Christmas is a blessed season to pause and soak in the loving presence of your family, recalling the quiet joy of the first Christmas in the humble abode of the Holy Family. As the song says, “Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year.” For many families, this is true. You see, kids love family. It’s what they instinctively long for. Christmas is really the celebration of what many in ...

American fathers have launched a new initiative in schools that provides a powerful reminder of the important role dads play in the lives of their children – and the community. To tackle rising school violence, up to 40 dads from Southwood High School in Louisiana have banded together under the banner Dads on Duty USA. Their battle plan is simple: be present on school grounds. According to CBS, “the students say ...

Happy Father’s Day. Many are getting breakfast in bed, Father’s Day cards and lots of smoochie kisses from their children (as Bandit, the dad in Bluey, would say). Not only that, most dads will receive their yearly supply of socks and undies all on the one day. Even more exciting is that the new Dads4Kids TV community service ad is being played on TV all over Australia. Watch it below if ...

Dr. Seuss said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” This famous children’s book author was certainly across his subject. Here are 10 good reasons why you should read to your children. Hopefully you are inspired. 1. Dads Bring Something Special to the Reading Equation. Harvard-trained Dr Elisabeth Duursma said, “In most families, mothers are the ones ...

One of my most favourite things of all time is when one or both of our boys have a day out with dad. Partly because it means I get a day out with myself that usually consists chocolate, girly movies and/or pampering, but also because I notice a distinct difference in my boys every time they return. As if they’ve grown up a little bit, and for the next few days, ...

Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like if he were here now. I’d like to make a place for him at our table for Christmas lunch, like I do for Mum and other family and friends. I’d like to serve him and make up the spare room in our home. I’d like him to see what I’ve become. I was a skinny, pimply, constantly awkward teenager when he ...

My good friend Robert Day sent me a link. He said, “Check out Gavin Topps and his ‘Fight Like a Pro’ Program”. Rob is a Dads4Kids board member. He has worked with men all his life. He knows men. So, I just had to check it out for myself. Below is the challenging call to Manhood from the Gavin Topps Rite of Passage for the Modern Man landing page. “Friend, if ...

There I was, staggering down the dark hallway at 5.30 a.m., trying not to wake the children. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. What is that, I thought? Maybe a mouse? No, it looks bigger than a mouse. Maybe it’s a rat? Peering down in the darkness, I realised it was a frog. But how did such a large frog get into the house? All of these ...

It’s always an interesting thing, gauging how much people engage with an issue or an idea. Sometimes you’d think that one thing would be wildly popular and it flops, other times you think it’s an absolute stinker, yet it grabs people’s attention and becomes a runaway success. This is especially true on the internet, a place where pictures of cats seem to rate higher than stories about real life heroes much ...

The mission of Dads4Kids is to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, committed and loving fathers. You might well ask the question, “How do we do this?” This is a question the team at Dads4Kids asks themselves every day. Simply put, we have to inspire more love in the fathers we connect with. Again you ask, “How do you inspire fathers ...

This week Dads4Kids launches its annual end of financial year ‘Help the Children’ Appeal. One great reason to give to the ‘Help the Children’ Appeal is because Dads4Kids is helping dads live longer than in years gone by. Last year, on 6 November 2014, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released an important news item: “Aussie males born from now on could plan on receiving a ‘Happy 80th Birthday’ card, as ...

I have been receiving calls from all over the country from happy men and even more joyful wives. The last batch of the 10 week ‘Good to Great Fathering Courses’ are finishing up for the year and I am enjoying the stories of ‘Transformanation’ coming from the men who have completed the fathering course. Let me share a few: I spoke with a father of two who works in the building ...

  Sometimes, when you read a book, it is just a story. Other times the story reaches out and grabs you with both hands and touches your heart. That’s what the book ‘Twice Adopted’ by Michael Reagan © 2004, Broadman & Holman, Nashville USA, did to me when I read it. Mike is the adopted eldest son of Ronald Reagan, former President of the United States of America. He is also ...

We are all living letters to our children, and our children’s children. This really came through to me at a Fatherhood Success Seminar I recently conducted in Coffs Harbour, NSW. One of the dads at the seminar shared with the group about the 250 letters that his father had written to his mother and brothers and sisters when he was just a baby during the Second World War. Bill’s father was ...

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 ...

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 ...

Dear Diary, IT’S A BOY! My beautiful daughter gave birth the other week to a beautiful boy, 8lb 3oz. I was supposed to speak in Parliament House at the Human Rights Conference about ‘DIDs’ that week. And you know what? Normally my work would take preference over my private life. That’s possibly why I am now divorced. But this time I said no. My beautiful daughter and the birth of my ...

I arrived home from school at about 4 pm one afternoon to find that my pigeons had been stolen, and one of the new chicks had been killed and was dead on the floor of the cage. I was 10 at the time. It was 1952 and we were living at 44 Canning Street, North Melbourne. I loved my pigeons. I had five excellent pairs and they all were good breeders. ...

When I was five years old, I lived at 302 Dryburgh Street, North Melbourne, and on Saturday mornings my Grandfather, William (Bill) Coyle would look after me while my mother worked in the city. My grandfather was about 162cm (5’4”) tall, and about as wide. His grandfather, a lawyer, had migrated from Ireland to Australia in the 1800s. They were good Catholics; my grandfather had 14 children, of which my dear ...