One of the many lasting images I treasure from my days of working at Eckerd Youth Alternatives, Inc. (EYA) is a blue bumper sticker that clung to the back of every white camp utility truck and the white 15-passenger vans we used to transport kids. I'm not sure there was a bigger source of pride in our organization at that time than these small stickers boasting one giant message: "We've hugged our kids today."

It was fitting this message was attached to the back of the camp vehicles. I believe Jack Eckerd, Eckerd Drug Store and EYA Founder, used these stickers to convince the world a hug is the best vehicle to reach a child's heart. Although EYA was home to kids facing many different challenges in their lives, Mr. Eckerd was sure a hug was the simplest yet most lasting solution to every child's struggle. And in all likelihood it prevented one or two. 

Growing up my parents would have had every right to attach that bumper sticker to the back of our family cars. My mom and dad were big on hugging. I don't know that we ever walked out the door in the morning without a hug goodbye or went to bed without a hug goodnight. Reality probably says they skipped a few hugs, but I'm grateful today my memory swears I grew up inside the grasp of one giant hug. I'm even more grateful that, still today, as an overgrown 50 year old son, my mom and dad find a way to get their arms around me and greet me with a hug every time they see me. 

I didn't know growing up how powerfully those hugs shaped my life. They literally squeezed and molded me into a person who felt loved, wanted, and secure. As a child I never considered those simple and seemingly routine hugs with much introspection. But those bumper stickers and witnessing the therapeutic role hugging played in changing the lives of teenagers that many people thought were unchangeable helped me understand - there is nothing simple or routine about a hug. 

Someone once said "a hug is like a bandage to a hurting wound." At Eckerd I came to believe in the healing powers of a hug. Early in my career as a counselor I watched from the outside as one sad and insecure kid after another was sprung back to life inside the caring arms of their chief (all the camp counselors were referred to as chiefs). Then I began hugging kids myself. Sometimes two or three at a time. There is nothing in this world that compares to holding a kid, feeling their hurts stream through your arms and out into some peaceful nowhere, and then replacing them with the love of someone who is committed to seeing, at least for the few seconds inside the guarded arms of that embrace, that hurt has no way of getting back in. 

A lot of research has been conducted on the healing power of hugs. Many therapies have been developed based on it. If you're interested in the science behind hugs I encourage you to google the "healing power of hugs". If you do you'll learn all about the cortisol and oxytocin hormones and how science says hugs work with these hormones to reduce our stress and make us overall healthier creatures. 

I'm not an anti-science guy. I enjoy science. In many cases, though, for me science turns out to be a more detailed explanation or evidence of what I already knew. So many of the hurts we face in the world come from feelings that we don't belong, we're unloveable, and we're afraid we might stay that way our entire lives. Nothing disproves those feelings faster than a warm hug. If cortisol and oxytocin come into play, I find that interesting. But in the end a hug is really just a quiet way, and sometimes the most convincing way, to say I love you.

Here's what's even more beautiful about a hug. The same power it has to heal hurts can be even more powerful in preventing them. When I look back on the hugs that surrounded me growing up, I now recognize that with each one I gained a growing confidence that I was loved and safe. My parents were very young when they had me. They had to be clueless about what went into being good parents. But after spending years with young people who were growing up in homes without hugs, and seeing the pain they felt without them and the sudden joy that rushed through them when they finally got one, I am grateful my parents had one very important piece of parenting mastered. They could always say: we've hugged our kids today. 

It saddens me to say that several years into my Eckerd career the bumper stickers went away. And so too did many of the hugs. It wasn't as much a philosophical change as it was a caving into the cultural pressures that were beginning to make hugging less acceptable, and in the business of working with youth - a liability. Those cultural pressures have only intensified the last 20 years. In my next post I will address them, and hopefully convince one or two of you to reverse the trend.  
   

In my last post, Letting Your Kids Know You're All Ears, I wrote listening to our kids trains them to talk to us. Talk to us about the things they celebrate and fear. Talk to us about things they've royally screwed up. Today I want to share another reason we should listen to our kids: to teach them how to listen. 

