Here's what I think Dad might want for Father's Day today

Hey, it's Father's Day, so I just wanted to pop in for an off-the-normal-schedule post to offer up a thought...

If you haven't bought Dad anything for his big day today (assuming you're even planning to get him something in the first place), I have a suggestion for a gift that will cost you nothing.

And please understand I'm not saying that all fathers want this. You can't say all dads want a certain thing any more than you can say all moms want a certain thing. Everyone is different.

But from my experience, I think there's a good chance the dad in your life will enjoy this particular present. And it's this:

Leave him alone.

Just for an hour or so. Leave him alone. Let him do what he wants or go wherever he wants to go. By himself. In a noiseless environment. Just be quiet and leave him alone.

That's all. Dad wouldn't mind some alone time. It's none of your business what he does with it. He may very likely just sit on the couch with his hand in his pants. Doesn't matter. The key factors here are:

• Leave Dad alone
• Be quiet
• Don't ask him what he's doing

Do we have that, kids?

Happy Father's Day to all of my fellow dads. And to the rest of you, just leave us alone for a few minutes, OK? Great, thanks.

The father's long journey (Blog Rerun)

(NOTE: Once a month or so, I like to resurrect a past blog post and run it, largely because it saves me from having to write a new one. This is one I'm bringing back because I just really like it, and because the feeling I describe is even more intense now than it was when this post first ran on April 18, 2012. I hope you enjoy it.)


On Tuesdays, Terry babysits a 2-year-old girl named Ava. Ava gets dropped off around 7 in the morning and doesn't leave until 5 or 5:30 in the afternoon, so we see a lot of her when she's here.

Like many 2-year-olds, Ava takes afternoon naps. I am insanely jealous of Ava for this. I would give almost anything (and I'm not kidding) for the privilege of taking afternoon naps. Or morning naps. Or just about any kind of nap to supplement the sleep I get at night.

Anyway, Ava takes naps. She does this in a playpen Terry keeps in our walk-in closet. She puts Ava down in there, turns on a fan for white noise, and usually has a few hours to herself after that. Ava is an expert sleeper, at least when she really wants to be.

A lot of times after Ava leaves, I'll come home from work and the playpen will still be set up in the closet. Often I'll just grumble about it and walk around the playpen as I take off my work clothes and put on whatever clothes are needed for that evening's activities.

But other times I'll stow the playpen away myself, thus taking at least one small thing off of Terry's seemingly endless to-do list. It's one of those Pack and Play models that folds up into a relatively compact 3-foot rectangle. We've had it since 1994, the year my oldest daughter was born. I have put up and taken down that playpen so many times in the ensuing 18 years, I'm pretty sure I could do it in my sleep (and I probably have done just that at some point when one of our kids or another was keeping us up nights).

I generally don't think anything of it, because this is a chore that literally takes all of 60 seconds to complete. But the other day I was taking down the playpen and it felt strange to me. Really strange. Like it belonged to someone else.

Never mind that this playpen is ours and always has been ours. Never mind that Terry is probably the only person who has lugged it around more than I have, or that all five of my kids have slept and/or played in it at some point in their lives. It just didn't feel like it had anything to do with me.

Nowadays, almost nothing related to my kids' babyhood feels connected to me. I come across an old baby toy and it seems like it's from someone else's life altogether. I feel so far removed from baby toys and bottles and playpens and strollers and pacifiers and diapers and the whole thing that it's hard to believe I helped raise five kids. You could almost convince me we didn't have any of them when they were babies, and that instead someone dropped each of them off at our house when they turned 6 years old.

I know that's not true, of course. There is photographic evidence that I have been, in fact, a father of newborns. And infants and toddlers, too. There are all sorts of pictures of me holding babies, burping babies, feeding babies, sleeping with babies on my chest, etc. And I remember it all. But still, there's this strange feeling that it happened to someone else years and years and years ago. I'm only 42. Why do I feel like this?

I guess it's because I'm inundated with Older Kid Experiences now: middle school, high school, driving lessons, college tours, etc. We still have little Jack tying us back to pre-adolescence, but as far as I can tell, it has been 100 years since he was born. It's all just so distant.

Since I've become aware of this strange feeling, I've been hoping my brain could make some sense of it. After all, I've been a father for less than 20 years. That's really not all that long, when you think about it. It's not like I'm an 80-year-old grandpa whose parenting years are far, far behind him. I'm still in the middle of this great test, and I'll continue being in the middle of it for many more years.

