It’s Friday night and I have just come home from the fish-and-chip shop up the road. I went up earlier with my 9-year-old daughter Angel. While we were waiting for our order — chips and gravy — she was telling me with much conviction that if you spit chewing gum onto the footpath, some people will come along and pick it up, and because it has your tooth-prints in the gum, ...

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 ...

Thanks so much for all the wonderful help with the End of Financial Year ‘Help the Children’ Appeal. Your giving will help Dads4Kids to keep going. The good news is, we are just over halfway to our target. I am sure we will get there in the end, but it just might take a bit more time. If you would still like to support the Dads4Kids Help Children Appeal, please DONATE ...

As the cold weather sets in, it’s vital to give your mind and body a boost to improve overall mood and wellbeing. 1. Centre in on your diet. Fill your plate with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables to give your body adequate nutrition and vitamins to increase energy levels throughout the winter months. A nutritious diet, along with drinking plenty of water, will ensure your immune system stays strong to help ...

Change is stressful, so we all need tips on how to deal with change. Real Talk 4 Real Men episode 56. Change brings on stress, and so in part 3 of Thrive Through Change, we dedicate an entire episode on how to deal with stress. We all know that when negative things are going on in our lives, it causes stress. Things like a relationship breakup, a job redundancy, a health ...

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Eric Barker, it would seem, has been inspired by Gandhi’s wisdom in his science-based article called, “How to Raise Happy Kids: 10 Steps Backed by Science.”  Eric Barker is the creator of the blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and the book of the same name, which presents science-based answers and expert ...

Dads in Distress hold weekly meetings to enable fathers who are affected by relationship and custody issues to come together in an atmosphere geared toward practical support, progress and healing. We don’t denigrate woman at our meetings, in fact we encourage men to look in the mirror to understand what part of the blame they own, if any. We simply guide men to become the cause of their future and not ...

Yesterday I heard a disturbing story. My friend rang me to share how his son had recently gone through a very sad divorce. He shared with his Dad how the unreality of the digital world, that many young people live in today, was a major contributor to his divorce and his general lack of wellbeing. My friend’s son pointed out that after a while, for the inhabitant of the digital world, ...

The DIDs story, Part 1. My name is Tony Miller, and I am the founder and national coordinator of a group called Dads in Distress, a dedicated support group of men whose immediate concern is to stem the present trend of male suicide due to the trauma of divorce or separation. Current statistics indicate that 5.3 males per day or 37 males per week (ABS Information Paper, Suicides 2001) will take ...

When all hope is lost and you are at the end of your rope, whom do you call? Until recently, you could call Eric Trezise (1930-2021), friend of the friendless and hope for the hopeless. Sadly, Eric passed from this life to the next recently, at 91 years of age. I first met Eric Trezise at the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Forum in Parliament House, Canberra in 2005. Tony Miller, founder of Dads ...

I look forward to family get-togethers at Christmas, because there is always lots of laughter. Our family’s principal humourist has recently had his first child. As we were enjoying our Christmas family dinner, we were all talking in earnest about his baby son’s resemblance to both his parents. Of course, the discussion revolved around whether he was more like dad or more like mum. Perhaps the 3-month-old baby could understand our ...

Dr Alex George has shared a heartfelt post in honour of his dad, Anthony, to mark International Men’s Day. The TV star, 30 years old, took to Instagram to mark the occasion and also urged his followers to check in on their male friends’ mental health. Alongside a selfie of himself with his retired police officer father, Alex wrote: “I am super proud of you Dad, you are always there for ...

The team at Dads4Kids takes a deep interest in men’s health. Having worked closely with Professor John MacDonald in 2007, we were successful in getting a national Men’s Health Policy across the line in Federal Parliament. Furthermore, we include a complete session on men’s health in every Good to Great Fathering Course because a healthy father is much better than a dead father. Generally speaking, men can be their own worst ...

If you are a Dad, it is hard not to feel a bit overwhelmed at the present moment. The coronavirus news seems to beat down at us from every quarter. Our children and our wives are looking to us for leadership in the midst of our current situation. What is our response to them? Firstly, we need to keep the saw sharp. Who is the saw in this analogy? You are the ...

The coronavirus pandemic really hit home to me when a close friend of mine here in Australia lost his friend and business partner to the virus earlier this week. The father of two left behind two young children and his wife. Thankfully, neither his wife or two children were infected with the virus, nor his two employees. This beautiful family lived in a south-east Asian country only a short distance from ...

My friend Tony Miller used to say to me: “We are not human doings — we are human beings.” Timely words for us in the Christmas/New Year season. We all need time off just to learn ‘how to be again’. It is amazing how quickly we can forget the need to have some Holy-days. Days for rest, days to have fun and days just to do nothing. Dr Mike’s Seven Benefits ...

My coal mining friend told me a story one day that still sends shivers down my spine. He was working many kilometres underground under the mountains that make up the Wollongong escarpment with his friend a fellow miner. He and his friend had completed a long shift extracting coal from the depths of the mine. They were travelling in a group in a coal train from the coalface back to the ...

‘Healthy Dads – Healthy Kids’ rolls off the tongue pretty easily. It almost replicates the saying, “He/she’s a chip off the old block”. Researcher  Jessica Ball released a research paper for the Public Health Agency of Canada, showing that ‘involved dads’ results in children following positive health outcomes such as the following: enhanced self confidence fewer accidental and premature deaths less substance abuse less distress greater wellbeing marital stability/happiness less hospital ...

In 2003 the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation rather prophetically stated,  (See footnote 1.)“The quality of the relationships between mothers and fathers and their children will determine the destiny of Australia.” Convinced that such a statement was true in 2003, the team at Dads4Kids are just as convinced today. Whilst preparing the submission, ‘Healthy Men, Healthy Families, Healthy Nation’ from Dads4Kids for the Senate Committee Inquiry into Men’s Health many years ago. I ...

As I was putting together the Newsletter this week and trying to work out what to talk about in Warwick’s absence, lo and behold an article shows up about the town of Warwick in Southern Queensland, where they’ll be holding a breakfast later this month to talk about men’s health and fatherhood. It must be fated that we look at the issue of men’s health, especially in the lead up to ...