The Hidden Baby Gate

Moms and dads do things differently. In fact, any two parents will do things differently (regardless of gender) because they are two different people. Kids benefit from the difference, so we parents have to make sure that our kids are exposed to both parenting styles.

To calm a crying infant, you may sit with perfect quiet in a rocking chair, slowly easing her to sleep. To calm that same crying infant, I may walk the floor, jabber nonsense, and bounce her on my knee until she tires and goes to sleep.

One way isn’t better or worse than the other, since both methods got the baby to stop crying and go to sleep. Even better, she learned that there is more than one way to nurture and to bond with more than one nurturer.

Parenting research indicates that a father is more likely to carry an infant so that she is facing away from him, while a mother is more likely to carry the baby facing towards her. Your baby needs both perspectives. It’s good for her to explore the world and it’s good for her to know her family intimately. It doesn’t matter which parent provides which—and it’s probably best if both parents provide a little bit of both.

Nevertheless, we tend to judge or rank different baby-care strategies, not based on whether they work in the end, but rather on how closely they mirror our method or the method we grew up thinking was the “right” one.

That vision is usually one that conforms tightly to worn-out stereotypes about which gender is supposed to do what when it comes to child-rearing. That limited vision is arbitrary, counterproductive, and completely inadequate to the demands of raising children in today’s world.

The key is to remember that most infants have more than one parent for very good reasons. Don’t let either parent be locked out, because that’s not good for the child.

Learn more @ www.thedadman.com

© Joe Kelly

Ten Tips for Dads to Promote Daughters' Sports

Why should your daughter or stepdaughter participate in sports & physical activity? To be more healthy (in mind & body), feel better about herself, learn new skills, stay off alcohol & drugs, defer sexual activity, and, TO HAVE FUN! Sadly, some people worry that girls are too delicate, unskilled, or inadequate to play sports. To which the smart father and stepfather reply: "Baloney." In anticipation of February 4, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, here are 10 Tips to help Dads provide the kind of support Daughters need.

1. Make sports fun from an early age. Keep a relaxed approach when she's young. For example, have athletic-theme parties, like kickball and pizza.

2. Demonstrate interest in her athletic programs and activities. Attend her games and other extracurricular activities. If you live away from your daughter, be sure to talk with her after every game to hear how it went.

3. Learn the importance of physical activity for girls. Read research from organizations like the Women's Sports Foundation (e.g.: "Go Out & Play") and Kids' Sports Psychology.

4. Leave coaching to coaches. Tina Syer of the Positive Coaching Alliance says, "You're there to fill the kids' emotional tanks and make sure they bounce back from mistakes, not to tweak their throwing motion or tell them where to be on the field." Be smart about choosing coaches tuned in to her age and skill level. If there's a lack of adequate coaches, sign up to volunteer!

5. Be a model fan. Cheer hard for your girl, and then cheer for everyone else who is playing, too. Think about what you would look like on the sidelines if someone were videotaping you instead of the game. Be sure you (and your daughter) would be proud of what you'd see. Every kid (and parent) should remember why they call it "playing" sports. And then encourage her to be a fan of college and professional women's sports like the WNBA--by becoming a fan yourself!

6. Ask, "What do you and I hope to get from the experience?" Then tell her what you hope she gets. If you don't talk (and listen), she may assume all you care about is a winning record or how good her stats are. Make sure she knows you want sports to be a fun place to make friends, test herself, be healthy, and feel good about herself.

7. Let her play with boys. In "Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls' Lives," Jean Zimmerman and Gil Reavill suggest utilizing coed or single-sex programs according to your daughter's comfort level and what will contribute most to her learning and growth.

8. Help her use "mistakes" productively. When she messes up, she'll look to you first. So illustrate how to put mistakes in perspective by a) showing her how to let go of them and b) encouraging (but not demanding) her to use them as motivation to improve her skills.

9. Make sure girls and boys have equal sports opportunities and resources. Support Title IX and encourage school and other sports programs to be aware of and promptly address inequities.

