I must be one of the stupidest people I know. Some time ago I was invited to speak at the opening of a local charity called ‘Assist’ run by Brian Pember, a friend of mine. I wrote the address down in my diary when Brian invited me to speak. I took my diary with me in the car but, guess what, I didn’t look at my diary and ended up going ...

Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book, ‘Outliers’, gives us all insights into why plane crashes happen and what we can do to stop them. Perhaps his insights can stop families crashing as well. The relationship between the captain and his co-pilot is very similar to the relationship and communication skills required for a father and mother who together co-pilot a successful family through the storms of life. It is the quality ...

You may remember that I recently told the story of Gallipoli VC awardee Captain Shout in a special edition of Dads4Kids about the upcoming Train the Trainer Summit. Imagine my surprise on having dinner with Mark Jeffery, one of the Dads4Kids Board Members, the night before ANZAC Day, that his wife Rochelle told me that her grandfather had been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross in Vietnam. I almost fell off my ...

We are in the middle of celebrating Easter.  Our children think that Easter is all about chocolate eggs and rabbits, but of course it is really about something far deeper and stronger.  Good Friday is called ‘good’ because it celebrates the death of Jesus Christ on a cruel cross, and Easter Sunday is a celebration of his resurrection.  Many people think of Jesus as effeminate, or as Larry Norman said, ‘a ...

At Gallipoli on the morning of 9th August 1915, with a small party of soldiers, Aussie Dad and soldier Alfred Shout  charged down trenches strongly occupied by the enemy and personally threw four bombs among them, killing eight and routing the remainder. In the afternoon of the same day, from the position gained in the morning, he captured a further length of trench under similar conditions and continued personally to bomb ...

In 2003 Counting Crows had a hit with Joni Mitchell’s song Big Yellow Taxi. The chorus goes like this: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” This thought is captured in a brilliant article by Amy Remeikis called, ‘Facing a father’s death with laughter and tears’. Amy Remeikis battles with the emotions of watching her father die, using laughter and conversation to ...

Well-known UK commentator Peter Hitchens in an article called ‘So Much for Father’s Day’ said, “By the end of his or her childhood, a British boy or girl is much more likely to have a TV set in the bedroom than a father at home. Our 45 year war against traditional family life has been so successful that almost 50% of 15 year olds no longer live with both their parents.” ...

Kevin Bailey is one of those guys you would never forget if you had the chance to meet him face to face. Like most people who have served in the Armed Forces, he carries himself well in a positive and self-assured manner and yet in a uniquely Aussie way, is very laid back. Kevin has an infectious sense of humour, a quick wit which he doesn’t’ mind using and a razor ...

Dads4Kids has a big goal. The Dads4Kids Board and the team at Dads4Kids want to turn the tide of fatherlessness in our nation. Tonight over a million Australian children will go to sleep in a home that is without their biological father. In the vast majority of situations, it could have been prevented. Many more millions live in a home where their father is disengaged or ineffective, and so they grow ...

As a boy my dad used to tell my brother and I stories before we went to bed. We would even sing a song, “Tell me a story” if he was short off the mark. Our favourite stories were Dad’s Snake Stories, most of them real. They would always end with Dad killing the snake and putting the dreaded killer snake on a nearby ants’ nest. The ants then threw a ...

The term ‘Caramello Life’ is coined by fatherhood researcher and advocate Dr Bruce Robinson from Perth, Western Australia. Bruce was nominated for Australian of the Year 2014 and was high in the running, but lost to Adam Goodes, a well known Aboriginal Australian Rules footballer. Being a good friend of Bruce’s, I rang him to ask exactly what he meant by his newly minted term. This is what he said, “When ...

Some time ago I went on a retreat with a group of men.  One of the subjects for discussion was the place of our families in our lives.  Most of the men were professional, ‘middle management’, if there is such a thing.  Most of us felt the intense pressure of ‘trying to keep the customer satisfied’.  Many had put their careers in front of their children and their families.  Others seemed ...

As we learned in last week’s newsletter, ‘the Joy & Terror’ of fatherhood, we can experience times as fathers when we are driven to the point of extremity and simply do not know what to do. That is when we must, as MC Hammer once said, “Pray just to make it today”. From my own experience as a father, prayer has been the key to any success I have had. It ...

If you don’t like this week’s title, it could always be renamed ‘The Sweet Insanity’ of parenthood. As a nation we have just celebrated Valentine’s Day and I trust you were able to celebrate it too. Hopefully you took the Dads4Kids Valentine’s Day Challenge and you are more in love this week than you were last week. The funny thing about falling in love with a woman is that it produces ...

Yes, it is Valentine’s Day this Friday 14 February, and the first thing you are going to say is, “What does Valentine’s Day have to do with dads?” Actually, quite a lot! Firstly it was the passion of love for the woman of your dreams that got you into being a father in the first place. Remember when you could do nothing else but think of her? Remember when the smell ...

We start the school year knowing that Australia’s educational standards are dropping and yet Australians, on a median basis, are the wealthiest people group in the world. Is more money spent on education the answer, or is something else the missing part of the educational puzzle? Educational experts in Australia have argued in favour of billions of dollars of extra government funding to be spent on education to help Australia return ...

I will always remember walking home from primary school at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, NSW being annoyed by my mother and father’s constant insistence about saying ‘thank you’ and ‘please’. It seemed totally illogical to my egotistical young brain at the time. Looking back now, I am thankful for parents who insisted I say ‘thank you’ whether I thought it was a good idea or not. You see, all children ...

‘Equality for Men’ is a new book by Glen Poole, fatherhood campaigner from Great Britain. Glen Poole worked very closely with Matt O’Connor of Fathers4Justice. More than any other group in the world, Fathers4Justice put issues surrounding single fathers, unjust family law courts and fatherless children on the worldwide map. Who can forget Jason Hatch climbing the walls of Buckingham Palace with his banner, ‘Super Dads of Fathers 4 Justice’? Billions ...

The Prime Minister Tony Abbott, along with many others, has made a personal plea to end the epidemic of drunken street violence across Australia. But do these statements tackle the real cause? This is what he said, “As a father and as a citizen, I’m appalled by the violent binge drinking culture that now seems so prevalent, especially at ‘hot spots’ in our big cities. I’m sick of the fact that ...