Steve Harvey: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

Read a passage out of each other's favorite books.

Have a movie night in which you both bring your favorite DVDs.

Go to a record store and listen to each other's favorite artists.

Challenge each other to do something silly, like build a sandcastle at the beach or a game of jacks or marbles.

Hit up a comedy show; you can learn a lot about a person by what they.nd funny and what they think is offensive.

Go out for a picnic in the park with the kids; see if he's comfortable with them.

Let'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.tting 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'OrTal. 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.gure 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 timehonored 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 direction 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 convinced 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.nally drag him to the house only to.nd 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 situation 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.gure 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,.nally, if he wants to play second.ddle 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 requirements. (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 meeting; 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 developing 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 motherchild 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.fteen-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 mothering gene that kicks in for women just because she has the equipment 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 unraveling 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 homework, tending to the other who's had the.u 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. Similarly, 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 de.ect any attempts 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.