10. Keep a relaxed, fun approach. Team sports teach girls how to be self-reliant while also working collaboratively to be competitive. If she loses interest in sports, you and she can still be physically active together--and books like The Dads & Daughters® Togetherness Guide have plenty of other ways to relate and have fun together.

Learn more about healthy fathering of daughters @ www.DadsandDaughters.com.

© Joe Kelly

That Little Camera

So many memorable images on this historic Inauguration day. But the one that was most striking to me as a father was Malia Obama taking pictures with her pocket-sized digital camera (this photo is from the other day—she’s been snapping all weekend).

This Inauguration may be the most photographed event in human history, and anyone can find thousands of professional photos of the day. But seeing Malia photographing gives me the sense that she’s present—fully experiencing the remarkable events as a kid would experience any other special event in her life—like an aunt’s marriage or a Grand Canyon trip.

She’s just going through this experience in a remarkably normal way. If I was Malia’s father, my greatest hope for her over the next four years would be a profound, rooted sense of “normal” in her life. The fact that Malia is snapping pictures with a small camera (and is home tonight watching “Bolt”) tells me that she’s being very lovingly and well-raised by her parents and grandmother.

That’s a great blessing, when seen through this dad’s eyes.

Are girls still being held responsible for dating violence?

That’s a hard question to ask—because it speaks to both our tendency to re-victimize victims of violent crime and to our ongoing struggle to develop healthy concepts of masculinity.

Thanks to my friends at Hardy Girls Healthy Women in Maine, I learned about a commentary in American Prospect by Courtney E. Martin, a young writer I’ve known for many years. Martin makes a pretty compelling case for rethinking our efforts are ending dating violence.

She cites the example of Boston, where The Boston TenPoint Coalition and Boston School Police put on a program that tells girls “you must prevent your boyfriends from becoming violent”

What is your take on dating violence and its prevention? Share your thoughts below.

The “I’ll Always....” Agreement

If we want our daughters to make smart, healthy decisions, then we have to do the same ourselves. That’s not always easy to do—but here’s a possible solution to help both Dad & Daughter.

Draft an agreement in which you and your daughter each commit yourselves to take care of yourself. For example, you might vow to quit smoking and she vows to not start. You could promise to get a yearly physical and your daughter might promise to avoid parties where alcohol will be consumed. Plus, the document can include steps that each of you can take to help look out for the other. Your daughter could encourage you while you quit smoking, and you can promise to always come get her if she finds herself at a party where people are drinking or doing drugs.

A contract like this encourages communication about specific (and often difficult to discuss) situations like alcohol, drugs, peer pressure and being healthy. Continuous and open father-daughter communication is critical in helping your daughter make healthy decisions.

Dad Can Balance Work & Family, Too

A few years ago, while I was discussing fathering issues on a national TV talk show, the self-described “Gen-X” host called on a teen girl and her dad in the audience. The host asked the girl, “What’s your biggest issue with your dad right now?”

“When I was little, it seemed like we were best buddies,” she replied. “Now he works so much that I hardly get to see him. I want to spend more time with him.”

“Dad,” the host asked the father, “how do you respond to that?”

“Well, the demands of the job seem to be tougher and tougher each year,” he said. “It’s just hard to find time with her.”

The host interrupted the father and asked incredulously, “But Dad. How many 17-year-old girls say they want to spend more time with their fathers?”

That question seemed to cut to the heart of something important. I know from personal experience how hard it can be for us dads to see what’s important when we strive to balance the demands of paid work and fatherhood. While surveys indicate that younger dads increasingly list family time as a priority, most fathers still tend to judge our contributions to the family by the size of our paychecks.

We men must broaden our definition of being a “successful provider” to include providing our time and our experience, as well as our affection, knowledge, and stories. It’s crucial that dads join mothers in the battle to win family-friendly workplace policies and legislation, particularly because our fellow fathers still lead most of this country’s large businesses and institutions. These guys set the policies that either encourage or inhibit us from participating more fully in our children’s lives. These are the guys who influence the standards by which we measure success.

So start making your family concerns visible at work, and start talking with other dads about how they balance work and family. Listen to their ideas, and then use these insights to begin the process of changing your workplace and others throughout your community.

