“Yes Day — you have to see it, Warwick,” he said with unbridled enthusiasm. “It is a great family movie that every family should watch!” His strong recommendation really caught my interest. For one thing, he is married but has no children. Secondly, my friend is a very switched-on, media-savvy guy, who is passionate in his support of fathers and families.   Yes Day, the movie, is based on a bestselling ...

We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings. The above quote is from Helen Keller, which makes it all the more pertinent. Helen Keller was both deaf and blind, but somehow broke through her massive impediments in communication. Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts ...

What is a Dad? The poem below says it all: A dad is someone who wants to catch you before you fall but instead picks you up, brushes you off, and lets you try again. A dad is someone who wants to keep you from making mistakes but instead lets you find your own way, even though his heart breaks in silence when you get hurt. A dad is someone who ...

“My Daddy’s a Champion” was the headline at the top of the Daily Telegraph, one of the biggest selling daily newspapers in Australia several years ago. The story inside the paper was even better. I have never met Daniel Geale, but you can tell he is a lot more than a prize fighter. Daniel is also aspiring to be a great Dad.   I will let you make up your own ...

Some time ago, I was busy minding my own business in my office, when I heard my wife talking in the next office to a stranger. I opened my door to shake hands with Bill, who was inspecting our fire services in our office on behalf of the landlord. Bill, realising he was in the offices of Dads4Kids, started to ply me with questions about parenting. He asked, “How should I ...

Dale Carnegie said, “Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” Dale Carnegie wrote one of the world’s best-selling motivational self-help books of all time, How to Win Friends and Influence People, in 1936. This book has sold over 30 million copies and still appears on bestseller lists, even to this day. Maybe Dale Carnegie should have written a special book on toilet-training for toddlers. He could have called ...

Dads4Kids often gets heartbreaking calls from single dads who have been shut out of their children’s lives in the process of family breakup. We have advocated at a parliamentary level for a fair go for single dads who can’t see their kids. Sadly, the changes to the system have been wound back. The legal bias and the complex problems single fathers face as a result are beyond human understanding. Sadly, we ...

Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, but there is such a thing as the “Christmas Aftermath”.  The cleaning, the recovering, the losing weight and keeping the children entertained during Australian summer holidays. From a parent’s point of view, they stretch on forever, but from our children’s point of view, they are all too short. For this poor man who was attacked by his cat while opening his Christmas presents. ...

Several years ago, on International Men’s Day, Canberra’s ABC radio station rang me up and wanted to do an interview in Drive Time. I was happy to do it, until I found out my interviewer was a lady. Not that I have anything against the ladies, but ABC women (and many of the men) are noted for their bias against the male of the species. However, I am always up for ...

The team at Dads4Kids is so thankful to the three daring dads who featured in the Decorate Dad Challenge video. One of those amazing dads is Ashton Reed. Last Thursday, Ashton and his three beautiful children agreed to be featured in the TV story about why he took the Decorate Dad Challenge so seriously. To the joy of his children, they had the opportunity to decorate Dad all over again for ...

Dear Friends My friend Dr Bruce Robinson tells a story in his bestselling book, which forms the introduction to Fathering from the Fast Lane. An unforgettable and sad thing happened to me at a restaurant one evening. It illustrates how important it is to know if we, as fathers, are on the right track or not with our children. I was dining with a group of people and was talking to ...

The science shows that families who play together stay together, for more reasons than one. Jim Burns, in his article “Families that Play Together Stay Together”, said, “Playing together is an essential trait of happy, healthy families. Certainly, our children need to do their chores, and of course they need discipline with consistency, but what they also need desperately from their parents is a rousing game of hide-and-seek or a monthly ...

This week I would like to share an abbreviated article by former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia John Anderson, published in The Australian: “Black lives matter, but dads should matter first”. John’s main thesis is that most of the problems in our society, among both white and black, can be traced back to the Fatherless epidemic sweeping our Western world in particular. My wife and I have spent a lot of ...

“In family life, be completely present,” is a saying of Lao Tzu from 600 BC. Here we are now, 2600 years later, and we are still struggling to learn this simple but profound piece of advice. This advice is all the more critical for fathers, and even more critical for fathers living in the twenty-first century. Dr Justin Coulson has written a book on parenting titled: “What your child needs from ...

Two weeks ago, I wrote about “Work Day with Dad”. In the article, I told the story of a number of dads who had changed their children for the better by simply hanging out with them. The act of taking your children to work, or taking time from work to be with your children, is especially impactful.  This response from my friend Stephen, a very dedicated father of two young children, ...

I once went to a men’s breakfast where Paul Bartlett, then a father of young children, was speaking about the importance of fathers in the lives of their children. He told the story of how, once a month, his dad, who was in a high-pressure management job, used to take him to the Saturday markets at Campbelltown, west of Sydney. Paul used to look forward to this time with his father, ...

“Love is a many-splendored thing” is the title of a popular song from the fifties. Many people would argue the sanity of that song and concur instead with Shakespeare who said, “Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage”! Nobody would disagree with you if you said that our world is in the middle of a marriage crisis. In Australia, one in every three marriages ends in divorce. In America, it ...

I could have titled this article The amazing things that happen when a father says “sorry”, but having the courage to say sorry and exercise forgiveness will work for anyone: dad, mum, male or female. Some years ago, at my daughter’s engagement party, I had the honour of giving a short speech. Recently I wrote about the fact that “in families, change is the only constant”. What I didn’t tell you ...

When my beautiful and only daughter got married, I was reminded of the words of Enid Bagnold, “A father is always making his baby into a little woman, and when she is a woman he turns her back again.” At the time of my daughter’s marriage, I was sharing with a friend, another father who has two married daughters, my sadness and my joy about my baby’s impending marriage. His words ...

This week was an important week for one of my granddaughters. It was her seventh birthday. Her mum took her, and her sisters, horse-riding for a very exciting and fun-filled day. We got invited to the after-party, and it was of course gallons of fun. This granddaughter has 4 sisters, three older and one younger, so birthday parties are very social occasions and greatly valued. When we arrived at the after-party, ...