But still, I feel...finished with part of it, I guess. Maybe this is God's way of telling me, "Good job, young man. (NOTE: To God, we're all young.) You got through this much of it just fine, like I said you would. Remember all those times you doubted whether you could take one more night of walking the floor with a crying baby? Those days at work when you wondered whether you would make ends meet? Those times when you questioned whether you were any good at being a dad? I know you still ask those questions. But I want you to realize how far you've come, and I want you to realize that you'll make it to the end.

"And most of all, I want you to continue relying on Me. I know sometimes you forget I'm there, and that's OK. For a little while, at least. I'll always be there to nudge you and remind you where your strength comes from. So just keep on going. You'll always be a parent, just like I will always be Your Father, and you still have a long way to go. But having come this far should tell you that you're in good hands."

Yeah, that's probably it.

The art of dadness

It's tricky being a father in the 21st century.

Guys in my generation are influenced by two very different styles of parenting: On one hand, most of us had fathers who were of the old school. They were generally good dads, but they left the majority of parenting duties to their wives. Their involvement in the child-rearing process was fairly limited to serving as procreators, disciplinarians and financial backers. And in some cases, not much else.

On the other hand, we ourselves are raising kids at a time when fathers are (happily) expected to be far more hands-on. Unlike many of our dads, we were right there to witness the birth of our children, which as Sting once very aptly said makes the whole thing "much more bloody and profound." In that alone we are sometimes more closely connected to our kids from the very start than our fathers might have been.

We are also rightly expected to take part in all day-to-day aspects of parenting. This is eminently fair but also sometimes a little challenging. The only role models we had for this growing up were our moms, since our dads were so often out working or doing other manly, dad-like things and were therefore absent from the minutiae of having kids. Consequently, a lot of us are simply carbon copies of our mothers when it comes to parenting style.

Women, for the most part, are pretty understanding of this ongoing conflict in our lives and as a gender have been remarkably tolerant of our fatherly shortcomings. One side effect of this is that the bar is set fairly low for modern dads, and anything we do right is met with cheers and applause.

Seriously, it's not that difficult to be considered a good dad nowadays. You show up to little league games, change a few diapers, stay home and watch the kids when your wife goes out and, presto, you're suddenly a candidate for Father of the Year. I've always thought the standards should be a lot higher than that. If we're going to be what we're supposed to be as dads, I think someone needs to push us a little harder.

And speaking of watching the kids, you know what has always bothered me? When someone sees me alone with my children and asks whether I'm "babysitting" them. As if they don't actually belong to me and I'm just pretending to be a parent for a bit while my wife is out shopping. The two irksome implications of that question are:

(1) The responsibility for watching the kids really falls on my wife and I'm graciously offering to do her job for her, and

(2) I'm incompetent and can't be trusted to do this for too long.

In all fairness, I don't think people who ask whether I'm "babysitting" my kids mean anything negative by it, and usually they're of an older generation that simply had a different approach to parenting. But it still bothers me.

I am of the opinion that fathers are invaluable. That's not at all to say that single mothers can't raise quality kids. They do it all the time, and they amaze me. (I know some great single fathers, too.) I'm just saying that a dad brings something to the equation that's hard for a parent of the other gender to match, just as a father on his own by definition can't give his kids everything a mother can.

I am very blessed to serve on the board of directors of The City Mission, an incredible organization in Cleveland that helps people whose lives are in crisis. Next month, the Mission will conduct a day-long event called "Where's Papa? A Symposium on Father Absence." The speaker, Dr. David Stoop, has written more than 20 books that deal with parenting, and specifically with the role of fathers in raising children.

I presume that Dr. Stoop is going to point to the dozens of studies showing the negative social, developmental and financial impact of absent fathers on our society. But beyond that, I just hope that in some small way the event lends credence to the idea that dads are worth something. Popular culture has done a lot to denigrate the role of fathers, and we're often viewed as optional accessories. As I said, this in no way detracts from the efforts of single parents, but I like to think that what we do as fathers is vastly important, and always will be.

I had a great dad. He was goofy, and he had his quirks and faults, but not for a second – not for a single second – did I ever doubt that he loved me and cared for my well-being. The effect of that simple fact on my life has been immeasurably positive, and I want my kids to enjoy the same thing.

Because let's face it: We can't rely on moms to tell stupid jokes, make bad puns, wear hideously mismatched outfits in public, and fall asleep on the couch with their hands in their pants. These are time-honored dad traditions, and by God, I will do everything in my power to uphold them.