For me, this whole issue boils down to the ultimate bottom line. When I die, it’s unlikely my gravestone will say “Joe Kelly, he appeared on national TV because he wrote a bunch of fathering books.” What I hope it will say is “Joe Kelly, Dad.”

)For a list of my fathering workshops—including The Dad Man’s Guide to Work-Family Balance—visit http://thedadman.com/presentationtopics.)

10 Questions to Ask Over the Holidays

We Dads and Stepdads tend to have more time with our daughters during a big holiday week like this one. You might consider taking some of that time to engage in the kind of conversation you don’t normally have at “normal” times of year. Here are some questions she and you can ask each other to get the ball rolling (adapted from my book The Dads & Daughters® Togetherness Guide: 54 Fun Activities to Help Build a Great Relationship).

1. Can you name each other’s three best friends?


2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the state of our relationship?


3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how crucial do you think Dad’s active involvement in Daughter’s life to her healthy growth and well-being?


4. Do you talk to other dads about being a dad? Why or why not?


5. When we’re together, what topics are you hoping I won’t mention?


6. What’s the most important thing that you think we should be talking about that we’re not talking about – or else not talking about enough?


7. Can Dad tell Daughter an important story from when he was her age?


8. What do wish we had more time to do together, just the two of us? (There are tons of ideas in The Dads & Daughters® Togetherness Guide.)


9. What is your greatest concern and greatest satisfaction in our relationship?


10. In your life today, what gives you the greatest joy? Satisfaction? Joy?

Have a wonderful Holiday week—and always remember to cherish your daughters and stepdaughters!

The Blame Game: Divorce Edition

Actor Alec Baldwin was on Larry King this week, hawking his new book. Perhaps this is small-minded of me, but I haven’t read it and don’t expect to. Baldwin is good on sitcoms, but has zero credibility with me on fatherhood. Why? Because he seems primarily interested in blaming someone for his troubles—and being bitter and angry about it.

To my mind, the bottom line is that Dad is the grown-up in any relationship with is child or stepchild. NOTHING anyone does justifies a father abusing his child. NOTHING. Nothing ANYONE does. Period. And by my lights, abusing a child includes hitting him, screaming obscenities at her over the phone, or engaging in spite-, ego- and power-driven battles with the child’s other parent(s).

As an advocate for fathers, I find it incredibly counter-productive when fathers focus so much attention, energy and verbiage on blaming someone else for their situation. I suspect that comment might piss some people off, so I’ll explain.

Strategically, the effort to improve fathers’ position/status/responsibility within the family is undermined when the loudest (and, often, ONLY) words folks hear about fathering are variations on these 2 sentiments: “mothers are b—chs” and “the courts (or “the people’s republic of insert-state-here”) are out to screw me/us.” And that’s merely the problems this creates strategically for the fatherhood movement—and says nothing about how such attitudes poison our very own children.

People who have followed my work over the years know that I’m a hard-ass on this subject. My job as a dad is to work on strengthening my relationship with my children. The first, primary step in that process is self-examination: looking at my own attitudes, values, words and actions. Close on its heels is the step of then responding to my self-examination (and the situations that life presents) in ways that best support and strengthen my children’s physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological growth. These steps regularly demand self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is seldom fun, but that's life; if I didn’t want to have any self-sacrifice, I should not have become a father (or a human being for that matter…but that’s another rant!)

Indeed, there is a strong argument that these steps are the ONLY things I can do. I can never control the attitudes, behaviors or words of another person—I can only control my own. So my job is to spend my energy keeping my side of the street as clean as I possibly can—not matter WHAT anyone else does.To quote my good friend (and non-custodial, divorced father) Bill Klatte: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the people I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.” (BTW, if you’re a divorced dad who hasn’t yet read Bill’s book Live-away Dads: Staying a Part of Your Children's Lives When They Aren't a Part of Your Home, then you’re operating with one hand tied behind your back.)