In the first post in this chapter, Listening Is The First Step To Understanding, I lamented we've become a world out of communication balance. Everyone wants to talk, no one wants to listen. And the problem with that? I believe listening leads to understanding, understanding to empathy, and empathy builds the capacity to care for something outside ourselves. Unfortunately, parents often point their children inward, not outward.  

Often it's what they're instructed to do. I've read a lot of parenting blog and magazine articles that teach us how to develop our child's self-esteem. They beg us to understand how important it is to raise a child who has high regard for who he or she is. I used to read these articles. Then I quit. I found them depressing, these endless lists of steps parents should take to make sure their children feel good about themselves. At the end of each one I found myself convinced: this is why the world is so screwed up. 

Maybe I feel that way because I see the articles working. Everywhere I look today I see young people who are firmly committed to climbing the world's highest pedestal. Whether it's because they excel in school or sports or church or one of a dozen other activities parents use to help their children make that climb, our kids are building resumes of accomplishments that allow them to hold their heads up high and shout: look at me.

The problem with teaching our kids to attach their self-esteem to resume builders is the inescapable reality resume failures lurk around every corner. A bad grade waits for the good student, defeat waits to launch agony upon the victory celebration, the girl who makes you feel like you're the greatest guy in the world is one glance away from leaving you for the greatest guy in the world. Every earthly thing we could possibly attach our importance to is fleeting. 

All of this leads me to offer this view on our boys' self-esteem. I'm uninterested in it. I don't believe we were put on this earth to hold ourselves in high regard. If my own life has taught me one thing it's the more I focus on feeling good about myself the less attention I pay to feeling good about the people around me. In doing so, I  end up being much better at masking low self-esteem than escaping it.  

Does that mean I want our boys to feel bad about themselves? No. Because here's the thing. The people I've seen living lives focused on loving and serving others -  they always seem to place just the right value on themselves. I know countless people who've never hoisted a trophy, been elected to office, or had an office door nameplate engraved deep and dark with CEO or PHD, who in spite of that, march through life full of self-esteem. Sometimes I wonder if that might be precisely why they do. 

By now you think this conversation has gone off track. One minute I'm talking about teaching a child to listen and now I'm all the way down the road of a child's self-esteem and how little I care about it. But they are connected. I believe we were created for two reasons. To love God and love the people around us. To work against either of those things is to work against our purpose and inherent value, which inevitably kills any self-esteem we might have. And here's the thing: neither of those purposes can be achieved without listening. 

That's why it's important to intentionally listen to our kids. Listening doesn't come easy to us, at least it doesn't to me. We have to be thoughtful and disciplined about it. Purposeful in teaching our kids to do it. That's how we grow to understand them, and grow them to understand others. 

So how do we do this? 

When we listen to our kids:

We need to look them in the eye. This is the surest way to convey I'm invested in what you're saying. I'm fully engaged in this conversation and it's value to me doesn't plummet when you start talking and I stop. (I hope it goes without saying how difficult it is to keep eye contact with someone when you're checking your iPhone or looking at the person across the room you'd actually rather be talking to).

We need to empathize. The biggest mistake we make with this one is confusing empathy with sympathy. With empathy, we demonstrate a willingness to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. It's our attempt to understand them. When we sympathize we often look to comfort or offer assurances around someone else's situation. The problem with this confusion is we often skip empathy and fast forward to assuring someone everything is going to be OK before we have a clue of what everything actually is. Moreover, many times the other person doesn't need our assurances as much as they need to feel like we're trying to understand what they're going through. That's especially true of our kids. 

We need to listen with an open mind. Oh how I struggle with this one. I can't tell you how many times I'm listening to my kids or my wife or my friends while at the same time judging what they're saying. Listener multi-tasking I suppose. But many times while they're talking I'm fast forwarding to the words I can speak to fix them. Sometimes I don't even fast forward, I just interrupt them to put me out of my listening misery. How wasteful is listening when you already know how the story needs to end? When I'm a good listener, though, the other person knows I'm more interested in hearing what they have to say than thinking about what they need to hear. 

