Editor’s Note: City Dads Group is proud to occasionally feature writing from members of The Handsome Father, a support community that helps connect, prepare and inspire gay fathers. In this piece, Patrick Roth writes about the Christmas wishes he has for his children.Always strive to see the good in the world. It’s easy to read the headlines of the day and see only darkness. There is hatred, intolerance, corruption and destruction all around us. But there is also love, acceptance, honesty and creation. The good outweighs the bad in big and little ways every day. Neighbors offer their … [Read more...]
Parents Can Be Overstimulated, Too
“Do you know why they call Wednesday ‘Hump Day’?” I asked my 12-year-old daughter, Lindsay, a few months ago.“Yeah. Because people hump,” she replied.With a chuckle, I realized her tweenhood was over. She had now joined her older sister in the snarky world of teenhood. But Lindsay’s end-of-the-innocence reply also stirred a stew of conflicting emotions and thoughts in me — e.g., Was that a joke? An educated guess? A reason for concern? A need for several talks with her mother? An indictment of my less-exciting Wednesdays? All of the above? I found myself, in a word, … [Read more...]
Your Parental Costume Changes as Your Children Grow
Halloween season always reminds me of the time I dressed as Clifford the Big Red Dog. My children’s school needed an adult volunteer to wear the costume for a reading event. I decided to oblige in part because I like to laugh, and in part because my two young daughters liked the idea. In other words, they had not yet reached the Age of Embarrassment.As children gathered in the gym, I started to suit up in a “secret” adjoining room. The costume was large and heavy, so a few parents helped me with the process. I remember being so amused by one of the instructions on the costume’s interior: … [Read more...]
Grandparents: The Acoustic Version of Parents
Grandparents Day, always the first Sunday following Labor Day, was especially poignant for our family this year. My mother is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, and our visits to the nursing home are increasingly difficult as she struggles to remember her children and grandchildren.Her anguish recently came to mind while my daughters and I were, of all things, ziplining through a forest. On many landings a simple warning sign reads: “Always stay attached.” The sign features a figure falling through the air, his harness belt waving aimlessly like a severed umbilical … [Read more...]
Our Kids Can Mend the World We Wrought
There are countless problems in the world. They can be found in Sudan, Syria, England, Brazil and Ethiopia, to name but a few. Everywhere there are terrifying acts of nature and unnatural acts of terror. They are here, in America, too: gender and racial inequality, a lack of common-sense gun laws, incurable disease (and the profiting from it), the demonization of poverty, a culture of violence, the celebration of ignorance, and a demagogue wearing hate as a brand who wants nothing more than his bully in the pulpit. The lists go on and on, all of them, and it can seem overwhelming. Some issues … [Read more...]