Saluting Our Fathers on Father's Day

"One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters." ~ - George Herbert

Fatherhood is filled with joy and challenge. A father’s role in the lives of his children provides untold benefit: economic stability, nurturing, role modeling, and security and this role cannot be diminished.

The days of sons working alongside their fathers is gone, and the bonding and instruction in a value-driven life that happened in that environment has been replaced by fathers more in absentia than not. Children still crave the interactive instructions that used to occur during our more agrarian society, and today more than ever, the gifts fatherhood brings to children is invaluable. Fathers today have become so much more aware of the need to balance their work and family time and we salute their awareness!

Fathers today enjoy attending their children’s games and recitals. Fathers today are taking a good strong look at what they did not receive from their own fathers and are supplying it. Fathers today are leading purpose driven lives in consideration of the nurturing of their children’s emotional, physical and spiritual needs and deserve heartfelt applause!

Fathers today realize that their relationship with both their sons as well as their daughters invokes a profound influence and they establish open lines of communication during the grade school years so that when the angst of teenagedom hits, the conversation and connection continues to flow. Fathers are spending time alone with their children and the payback comes up in Aces!

I celebrate all of the aspects of fatherhood and I can’t say enough about the importance fathers bring to their families. Here are some things I’ve learned by observing fathers.

*A strong father will inspire both love and fear, and perhaps a little of each is a good thing.

*You weren’t born a father. You grow into it as a stage of your development.

*You can become a good father even if you didn’t have one.

*It’s important that you allow your children to see that you love their mother.

*Believe in your children; support them in all they wish to undertake.

*The life you are living IS the Instruction Manual for your children on how to live their lives.

*Small boys look up to big men and their influence.

*Big, successful powerful men appear tenderhearted when their children run into their arms.

*You don’t have to be rich to leave your children a very rich inheritance. What would you like to leave them?
A father and his son isn’t created with flesh and blood but with the heart.

*If a son is never educated, it’s his father’s fault; and if a son neglects his duties, both the father and son are to blame.

*Build your own character and your sons will emulate you.

*A father’s key role is as Protector and it fulfills a child’s strongest needs.

*Seek to understand your own children. It is the work of great wisdom.

Being a dad is a demanding task and it can also be very rewarding. Most dads love their children and want their lives to be better than their own childhood. I salute dads for their conscious decision to fulfill the important role championship fatherhood demands. Happy Father’s Day!

"Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life." ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities