Parenting Classes Kokomo IN

Written by the dads @ fathers.com

Date Posted: Friday, 26 December 2008

As the New Year arrives, it's natural to think about turning over a new leaf. Bad habits to stop. Good habits to start. Resolutions to keep.

On a personal level, maybe you'd like to lose a few pounds next year, get out of debt, get better organized, or read a book every week. Those are all great goals. But make sure you also have specific resolutions for your fathering.

Maybe you need to look at the long hours at work and start being more intentional about scheduling time with your family. Maybe you need to develop more patience or emotional stability, so you’re a better model for your kids. Does your children's mother have some needs that remain unmet? How can you be more thoughtful and romantic as a husband?

These aren’t just rhetorical questions. This is about you creating an action plan. How do you start? Thankfully, the New Year holiday provides us with some extra free time—then things will get a lot busier again next week. So spend some of your time this week reflecting with a pen and paper or sitting at your computer. Think about your children and how they’ve grown and changed in the last twelve months. What issues are they dealing with now, and what challenges will each of them face during the next year? ...

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Written by Dale Sadler, MAE

Do you ever feel lost as a father? Does it seem like your idea of what should be happening ... isn't? Maybe the path your child is taking or the level of success he is achieving doesn't quite match up with your timeline?

I struggle with this. My son is four and a half, and there are times when I'm convinced that he should be able to master a physical skill—like swinging himself—until I discover that some six-year-olds can’t do that yet.

Not long ago, I discovered a fascinating book on wilderness survival that has given me some new insights about why I tend to do this, and it has some other useful applications to my fathering. In this book, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales, the author tells true stories of people who become lost and even die in the wilderness. He contends that people meet their ultimate demise this way because they don’t adapt. They apply old forms of reasoning—which he calls "mental maps"—to new experiences, and this often leads to bad decisions.

For example, even accomplished outdoorsmen will sometimes struggle while hiking in unfamiliar terrain and higher altitude. They may make decisions based on past experiences, underestimate or fail to adapt to the new challenges, and miss common-sense solutions that would save them a lot of time and trouble—and maybe even their lives. They become victims because they aren't willing or able to adjust their mental maps. ...

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Written by Carey Casey

Date Posted: Monday, 19 May 2008

Dr. Kyle Pruett is an expert in fatherhood at the Yale University Child Study Center. We may disagree on some issues, but here’s what he said about the urgency of engaging fathers during an interview for a documentary-in-progress:

If you want to reduce gang membership, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, abuse and neglect of children, and substance abuse, you can do it by engaging fathers early and often in the lives of their children. We know this from the science, we know it makes sense—it’s not easy, but it absolutely works. It works on these problems like aspirin on a headache. And our failure to connect the dots here with what we know is a huge unfinished problem and our children absolutely deserve for us to stop fooling around and fix this.”

Did you hear that? Engaging fathers “absolutely works” to improve outcomes for children. In order to really make a difference in the future lives of our children and grandchildren, our strategy is to reach, teach, and unleash fathers. After reaching men and engaging them as fathers, we must also teach them by providing training and encouragement through our events , programs , and resources, like our fathers.com weekly e-mail . Finally, and maybe most importantly, we’re unleashing them to enlist all the dads in their sphere of influence and get them to join our Championship Fathering team .

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Written by Carey Casey

Date Posted: Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Wayne Gordon is a close friend of mine and pastor at the Lawndale Community Church in Chicago. What has happened there under Wayne's leadership has been called a miracle: a blighted community has been transformed into a place of progress, purpose and hope. I had the privilege of serving with Wayne for five years during the 90’s.

Wayne’s book Real Hope in Chicago talks about the principles that helped to transform this community. His insights specifically on leadership are especially valuable and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t pass them on to you. After all, fatherhood is about leading today and raising up leaders for tomorrow.

1. See fifteen years into the future. The little children you see today—or even the teenager—will grow and mature. Even if things seem difficult right now, don’t give up! Your investments in your children’s lives will make a difference, even if you can’t see it for weeks, months, or even years.

2. Make them feel important. That’s how gang leaders build closeness and loyalty, and it works even better in families. When your child knows that he is precious to you and has a contribution to make in your household, he develops the confidence to develop into a leader.

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