And to quote Thomas Aquinas: “Resentment is the sword with which we pierce our own soul” (Or as Phillip Fullmer put it when asked if he resented being fired as Tennessee’s football coach after all those years: “No, because resenting someone is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.”)

There are many forums and men welcoming the message that the Alec Baldwins of the world disseminate. It’s always been one of my goals to fight messages of bitterness, blame and anger among dads. The best service fathers can give to one another is to engage in self-examination and support each other in doing the next right thing to help our daughter grow up healthy—even if she (or anyone else) tells us to “go f—k yourself” in the moments or weeks or years after we do the right thing.

My job is my job and my life is not someone else’s fault. To think or act otherwise is to think and act as a child. And when I’m a dad, someone else gets to be the child—not me.

“Stop Playing Like a Girl” Part 3

For the last couple of days, I’ve blogged about a dad who get annoyed when with his stepdaughters play “girlish” games like dress-up. As promised, today I’m providing some simple activities that stepdads and dads can do with their daughters to embrace and participate in girl play.

There are plenty of activities you and your daughter can share to stay connected in a healthy way while respecting your daughter’s need for independent play and physical boundaries as she grows up. Look at the following list for fun things to do together and then be inspired to find your own:

Get down on the floor and play dolls
Take dance lessons—or just make up dances @ home
Pillow fight
Gentle roughhousing
Hold hands while going for walks
Build something
Play in the pool
Lay in the hammock and look at the stars
Toboggan or sled
Give each other manicures
Let her put makeup on your face
Get dressed up yourself when she’s playing dress-up
Groom the dog

You can find dozens of other ideas in my book The Dads & Daughters® Togetherness Guide: 54 Fun Activities to Help Build a Great Relationship.

“Stop Playing Like a Girl” Part 2

Yesterday, I began blogging about a dad who seems impatient with his stepdaughters’ manner of playing, which he sees as too “girly.” And he doesn’t seem to believe that his attitude hurts the daughters’ feelings.

I believe that any dad who believes that his attitudes might not hurt (or, alternatively, help) his daughters is operating on a false premise. Unfortunately, evidence indicates that most fathers agree that their influence on their daughters is minimal.

For example, a 2004 national poll--the first (and apparently only) one of its kind—of US fathers showed that 75 percent of dads think they have good or excellent relationships with their daughters. But at the same time, 66 percent said that their active involvement in their daughters’ lives is NOT crucial to her health and well-being. In my opinion, those 66 percent are dead wrong.

We don’t hear much talk about the influence of fathers on daughters. It’s much more common to hear about how girls are influenced by their mothers. But all it takes is a moment’s reflection to start realizing the huge impact we fathers have on every one of our daughters. To find the roots of a father’s influence, think of your own daughter (or, if you’re a woman, reflect on your own dad or stepdad). It’s normal and natural that a girl wants to know what’s interesting to, or gets the attention of, members of the opposite sex. That’s important knowledge for her to have even if she never dates a boy or marries a man, because she lives in a world half full of boys and men.

Where will she turn first for this information? Most often, she’ll turn to the first member of the opposite sex she gets to know: Dad. Even a stepfather, while not necessarily the first male a girl knows, has huge influence because he spends so much time with her.

We hold a position of unique leverage in our daughters’ lives: First Man. The way we act toward our daughters and the other females in her life set the standard for what she will expect from boys and men. The same is true for our attitudes, words and beliefs. In all of these, we represent to her the richness, honor and value of being a man. When we are true to her and true to the best in our masculine heritage, she will learn to respect men and treat them as equals. She will learn to gravitate toward men who respect her and treat her as an equal, while turning away from men who threaten, violate and abuse. That’s good for both a daughter and her father.

Tomorrow, I’ll blog about some actions dads can take to engage more fully with the daughters, build stronger attitudes about them—and, as a result—have more FUN with your daughters.

“Stop Playing Like a Girl!” #1

What if a dad or stepdad scoffs at the things girls like to do, like dress up, play with dolls, dance, play make-believe and the like? I recently heard about a stepfather who genuinely love his new daughters, but is used to life (and play) with his own two biological sons.

