Partnership for Dads begins its new Interactive Dads campaign with MINECRAFT DAYS! Interactive Dads is a series of activities and events designed to provide dads and kids fun, social, and educational opportunities to interact and MINECRAFT DAYS! is a great way to start. In a partnership with the Southfield Public Library, dads, father figures, and their kids will come together to build and play on the biggest PC game to ever exist!
Kids
An Open Letter to Young Dads and Dads-to-Be
As I write this, our first-born is just back home from his first year of college and our youngest is soon to finish her junior year of high school. A window will close soon for us. That window through which we enjoy hours and hours physically together most days, molding each other. That window closure is the natural way of things; it truly is the way it’s meant to be as they become their own people. Though this dad finds that bittersweet, it’s much easier to face knowing I have no big regrets.
That’s not to say I didn’t make mistakes; I made tons of them, and continue to very regularly. But I don’t look back and say “I wish I’d made more effort to be a part of it all.” I was intentional, from well before they were born, about being as much a part of their childhood as humanly possible. For all the miscues in the past and future, getting that one right has made all the difference for them, and for me.
Kids need both parents
I make no apologies for being a shared parenting advocate. As a family therapist, I’ve understood for years that kids need both parents. But in 2003, the clinical benefits that are achieved for children in shared parenting and the negative outcomes that often result when a parent is under involved became even more meaningful to me when my son was born.
Yet with all the research and understanding,
Teaching good sportsmanship starts at home
One of my favorite things about autumn is football. I love the game with a passion that might be more than it should be at my age, but then again I suppose that depends on who’s setting the bar.
A few friends got together this past Saturday to cheer on our favorite college teams (Go Blue!), but when a commercial about sportsmanship aired I was left with some reservations about the traditional trash talking that had begun. The commercial starts out with a group of kids coming together to play a game, but before they take the field each of them give commentary of their dad’s comments during a recent football game. Each child exclaims how their dad,