I sit watching my daughter struggle to put her shoes on. Why must she always pick the most difficult shoes to put on when we are in a hurry? “I can do it myself, Daddy!” Yes, you can do it yourself, but it will take forever and once forever is finally over, I will be horribly late for my meeting at school. Just let me put the damn shoes on for you so we can get out of the house! “Take your time, dear," I say, "I know you can do it.” I continue to work on deep breathing. I continue reminding myself that this very moment will be forgotten in time and life will continue. I have … [Read more...]
‘Girl Dad’ Confessions: Ex-Stay-at-Home Father Reflects Beyond Hashtags
Even a few weeks after the helicopter crash in Los Angeles that killed basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others, the shock remains. As a parent of two teenagers, what reverberates most is the multi-generational losses of three different families. Based on the supportive messages that continue to flit across social media, fellow parents agree. The most viral hashtags, however, have celebrated the father-daughter relationship: #GirlDad and #GirlsDad. They resulted from Elle Duncan’s tearful ESPN report in which she recounted Bryant’s pride as a “Girl Dad.” When I … [Read more...]
Parents Need to Know History to Help Children Prepare for Future
One of the pleasures of being a parent of teens is the long history you can reflect on. From time’s perch, you can finally start assessing what went right as a parent. (You can also assess what went wrong, but that’s for another post.) During my younger parenting years, I had always heard that if a parent models a behavior at home, a child is very likely to adopt that behavior, eventually. As a writer and former professor, I’ve always tried to model my love of reading history as a way to counteract our increasingly context-free culture of media soundbites and tweet-size attention … [Read more...]
Watching Football with Inquisitive Daughter a Different Kind of Experience
My wife and I were recently given two tickets to an Indianapolis Colts preseason football game. Since my wife, admittedly, pays no attention during games she told me to do whatever I wanted with the tickets. After much debate, I decided to take my oldest daughter. The Colts no longer had Peyton “Nanny” as she calls him, but she was still pumped up and excited to go. We live just a couple of miles from the Lucas Oil Stadium, so it was a quick car ride downtown. I managed to find free street parking, too, and all I had to do was cross four lanes of traffic and cut off two cars to get it. From … [Read more...]
‘Raising Empowered Daughters’ Starts with Dads at Home
Best-selling author and OG dad blogger Mike Adamick tells The Modern Dads Podcast he thinks fathers changing the conversation about boys and parenting is a good start to raising girls to be strong and independent. Raising Empowered Daughters: A Dad-to-Dad Guide, to be released in June 2019, is "a fists-up handbook for helping dads dismantle the patriarchy," Adamick's website. On the show, he and host Whit Honea talk about Adamick's efforts to meet dads where they are to discuss equality, representation and feminism. One way, he says, is to start by changing the way we talk about boys and … [Read more...]
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