Each summer my dad, who was born and raised in Crested Butte would take my brothers and me to his home town.  I learned to fish there, to skip a rock on a lake, and to shoot a rifle.  I even sneaked a swig from a cigar there when I was 10.

At the time I had no idea how those trips completed me in a manner of experiences what was then commonplace, but is now harder to accomplish.

With my children, our summer days involved many structured events, watching a fireworks display (rather than lighting our own as was my experience) and still enjoying outings and grilling.

I spoke to my daughter recently and she commented how important and precious her summer days with me were to her, and you know what?  Those days are now just as precious to me as they are to her, those are the memories that sustain me.

For those that glance at these words, please comment on what memories or plans you have about your father or being a father during the long, warm days of summer. 

  In 1910, Sonora Smart from Spokane Washington, proposed a celebration of fathers be held on June 5th of each year, her father's (a Civil War veteran) birthday.  In 1972, then President Richard Nixon formally made Father's Day a nationally recongized day to be held on the 3rd Sunday of June.

  As we celebrate fathers this year we are highly aware of the importance of fathers in the positive, or negative, development of children.  We know one in three children will wake up on fathers day not even knowing their biologicial father, either in name or due to a permanent absence.  We also know, however, that more and more fathers are great fathers.  This very website sees thousands of visitors each month.  In Colorado, the fatherhood programs set up all over Colorado has served over 5,000 fathers in the past four and a half years.  In all of these instances these basic truths about good fathering has been brought forth:

1. Presence - A three-part process involving father engagement, availability and responsibility in their relationship to their child(ren)

2. Cooperative Parenting - Fathers, mothers and other caregivers all working together to support the child(ren)'s optimal development, and

3. Healthy Living - Providing a role model through healthy lifestyle, education and appropriate social behaviors that teach work and personal ethics, as well as social norms, to help children grow to become happy and productive members of society.

 Celebrating fathers that do right for their children is to celebrate such a basic duty, but a very, very important one.

Have you ever thought about what your life would have been like if you didn't have a father, or perhaps, if you had a different father?

A father presence has led to many statistical studies that certainly indicate that a father brings income, discipline, humor and much more into a child's life, while no father leads to dire statistics of higher poverty and more negative outcomes for children.  But this isn't to say the presence of an abusive father is better - this is more to say a positive father brings positive child outcomes.  The question becomes is an abusive father better than no father?  I believe the answer is no - an abusive father, that doesn't change, is far worse. 

Consider that an abusive fathering leads to children growing into adults that have a difficult time forming long lasting relationships due to lack of trust in others and an inability to love, studies also indicate this trust factor affects the ability to hold onto jobs long term.  Abuse also hampers self esteem and if the abuse is sexual in nature it leads to a feeling of shame and the carrying of a stigma that is life long.  Studies also indicate that an abusive parent increases alcohol and drug addiction in the children, as they attempt to alleviate the painful thoughts of being abused. 

Why this is being mentioned here is due to April being Child Abuse Prevention Month.  Any who may chance upon these words may pause to think about if they do any sort of abuse to their children, no matter how small, from a simple name call, to physical abuse.  Perhaps you know someone who is being abusive and want to intercede? 

Our children deserve the best - lets make sure our communities assure they get it.

She was almost born on Valentine’s Day; actually it was 7:11 a.m. on the 15^th of February when she entered the world and completely changed my world.  My daughter is now 23, but each time I see her the same feelings of that first moment still emerge from my heart.  It is combined feeling of joy, pride, fulfillment, thankfulness, and humility, mixed with desires to protect and help.

Each day she lived at home found me excited to wake up and see her (and later along with my son), and to come home from work to help with homework or simply to have our dinners together and play. Children become central to your joy and purpose in life (I challenge anyone to tell me otherwise).

Daughters, do in fact, as my experience proves, have an innate ability to wrap their father around their finger and find ways to get a dad to do things for them.  Proof to this point is when my, then ice skating champion to be, had me buying skates for her that were twice what I had planned.  Of course, watching her skate made it all worthwhile, but darn if I would of bought those skates at the price for anyone else. 