We need to nod and respond at just the right time. There's no better way to let someone know you're listening than shaking your head in agreement or saying I understand at just the right time. These are small gestures and statements that say I'm engaged in this conversation in a big way. (To the contrary, offering a nod or understanding at an inappropriate point in the conversation is a listening catastrophe). We just need to remember, most of the time when someone is talking to us what they want more than anything else is to know we are invested in the conversation. 

If you're naturally a good listener who is motivated to understand others far more than you desire to have others understand you, you probably don't need to think about the "we need to" listening steps above. But if you're like me, and you too frequently feel like your words are more valuable than your ears, or your life is busy enough without accepting the added burden of listening to someone else talk, then you'll likely want to consider some of the steps above. 

Maybe I'm making listening harder than it should be. I don't know. All I do know is I have a hard time being the listener I want to be without being intentional about it. Here's the other thing I've discovered in our boys. At six and eight years old they are already proficient talkers. They can tell me what they want and what they think I should want them to want with incredible fluency. When it comes to listening, though, they seem to have more of a struggle. 

So tonight, I'm going to listen to them talk. I'll do so with a desire to be someone they'll always be comfortable talking to. I'll also do so with a mission to teach them to be better listeners, and unlock for them the secret to understanding the world around them. 

Over the Christmas break, Ian and I were sitting at the kitchen table listening to Elliott chatter about something. No. Not exactly true. Ian would stop me dead in my writing here and correct me. Ian and I were actually sitting at the table listening to Elliott loudly ramble on and on in a room at the other end of the house, by himself, about absolutely nothing. I believe that paints a more accurate picture. Sorry Ian.   

As we sat there listening to the volume and sensibility of Elliott's one-way conversation ebb and flow like the screams on a roller coaster, Ian alternated between bewildered looks down the hall and silent pleas of mercy across the table at me. Please make it stop. I told him, "don't worry, I took Elliott to the doctor for this and he should be getting better soon."

"What's wrong with him?" Ian asked. 

"The doctor says its an acute case of never-shuts-up-itis," I said. "He gave me some medicine he said would help Elliott, but that we should expect symptoms to continue for a long time, and that Elliott would continue to experience frequent episodes of the disease."

After a pause, "Daddy, what's an episode."

"What you're hearing now, Ian - that is an episode."

And so now, when Elliott gets to chatting away with no real purpose in sight, Ian gives me a quiet and sly look. I shake my head at him in agreement. Then we both go on our way, understanding - if not totally celebrating - that we've just shared some time together in another one of Elliott's episodes. 

Of course all of this is in good fun. It's healthier for me to find enjoyment in the non-stop chatter of our boys than it is to fall into the trauma of wondering when I'll next experience a still moment. In this fun, though, it's important that I'm ever mindful that a lot of our boys' desire to talk is rooted in a child's general need to be heard. 

In my last post  - (Listening Is The First Step To Understanding) - I talked about the adult world constantly competing to be heard and understood. The problem is the number of people battling to be heard grossly outweighs the number of people jumping in line to listen. This leaves many of us feeling like we have to talk louder, more often, and more abrasive just to be heard. 

Then consider children. They are clearly overmatched in the quest to be heard. Their inventory of talking points is limited to playground kickball games, who burps loudest in kindergarten, and the latest piece of wisdom from Johnny Test. Children quickly realize they have little to offer on who the next president should be and have little interest in knowing how much their Xbox contributes to climate change. So instead of overwhelming adults with their conversation quality - they bombard them with conversation quantity. 

I don't know how many times one of our boys has been walking toward me, mouths already  moving but the words not quite there yet, and I just know I'm about to hear another tale about the perfect lunchroom burp or a quote from Mr. Test himself. And I think to myself, I really don't want to hear another Johnny Test quote. The previous 3000 have failed to inspire me. How could this possibly be the one that's going to change my life? 