He expresses annoyance at the girls’ play activities, which he sees as too “girly.” And he doesn’t seem to believe that his attitude hurts the daughters’ feelings.

How can he come to understand that this kind of play is normal and healthy for girls (and can also be normal and healthy for boys like his sons)? How can he come to understand that his words and attitude have a major impact on how his daughters see themselves?

First off, I think it helps to remember that this dad, like every dad of daughters or stepdaughters, operates with a significant hurdle in front of him: all of us fathers grew up as boys. We don’t know what it’s like to be a girl or grow up as a girl, so a girl’s life can be (and often IS) very baffling for us to witness and understand.

This is especially frustrating for moms, stepmoms and women professionals who work with families; as former girls, they know tons more about growing up a girl than I ever will (and I wrote two books about it!). The challenge for women like these is to have realistic expectations about what Dad or Stepdad will know and when he’ll know it. That can easily make for an environment of tension at home when conflict over “girlish” play arises.

Tomorrow, I’ll explain more about the kind of impact on daughters that dads and stepdads have—whether we realize it or not. And come back over the weekend for some tips on how we Dads can get over our resistance to “playing like a girl.”

Simplify the Holidays

We can all use resources to help reduce stress around the Holidays—especially this year, when economic stresses are multiplying the stress factor.

Quoting from Dr. Suess’ Grinch ("And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more!"), The Center for a New American Dream is offering a free download booklet called “Simplify the Holidays.”

It includes practical tips for having a holiday with more joy and less stuff. Specifically, the booklet contains guides to help you set a budget, relieve stress, come up with new gift ideas, and make your holiday season more meaningful.

Check out my Holiday Ten Tips for Dads & Daughters® from earlier this month—or the gender-inclusive version for Dads & Kids at Fathers.com.

Dreams for Daughters

I admire the National Women’s Law Center for the good work they do—and I’m inspired by their persistence against many years of too-frequent resistance to fairness and equity for girls and women.

Today, NWLC sent our an email today that provided another kind of inspiration. They quoted from a speech given three years ago at NWLC’s annual awards dinner. The speaker (author of a book called “Dreams from My Father” who has since become President-Elect) shared his hopes for his two young daughters:

"That they'll be able to dream without limit, achieve without constraint, and be absolutely free to seek their own happiness and achievement. At its heart, this has always been the essence of the women's movement in America, the quest to ensure that our daughters will have the same opportunities as our sons."

I think that social changes triggered by the women’s movement have also opened up to our sons (including all of us fathers) some the “same opportunities” traditionally available primarily tom women. Chief among them is the opportunity to be fully-engaged parents, more actively involved in the day-today rearing of our children.

That’s a gift—even a dream come true--for me and many Dads I meet.

Reflect on your dreams for your daughter—and for yourself as a father. Then share some of those dreams with your daughter—and with us in a comment on this blog.

When Things Look Bad to Her—and She’s Right

In today’s New York Times, columnist Judith Warner describes (with great honesty, I think) the dilemmas she faces in talking with her children about bad news, like terrorism in Mumbai, the Black Friday trampling death @ Wal Mart, etc.

She raises an especially Gordian problem—how do we respond when one of our children has an ongoing fascination with bad news, how bad things happen, what they look like, and why bad things happen.

Good parenting suggests that you “confirm for your child what he thinks he’s already observing,” as one expert told the Wall Street Journal. I think we also have to keep learning to know our child as the individual she is—so we can do our best to respond to that individual with comfort, appropriate knowledge—and hope.

Please use the comment function to share your experiences with explaining bad news to your children—what seemed to work well and what didn’t. Other parents will benefit from your insight.

Smart Girls at the Party

You may have heard some buzz about the new online program Smart Girls at the Party, from former SNL star Amy Poehler. It’s a web-based TV show profiling and celebrating pre-teen girls of achievement.

Writer and women’s activist Marianne Schnall interviewed Poehler for Huffington Post, where Amy explains the program’s genesis:

The idea came out of us wishing we had a time machine so we could go back to the younger versions of ourselves and let them know it was gonna be ok. We wanted to do a show that we would have wanted to watch at that age. And we knew we wanted to have a dance party at the end. We basically started with the dance party and worked backwards.