When my wife, son and I dropped off our daughter at her college of choice it was a dark day for me, I found myself literally unable to breath.  I recall, previous to that day, driving her to the college orientation, four hours from our home, only to find we were one day to early, so we had to go home and repeat that trip the next day.  But, instead of being angry, I was actually so happy to be able to spend all that time with her before the emptiness she left in our home descended upon us.

Now, my daughter, wife and I now share the loss of our son/ brother together.  Luckily, it is my daughter, that has always brought joy to us, that still brings joy.  Without her I know I would not be able to go on. All those many feelings she stirred from the moment of her birth are still there and provide a balance of sweetness to the bitterness life recently brought to us.

My son once, in a rare moment of anger, told my daughter she is a “butt in the pain” – but I now tell him, “no, she is a light in the pain,” and I find him agreeing.

Fathers be kind to your daughters, they then will turn to be blessings during the darkness that life often brings.

In an interview that will be published in June I was asked, "What do you feel is the most important thing a father can provide for his child?"

How would you answer? My response might have been different twenty years ago and may well be different twenty years from now (my kids are approaching 23, 21, 19 and 17) but this is how I responded today.

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I’ve been a follower of Mark Brady’s blog, The Committed Parent: Translating social neuroscience to help parents raise kids we can live with and we’re crazy about, for some time. In a recent post, Wiring the Brain for Wisdom, Brady cites research that identifies compassion, self-understanding, morality and emotional stability as some of the cornerstones of wisdom. He then expounds upon his belief in the importance of social neuroscience and the heart and brain connection in regards to wisdom. He also mentions the cultivation of learned fearlessness, and includes Princeton philosophy professor and social critic, Cornel West as someone who he believes demonstrates “learned fearlessness with deep roots planted early in his heart.” – Brady began his post with a quote by West on President Obama.

What does this have to do with the title of this post, “Be there for them”?

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We may be a fatherhood site but one of our best-kept secrets is our page for moms! Follow this link for almost 20 interactive websites for moms including Mile High Mommas, Moms Like Me, and Amazing Moms.

I also encourage you to check out New York Times Magazine contributing writer, Lisa Belkin’s blog: Motherlode – Adventures in Parenting, the podcasts of the dynamic mother-daughter duo of Marti and Erin Erickson at Good Enough Moms and our own Colorado Parent Online Magazine.

An old Swahili proverb says, Penzi la mama tamu, haliishi hamu (Mother's love is so sweet that you never have enough of it.) May our children know and live in the security and sweetness of a mother’s love.

Norman Maclean learned the discipline, grace and rhythm of life fly-fishing with his Scottish Presbyterian father. I learned it doing windows for Mesdames (I understand that’s the plural form of Mrs.) Tracy, Smith and Lake with my Easter and Christmas only Methodist dad of Scandinavian and British descent.

If spring was in the air, so was the commingled aroma of dusty old screens and WindexTM. Mesdames Tracy, Smith and Lake were all widows who attended the Methodist Church in our small Michigan town of 1200 or so. Although he wasn’t much for the Sunday sermon and offering he was one for works of service and I, as his first born and only son, got to come along.

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Our sons will become men. The question is what kind and when. Masculinity, what we expect from men, is a cultural concept. Joe Ehrmann, “head coach” of Coach for America believes that our society does a terrible job of teaching boys how to become men. Joe’s assessment is that the standard criteria of athletic ability, sexual conquest and economic success create a false masculinity that sets men up for failure. It produces a compare and compete mentality that leaves most men feeling isolated and alone.

More and more men are recognizing the emptiness of such pursuits but often it takes the unselfish love of another who is willing to peel away the façade and tenaciously pursue a man’s heart to open them up to the possibility of change. As an introduction to the theme of his book, Wrestling with Love: How men struggle with intimacy with women, children, parents, and each other, Samuel Osherson insightfully recalls a scene from The Wizard of Oz.

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Everything was wrong. The antiseptic smells, the bedside table, the pull around curtain and the pajamas. I had never seen my grandfather in pajamas. I had never seen him so thin and so helpless. He was always the strong one with big hands, a big smile and a high-pitched laugh. There in the assisted living facility not only was he out of his environment but he wanted to rid himself of life itself. He was being redefined in ways he couldn’t fathom or believe.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Oh how I wanted to inject those words of Dylan Thomas into his veins and restore the strong man I knew in my youth and childhood.

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