Lately I've been trying to catch myself on that, though. I do confess - some days I have to try really hard. When I'm successful, and some days I am, I take my eyes away from my computer or book or television and point them right at their eyes. And as they begin to tell their tale I tune into them like there's nothing else in the world I'd rather hear. Oh, be sure, some days the result of this approach is I receive very little conversation quality while getting inundated with conversation quantity. But my strategy isn't about me being inspired or feeling a part of a life-changing conversation. It's about me letting my boys know they are heard. 

I know that's one of the most important habits I need to work on and perfect as a father. Because I know this. Today they are coming to talk to me about their favorite television show or something funny their friends said or did at school. Tomorrow, though….Tomorrow they are coming to talk about sex or drugs or getting bullied at school or some other life struggle they just need someone to talk to about. And it would be foolish for me to believe if I haven't taken the time to listen to them today - if I haven't demonstrated a desire to hear Johnny Test's quotes while I've tried to wow them with brilliant quotes of my own - why would they think I'd be interested in the hard stuff?

So dads I encourage you to do this. As often as you can, when your kids approach you to talk, whether your interested in the conversation or not, make a point to stare them in the eyes, nod your head and smile or laugh at just the right time. So that when your child is done talking and walks away, they feel like they've just spent time with someone who values what they have to say. 

And if you're like me, say a little prayer of thanks it was a Johnny Test quote and not a question about sex. 

When I first started mentoring young men twenty years ago, I had no idea what I was supposed to say to them. That couldn't have been more clear one of the first times I tackled a situation that involved three parties: a teenage boy pissed at the world, the world he was pissed at, and me. Unfortunately, shortly into the clash I became part of the world he was pissed at. 

I've long forgotten exactly what the kid was mad at. All I know is when the problem began it wasn't me and when it finished it was nothing but me. It started when the young man screamed he was going to kill someone. I screamed back he'd have to do that over my dead body. He screamed that sounded like fun. I screamed quite louder what seemed to be the obvious response for this situation: do you know who you're messing with? He screamed he did and couldn't be more unimpressed by that revelation. Then I screamed a sense of disbelief like I've never screamed or disbelieved before.  

And somehow things only got uglier from there.

I didn't know it then but I would often consider it later. And still today. We never did talk about what that kid was mad at before I got him so mad at me. 

In our counselor training we talked a lot about de-escalation. The story above reflected absolutely nothing that training was supposed to have taught me. I was supposed to have learned the last thing a screaming kid needs is someone trying to scream louder than him. I was supposed to learn that an angry kid responds best to a calm adult. And I was supposed to learn that calm not crisis is the conflict resolution we were supposed to be working toward in the first place. The reality is, though, that day I did little of what I was supposed to do.

It wasn't because I was trying to ignore those valuable lessons. Not at all. The problem was, and still is today more often than I like, conflict is a wonderful place to unload our emotions and a very unappealing place to drag along common sense. When it comes to conflict, common sense says winning this battle isn't worth it while our emotions taunt us with the suggestion nothing could be worse than losing it. And too often, in the middle of crisis, being a mad and irrational winner sounds far more appealing than being a stable loser. 

Why is that?

Many years later a supervisor would tell me something that helped me understand the answer to that question. He said you have to first seek to understand someone before you can ever seek to be understood. 

When he said that I thought back on the conflict I described above and a thousand others I'd had since. In almost all of them - and I give myself the benefit of the doubt including "almost" - I had no interest in understanding what the other person in the conflict was going through. I didn't offer so much as a casual wonder why they were mad, frustrated, sad, confused or caught up in a variety of other emotions that led them to act in a way that didn't appeal to me. Because doesn't that often become the goal of our interactions - that people relate to us in a way we find appealing?

Most often the people we find most appealing in relationships are the ones who most often agree with us. On everything. And because there are pretty close to zero people who fit that billing, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people we're the one person selling the answers they should be buying into. Go to your Facebook newsfeed. How many people are sharing something they want you to understand them? How many are looking for more ways they can better understand you? 