Girls have to fight against a lot of the same stuff we did growing up...peer pressure, exploitation, etc. But what worries me the most is this trend that caring about something isn't cool. That it's better to comment on something than to commit to it. That it's so much cooler to be unmotivated and indifferent. Our culture can get so snarky and ironic sometimes and we kind of wanted Smart Girls to celebrate the opposite of that.

Watch some episodes with your daughter or stepdaughter and listen to what she thinks about them. Then, share her thoughts—and your own—in a comment below.

Connecting Redux

I recently shared a post (How Do I Connect?) from this blog at another website. The topic is how the mundane activities of life are the likeliest places in which we build strong connections with our kids—rather than the “big flashy” events (like going to Disneyworld). Today, at that other website, I got a response from a mother with daughters aged 13, 16 & 19. Her husband—their father—died a year ago. These are (IMHO) profound words to remember as we think about how to positively impact our daughters & stepdaughters…….

I am sure my daughters were permanently enhanced, not crippled by their relationship with their dad. Even after his passing they talk about everything from how beautiful he was to what great values he instilled.
As for how professionals [working with families] can encourage connection, I absolutely agree that it is the mundane everyday stuff that means the most. One of my daughters greatest moment of dad was the time he took her to the ER instead of me. (it had always been a mom thing in our household to deal with doctors) I talked him into it, because I knew it was important, and it was one of their last bonding times. Also the week before he passed, he and my youngest daughter
made salmon for dinner together and she would not trade that moment for anything in the world. He also let her give him a shave, which turned out funky but all she remembers is dad let her cut his hair, and he had that crazy haircut when he died. These are just a few of my daughters’ greatest dad stories, not the concerts or museum visits.
Hope this helps someone.

Those words helped me—and provide us dads and stepdads with profound food for thought.

Grateful Community of Dads

Today, I read an online posting from a soldier about one of my books; it was inspiring to read, so I wanted to share it with you.

I have just finished the book Dads & Daughters®: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter and I can not thank the author as well the other fathers who make a book like that possible enough. I am currently deployed and will be able to see my daughter by Christmas (which is the best Christmas gift of all). This book has changed the way I look at a lot of things. I have always been 100% involved in my daughter’s life and activities as long as I am there. The book has shed light on why my daughter keeps everything I have sent her even when at times I know she is confused about her daddy being gone this long (she is almost 6).
It has reaffirmed the future and the importance I do play in my daughter’s future. Never once have I thought that my involvement and time was futile but it is so nice to read about so many other dads and daughters in the same position. I know that I am on the right path and
will continue to do all that I can.
All the dads that participate in all that your daughter does, I salute you. I have seen so many Fathers who play little role in their daughters’ lives. My daughter is so much further ahead of her classmates. We all make a bigger difference that we will ever know.

When a person is a father or stepfather, every day can (and, perhaps, should) be Thanksgiving—a day to find reasons aplenty to be grateful for our children and grateful for the privilege of being Dad. Have a great Thanksgiving weekend, no matter where you are.

How Do I Connect?

I got an email yesterday from the dad of 4 year old and 19 month old daughters who describes his marriage as “wonderful.” He asked: “How can I reach out to connect with my kids more at their age? Most of the info I read seems to be for older girls.”

Here are the 3 things I suggested that he try:

1) Join up with the free Yahoo group "DadTalk" and ask is question there. DadTalk has been around for 9 years and has a cadre of good dads and stepdads of daughters (with kids of all ages) with good suggestions based on their experience.

2) Get my book The Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide: 54 Fun Activities to Help Build a Great Relationship. The title is self-explanatory, and the activities are divided by age of the girl.

3) If you’re giving your daughters as much time and attention as possible, then don’t worry overly about your connection. Time and presence build the connection, IMHO. The time and attention can come while changing diapers, making dinner and other mundane tasks--it doesn’t all have to come in big, "special" activities. I've come to believe that our kids and us really get to know each other in the mundane, ordinary activities of life...as long as we are THERE during those mundane, ordinary activities. So, make sure you're showing up.

