Gratitude now has a voice. We as fathers need to be encouraged to be thankful, so we can encourage our children to be the same. Thankful people are happy people. Thankful families are happy families. I even try to teach this to myself, but some things are better caught than taught! When my friend Mark Powell sent me the video below, I nearly leapt out of my skin with excitement. Mark ...

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 ...

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 ...

Crystal’s mother and father had broken up a few months ago and had moved from the family home, each going their own way. The family home was put up for sale. One night, the neighbours were woken by a loud noise that sounded like an explosion. They looked out their windows to see a massive fire which quickly engulfed the house. Arson squad detectives said it appeared that an accelerant had ...

It is always a great thing when respected leaders take a stand for the male of the species, especially for our young boys. Sadly, the vendetta against men and boys seems to be gathering momentum. ‘Toxic masculinity’ seems to be the buzzword of the moment. In 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers published The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. In the book, Sommers challenged what she called ...

Last night I came home from a busy day at the office. I walked into the kitchen where my son and daughter-in-law were cooking dinner. I instinctively reached out my hands behind both their backs and rubbed their backs as if to congratulate them for the beautiful dinner we were about to eat. My son did not comment, but my daughter-in-law said, “Do it again! Your friendly back rub made me ...

Some time ago, I wrote an article called “Ten Reasons for Eating Together” for the Dads4Kids weekly newsletter to inspire fathers and encourage families. The week after the story went out to 5,000 fathers, I spoke to my wife about the newsletter. I said, “You know, a lot of men are going to start eating more with their families after last week’s newsletter — 10 Reasons for Eating Together, but not ...

Let me give you ten irrefutable reasons why you as a father need to make sure that you get your family to turn off the TV, computer, mobile phone and eat together as a family. Of course, there will be some occasions when this is just not possible. For instance, when Australia gets into the grand final of the World Cup Soccer competition. Now, that’s a good reason to have a ...

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 ...

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 ...

If you are like me, you care about Australia and you would like to do something to make things better, not only for your children but for the community as a whole. The reality is that in many ways we are more connected than we have ever been through social media, but less connected at a human level. As Jay Bayer points out so well in his article, ‘Social media, Pretend ...

One of the ways International Men’s Day was celebrated, on Tuesday 19 November 2013, was by holding a Men and Fathers’ Strategic Roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra. Thirty-three delegates from many parts of the men and fathers’ movement actively participated. Three of the delegates were indigenous, seven were women and a few others came as observers. During the lunch break, Carolyn Managh from M&C Saatchi released The Modern [Aussie] Man White ...

Men are leaders. They will either lead goodly or badly. For almost 40 years men have been demonised by radical feminists and a compliant media because the radical feminists have rightly observed that almost all of the world’s problems have come from inerrant men. Look at the long list of dictators responsible for the deaths of 153 million people in the 20th Century. All of them (top 36) are men. Mao ...

In the Absent movie, which will soon be touring Australia, 13-29 June 2013, John Eldredge, author of ‘Wild at Heart’ says, “If you take snapshots of western culture right now the prognosis is not good”. David Blankenhorn has stated in ‘Fatherless America’ written in 1996, “Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation”. Dave Kopel, in his article called ‘Fatherlessness: The Root Cause’ says: As Pat Moynihan wrote in ...

In June, 2000, a 44-year-old father experiencing family separation killed himself in the bush in the Victorian Gippsland region. Greg Wilton had a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. This event made national news because Greg Wilton was also a federal parliamentarian. Each year in Australia, more than 2,500 people die by suicide. This is significantly more than the national road toll (about 1,700). Most people are aware of the focus ...

My last article mentioned a report from the Australian Institute of Family Studies that revealed that an alarmingly high number of children spend the day with their father but never sleep over. These children, and their fathers, are being denied the opportunity for a normal parent/child relationship and all the benefits that accrue from this. They are children who only visit their father. They have no sense of being at home ...

It may by reassuring for separated fathers to know that many federal parliamentarians have some awareness of their plight. The efforts of many men in communicating their experiences and highlighting the injustices inherent in the Family Law System is paying dividends. During the recent meeting of the Fatherhood Foundation/Dads4Kids at Parliament House, Canberra, the following comments were made: Senator Bill Heffernan said that they hear all the time in the party ...

‘Promoting family values’ has been the catch-cry of both well-intentional and vote-hungry politicians throughout the ages. In Australia in recent years, it has had a particularly strong and enthusiastic resurgence. Who can forget Bob Hawke’s emotional electoral promise that, “by the Year 2000, no Australian child will be living in poverty”? In 1989, the Hawke Labor Government introduced the Child Support Scheme, which had the effect of engineering and accelerating the ...