You'll likely discover evidence of why I believe we've become a world that will spend hours of time and energy seeking to be understood, but has little patience or desire to understand. And I know why that is. It's the same reason I spent 30 minutes screaming at a kid twenty years ago and not a single second desiring to understand what he was mad at in the first place. It's because I just knew if I could get that kid to understand me, to see the world like I saw it, and then respond to it exactly the way I responded to it, then he would be fixed. Anger gone. Poof. 

I'm older now. More importantly -wiser. I got that way because somewhere along the way I learned that far more important than the me who talks and explains is the me who listens and seeks to understand. I came to understand the kid I was screaming at didn't respond to his world the way I responded to mine because his world didn't look like mine. In listening to him, and then more closely to other kids, and for the first time mindfully to the people in the circles around me, I came to understand two very important things we discover when we close our mouths and open our ears.

One - our opinions about how someone should act in their world are completely useless until we've come to intimately understand their world. 

Two - when we come to intimately understand someone else's world, and come to fully understand how well they're actually navigating worlds more challenging than ours, we'll likely come to see we're not as good at responding to our own worlds as we once believed. 

Together, those two things helped me understand the importance of becoming a better and more active listener.

I suppose by now you're wondering what any of this has to do with being a dad. A lot. I've never been in a relationship where it is easier to let the talk/listen balance get more out of whack than it can in the father-son relationship. Our boys get a little out of line and my first instinct  is to tell them something that will get them back in line. 

Sometimes that's the right choice. But often, more often than I do, our boys need me to first listen. They need me to seek first to understand what's going on with them before I try to have them understand what I think should be.

In the next post, I'll talk more about why kids need their dads to listen. 

At the end of this chapter on enjoying our children you might be asking - does it matter to our children if we enjoy them or not. 

Back in 1915, in a letter to his 11 year old son, Albert Einstein wrote:

I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.

When Einstein talks about doing something with such an enjoyment that you don't notice that the time passes, he's talking about a learning environment. And I don't know about you, but one of my big hopes each day for my kids is that they will learn. Learn morals and values, learn to read and write, and learn skills that will one day uniquely qualify them for an occupation.  

I often make the mistake of trying to control what my kids learn instead of the environment they learn it in. This dad's ego is always longing to adopt the motto that father knows best. Likely out of a desire to be set free from the sobering reality that most days this father feels like he doesn't have a clue. But in my previous post I shared my friend Mike's love for sharing "Foxy stories" with his kids. (Dads Be Sure To Share Your Foxy Stories).  Mike didn't write a well thought out script before Foxy took his nightly bedtime stage, it was purely let's see where this goes. He saw Foxy as a way to enjoy his kids and for his kids to enjoy him. He knew in that shared joy there would be opportunities for his kids to learn far beyond the limits of what he thought they just had to know. 

I don't know if Mike knew it or not, but he was actually taking a very scientific approach to teaching and strengthening his relationship with his kids. The reality is, and I don't mean to go all brain development on you here, but until a child is well into their teens the part of their brain that allows them to reason and factor in the dad knowledge we unload on them in hopes they'll become as brilliant as we are - well that part of the brain is missing in action. You want to know what part of the brain is there - and dominating every thought and emotion - that would be the part of the brain that tells them what they enjoy. 

That's why when kids experiment with drugs and alcohol at a young age and discover they enjoy it, they are infinitely more likely to become addicted to these substances as they grow older.

Likewise, if a child experiments with enjoying their dad, they are infinitely more likely to become addicted to enjoying their dad forever than the one who never sees their dad. And certainly more likely than the child who sees their dad everyday only to be reminded their dad never seems to enjoy them. 

Enjoyment is what fuels a child's desire to learn. It builds on their desire to bond.

Please don't hear me wrong. This is not about making a child happy at all costs. Happiness is a fleeting and superficial emotion. It appears when you buy your child an Xbox. It disappears when they get bored with it or they discover their friend has the bigger and cooler Playstation.