I hope these suggestions were helpful to him—and you, too. Share your ideas for dad-daughter connection in a comment below.

Loving Kids-In-Law Isn’t Automatic

My daughter and her boyfriend got formally engaged last weekend. That’s her ring (and hand!) in the picture. This is a first for me--and her, BTW! ;-)

This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a couple of reasons.

First, and most important, because I love and am impressed with my daughter and future son-in-law. I also love the great partnership the two of them have. It will come to no surprise to learn than my daughter (like her sister) is pretty special and remarkable—and thus deserves a great life partner. (Most dads and stepdads I know feel the same way about their daughters—and a good thing too!) So I’m very happy for the two of them separately and for the pair they are (and will be) together.

My second reason is one of heritage. I was blessed with two grandparents, Frank Barnes and Catherine Hughes, who I always loved greatly. As a child and young man, Bepa and Cacky (as we kids called them) taught me the importance of honesty, compassion, justice, tolerance, forgiveness, and family.

But it wasn’t until my own children were older that I realized another important—and difficult--lesson they taught me.

My mother was their oldest child and the first to marry. For a number of reasons (some quite defensible), they were not thrilled with her choice of husband, my dad. But they found their way to loving him. Even with his imperfections, they saw that Dad was a good man at heart. And, during my lifetime, they embraced him as their own child. They did the same with the other people who married into their family: my Uncle Matt, Aunt Mickey and Aunt Ruth.

As a result, I was very close to my aunts, uncles and many cousins. I loved this extended family with all its chaos and affection and celebrations. But I took that gift for granted—not even recognizing how this family was Cacky and Bepa’s gift to us.

When my daughter and her fiancé got serious with each other, I suddenly realized that a good relationship between me and this good young man was not automatic. I needed to get to know him, include him in my life and take the risk of growing close to him (and growing close to them as a couple). For the first time, I saw that my grandparents’ embrace of their children-in-law was not automatic, either—even though it always looked automatic to me.

No, Cacky and Bepa had to take risks, too. And they took them even when (as with my father) they had more reason to hesitate than I’ll ever have with my future son-in-law.

Now, many years after their death, I began to understand the level of spiritual strength and capacity of love this required. To my eyes and experience, Bepa & Cacky did not discriminate between their biological children and the people their biological children married. They loved them all, period. Same for all their grandchildren.

What a wonderful and powerful example they set for their children and us grandchildren. It’s an example lived out in my generation and our parents’ generation. And it’s the example I try to follow with and for my soon-to-be-son-in-law and my daughters.

Thanks, Cacky & Bepa, for that gift and heritage. Your great-grandchildren don’t know you the way we grandkids knew you—but they do know you nonetheless.

Congratulations to you—and to my daughter and soon son—for nurturing such spiritual strength and capacity of love.

So Sexy So Soon

The dangers of hyper-sexualizing children have been well documented. Dads (and moms) are distressed by, frightened by and sick of the onslaught of “sexualized” messages and images raining down on our daughters—and sons.

Two women for whom I have the greatest respect have written a guide for parents on how to deal with this problem: “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect their Kids” by Dr. Jean Kilbourne and Dr. Diane Levin. Jean and Diane are veteran researchers and advocates on marketing to children and I’ve shared platforms with them many times through the years. This new book is very, very needed and very well done.

For children today, learning about sex too soon is only one problem. Another serious issues is what the authors call “the synthetic and cynical source of a child’s information.” Popular culture and technology shower mixed and developmentally inappropriate messages on young children who don’t yet have the emotional sophistication to understand what they are hearing and seeing.

The result: kids have distorted, unhealthy notions about sex, sexuality, their bodies, relationships, gender—the list goes on. On top of that, some kids are getting into increasing trouble emotionally and socially by engaging in precocious sexual behavior. We are left with little girls wanting to go on diets so they can be “sexy,” little boys getting suspended from school for sexual harassment, and parents in desperate need of guidance.

“So Sexy So Soon” provides it. If you’re the dad (or mom) of children today, read it.