to bring a man you hardly know into your house and leave him sitting there with your kids, unsupervised. Of course, when someone you’re just getting to know is in your home near your kids, you’re going to sit there the whole time, watching. What’s he going to do—touch your daughter on the thigh while you’re sitting on the couch right next to her? Or put your son in a choke hold at the dinner table? Be realistic: no man is going to walk in your house and abuse anyone with you sitting nearby. And if you’re that concerned about bringing a man into your house, you can always go to a public place—somewhere where plenty of people will be able to eyeball what’s going on and give a detailed ac- counting to the authorities if he steps out of line and you have to chop him in the neck.

For those of you who are dating men with children, don’t expect him to introduce the kids early, necessarily, because wherever his child is, most likely his child’s mother isn’t too far away. And the last thing he needs or wants is for his kid to run back to his ex talking about the “nice lady” Daddy had over to the house; next thing you know, his ex is laying down the new custody terms, which do not include having her baby around any strange woman she hasn’t previously ran a background check on and authorized, especially if that woman is trying to lay up in her ex’s house. So a man with children from a previ- ous relationship recognizes he needs to ration out the female encounters with his kids if he wants to try to keep a modicum of peace with his ex and actually see his kids again. If you’re not somebody he’s trying to have around for any amount of time, he’s not going to waste his “girl-encounter ration” on you, knowing that you’re not worth the grief he’s going to suffer when his children go back and tell their mommy he had a woman in the house. He’s decided in his mind you’re not worth it.

If he asks you to meet the kids, thereby using one of his girl- encounter rations, be sure of this: he’s decided you’re worth the pain he’ll have to suffer when the ex hears about it.

How will he let you know which category you fit in? If after, say, your fifth date he’s still telling you, “By the way, we have to go out on Sunday because this Saturday is my time with the kids and it’s the only time I have with them, so . . .” then he

doesn’t want you around them—he’s telling you you’re not worth the potential headache. But if he says something like “I got the kids this Saturday, how about we go to the beach or the park?” then he’s thinking he can figure out how to deal with the ex later—right now, he wants nothing more than to be with you and the kids.

Want to smoke out whether he’s got “good father” potential or not? The following list isn’t foolproof, but it will certainly give you some food for thought about the things you should be taking into account as you consider whether this man is right for your kids—or if you should take the kids and run in the other direction.

He tells you he likes kids, and actually would like to have one someday.

He expresses interest in meeting your children.

He shows up to the house with gifts—for the kids. (Of course, if he brings an Xbox for Mikey and disappears for a few hours, then that might be a problem.)

He lets the children see that he sincerely respects and likes (and even loves) their mother.

He makes a kid-friendly date with you and invites your children along.

He takes you and the kids to church.

He has a good job and a solid work history.

He’s kind to his mother and checks in with her often (but mama’s boys need not apply).

His nieces and nephews spend considerable time with him.

He has younger siblings he helped care for when he was younger—and they made it through, unscathed.

He has a pet, and it actually gets fed and taken care of.

He keeps his house clean and knows how to cook a few decent meals.

He’s financially prepared to care for you and your children, or he has the desire to.

He can and is willing to comfort your child when she hurts herself. (If he starts hyperventilating at the sight of blood, this might be a situation—especially if he’s already told you he’s a doctor.)

He doesn’t faint at the sight of diapers.

He can get down and dirty with your children— squirting them with a water hose, shooting hoops at the park, getting buried in the sand at the beach—and like it. (Though you don’t want him to get too excited about playing “Tea Party” with the dolls.)

He doesn’t lose his mind when someone spills food and drinks in his car, or puts a muddy footprint on the back of his seat—it shows he’s not so fussy about messy kids (because nothing wrecks your car quicker than having kids; his seats will see the inside of a Happy Meal).

He can make it through a one-on-one game with your child and maybe even let him win once (Note: dunking on an eight-year-old and yelling, “In your face!” is not something a good potential father would do).

He’s willing and able to teach you how to play a sport—which shows he has the patience of Job.

He’s willing to go to family functions with you and the kids—even after hearing the stories about your crazy aunt Thelma and how she likes to get a little tipsy and call out your new boyfriends in front of company.

He’s actually interested in how your child is doing in school, and not only encourages him to do well, but gives suggestions on how he can excel.

He can be gentle with your kids, but he’s capable of being firm with them, too (though you don’t want to see him start taking off his belt within the first half hour of meeting the children; I know kids can be bad, but that’s a little much).

He’s capable of forgiveness, and shows that, even when your kid does the seemingly unforgivable— or at least the highly questionable.