Enjoyment is a connection of the hearts. When a father marks the time they spend with their child with a smile or an uncontrollable laugh, a child's heart erupts with enjoyment. That time energizes a child's desire to dream and learn. It encourages them to take on life with such an enjoyment they don't notice that time passes. 

We live in a society that more and more teaches us that life is about finding personal joy. Too often, though, those lessons sadly minimize the kind of joy that is found in our relationships with one another. For that is the only joy that outlasts passing fads and things we love one day and shove to the back of a closet the next. It's the only joy that prevails through the stream of uncontrollable circumstances that often take over our lives. 

As I continue to grow older many fond memories of my childhood grow right along with me. Very few of them are rooted in the many things I was spoiled with. Nearly all of them are tied to the smiles and laughter from my parents that reassured me then - and remind me now. My parents enjoyed me.  

The Book of Dadverbs began with a question to the world, at least my small world. I asked: what do good dads do? I posed this question to friends on various social media platforms and to quizzical faces over cups of coffee. Every answer I received influenced in at least some small way the words I've written in The Book of Dadverbs to this point, as well as those left to write. But one answer has clung to me through the writing of each part, and with it a story I've been eager to write into this book since I first heard it. 

When I asked - what do good dads do, one of my friend Mike's answers was this: "foxy stories." 

Mike squeezed this answer in between two other responses - disciple them and cry with them. If you knew my friend Mike you'd have read this foxy stories response as a practical joke - his way of lightening up his other two weightier answers. To my surprise, though, that wasn't the case. Fortunately for me, and maybe for you, Mike felt compelled to make sure foxy stories carried a little weight itself with the following explanation:

I should explain, "Foxy Stories." At first I wrote "entertain them." Even as a kid I suppose I was an entertainer. So for me this kinda just came natural (and maybe that is the key- be yourself!). When my second son was born we were given a stuffed animal, a fox, for him. I suppose at first Foxy just sat with Micah in his crib but early on I began to "talk him." Sort of like a puppet I suppose. Foxy had a slight lisp and a "larger than life" sort of personality. He was always going on adventures and getting in trouble for doing things he shouldn't. He had an attitude. When our children were young they always begged for Foxy stories. So off the top of my head I would tell an elaborate tale that often included other stuffed animals or make-believe villains like evil, but stupid, Farmer Fred. Each story was new and fresh. The telling was often at night and included events from my childrens' day. Occasionally there was a moral to the story but most of the time it was strictly for entertainment. My only regret was that I never recorded or wrote any of these down. I remember sometimes while wrapping up a 45 minute story, I would get chills because of the way God allowed the story to all come together in the end. Foxy was also always there to cheer them up when they got hurt or sick. He was what made our many long car trips bearable. He was also someone they could take there frustrations out on with a good punch or a throw across the room. I would guess that up until our kids turned 10 they had heard more words come from my mouth in Foxy's voice than in the voice of their dad. I suppose Foxy may have been at times therapeutic for them, but he was often therapeutic for me. Even now at times when this old dad is all alone and thinking of his son who literally lives on the other side of the planet, I just say a few sentences in that lispy, attitude driven Foxy voice, and let the tears flow.  

Mikes account of bringing a stuffed animal to life through stories he told his children moved me. I know Mike well enough to know he delivered some life-changing lessons through those stories. I know this too, though. In his story telling mode, Mike enjoyed his children, and they enjoyed him. I can hear their laughter and picture their smiles impatiently waiting on Foxy's next words. 

When I shared Mike's "Foxy Stories" on Facebook, Mike's son Micah commented, "I feel (and probably a lot of other people that know us) that my dad and I have a lot in common, but the one thing that we share the most is that sense of humor, which I think a lot of that was passed down through those foxy stories.

As I read and re-read Mike's explanation of "Foxy stories", one thing he said stuck out to me. He said in sharing these stories he was being himself. I'm afraid too many dads feel pressured to be some pre-conceived notion of a dad around their kids instead of being themselves. We feel pressured to find the secret to getting our kids to relate to us instead of having faith in the absurd but true notion that sometimes we influence our kids more with our willingness and ability to relate to them. Especially in their early years. They don't need us to help them understand what Foxy has on his mind today, they need us to show them Foxy understands they have something on theirs. And many times that is nothing more than a desire to laugh.  

You know what I love most about being a dad? It's that not only is it occasionally OK to forget you're fifty years old and act like your 8 again, in some moments it's the most powerful thing you can do for your kids. Whether it's bringing a stuffed fox to life with your voice, a field to life with an impromptu wrestling match, or a car ride to life by adding new and hilariously improved lyrics to a song on the radio, you never know what memories will be created by trading in dad duties for dad fun. 

Several weeks ago we were at a local pumpkin patch with my mom and dad. While we sat enjoying a cup of hot cocoa on this chilly, early fall morning, we watched the boys wrestle in the grassy barnyard that surrounded us. Grass was flying everywhere as they rolled over and under one another. It looked like fun, so I sat my cup down and joined in. I promise you, my wrestling moves appeared far more robotic and labored than theirs, but laughter filled the air. And boy was I enjoying my kids. 

When the match was over, likely when Katie shouted out someone's going to get hurt - (why do these shouts always carry more fear for my health than the boys') - we raced back to our cocoa. My dad told me watching me wrestle with the boys reminded him of the days he used to wrestle in our living room with me and my friend Scott. I remember those childhood matches well. Oh how I enjoyed them. 

When you engage in moments of enjoyment with your kids, when you treat yourself to the opportunity to entertain them, their smiles that often lead to seismic waves of laughter assure you it's a wonderful moment for them. My dad reminded me it's more than that, though. As much as our kids enjoy these moments, some of the joy in that enjoyment laughs on in a lifetime of a dad's memories.  

Please come back next time when I talk about why it's so important for our kids to see us enjoying them. 

By now many of you know my how I became a dad story. If you missed it, here is the Readers Digest version:

Katie and I got married many moons ago, agreeing neither of us ever wanted kids. Then just over seven years into those moons Katie changed her mind - or at least changed the definition of ever. This apparently after a long conversation with God. I spent the next month asking God if he was really having conversations with my wife. And Katie spent the next month getting pregnant with Elliott, our first son. I obviously had some role in that. A role that was likely God's way of saying, yes, I've been talking to your wife. 

So there I was. Forty two years old and an expectant father of a child I was committed to never having. And here I am today. Fifty years old and writing a book about how cool it is to be a dad. 

One of the biggest hesitations I had about having children was I was scared to death a child would steal my enjoyment for life. I had it made, after all. A good job, a loving and understanding wife, and the freedom outside of both to do pretty much what I wanted to. Having a child, it seemed to me, would mean the remainder of a life imprisoned by the ever blaring needs of a child. All of the things I enjoyed doing, the things I wanted to continue doing, would face certain death the moment our son arrived fully intent on slaughtering each and every one of them. 

I know. It sounds like I had grim expectations of fatherhood. I did. Worse yet, I was right about a lot of them. Having our boys did result in the much anticipated death of the simple life. But I was also wrong about something. Or maybe I spent so much time considering the possible costs of having a child that I never considered the alternative. That I would be too busy enjoying my kids to notice what I'd given up. 

But that's exactly where I am today, though. Enjoying our boys. Just eight years removed from thoughts of suing God for disrupting the perfectly healthy mind of my wife and the routinely uncomplicated life I'd settled into, I now send him thank you notes. 

Some days when I talk with other dads I sense that might not be a common thread among us. Enjoying our kids. That makes me sad. Sad for their kids, especially when I think of the borderless smiles that magically appear on the faces of our boys when they know together we are sharing a moment of enjoyment. Sad for dads who are denying themselves an opportunity for enjoyment in it's most enjoyable form. Often an unknowing sacrifice they make to pursue interests they believe hold the ultimate joy. A pursuit, quite tragically, that almost always ends in the discovery of the ultimate lie. 

Several years ago when we first moved to our current home here in Ashland, Virginia, I used to take long walks in the morning with Elliott along the railway that runs through the center of our town. Elliott was - and still is - an early riser. Pushing him a few miles in a stroller before sunrise was as close to enjoyment as either of us could get while the rest of the world hung out with their blankets and still sound asleep alarm clocks. 

One morning on our return trip and as we got close to home, we came across a man gathering his newspaper at the edge of the road. As we approached, he stared at us, his long, thick bathrobe nearly brushing the road, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I'd seen that cigarette glowing many mornings before in the night's leftover darkness, rocking in the front porch air as we walked by.  But I never wondered much about the man behind it. 

As I pushed the stroller up next to him he took the cigarette out of his mouth.

"How old is he?" he asked. 

"Almost two," I answered. 

"Make sure you enjoy him," he said, "they grow up quick."

The man put the cigarette back in his mouth and wandered up his driveway toward his porch, his newspaper hanging from his side looking rather unwanted. I stood there for a moment wondering how accidental it was that our paths had just crossed. His message seemed too deliberate, yet at the same time it hardly seemed like a message at all. I think we deliver a lot of messages to folks based on things we've done in our lives and know to be true. Some messages, though, are delivered after a grand revelation of things we wished we'd done but never did. I stood on the side of the road that morning wondering if the only healing for that kind of perpetual wishing is a perfectly timed retrieval of the morning newspaper.

I would push Elliott's stroller by that house dozens of times after meeting the man that morning. From then on he would always wave, like a weight had been lifted. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. I knew what he was thinking. I'd always peek inside Elliott's stroller just as we walked by, hoping the man would somehow get just a hint of how much I enjoyed my boy. And maybe even take a little credit for it. 

A few months ago there was a lot of commotion happening at that old man's house. Then a few days later there was a large gathering of people there. Cars lined the drive and his yard and spilled into the streets Elliott and I used to walk along. When I saw the flowery wreath on his front porch, I knew the old man had passed away. I looked at all the people in his front yard and guessed one or two of them were probably his children. Something told me I should stop and tell them their dad once told me how much he enjoyed them. I quickly decided it wasn't my place. Deep inside I guess I hoped he'd found a way to tell them that on his own. 

One of the best things about being an "older" dad - quite possibly the very best thing - is knowing so many dads who've already raised their kids and sent them on their way. And all of them, because they either did it or wished they had, have told me to enjoy every minute I have with our boys. 

And I do. 

Over the next two parts of this chapter, I'm going to talk about how we can enjoy our kids, and why we need to. 
   
 
 

A couple of decades ago, I was a counselor working with a group of fairly defiant teen age boys in a North Carolina national forest. I spent each day guiding them toward choices I was sure would improve their lives. On the very best of days, they ignored my guidance. On the more frequent and worst of days, they ignored it while sharing quite unsolicited opinions about the moron who was providing it. 

Often, their opinions extended to the repulsive girls who were dumb enough to date me, the vile parents who thoughtlessly brought me into the world, and the loathsome bosses who hired me solely to disturb their lives. Fortunately, the latter group is the only one they threatened to kill with any notable frequency. 

As you might now imagine, my days were challenging. I was sucked into a fruitless cycle of give directions, watch directions get ignored, reprimand ignorers, and absorb hostility. I witnessed few of these guys moving toward positive choices. In fact, the overall direction of the group seemed to be violently stuck in reverse. 

One day, in the middle of an exceptionally lawless rendition of this cycle, one of my supervisors pulled me aside. He pointed out that I always seemed to be down on the group, that it seemed to come easy to me to criticize their behaviors. 

If you just heard a loud thud, it was the 20 year old echo of my jaw plunging to the forest floor as I absorbed the notion that I was remotely responsible for the bad boys gone prison break scene carrying on around us. I won't deny that coming down on the guys came easy to me. In fact, if anything had ever come easier to me than identifying and criticizing the delinquency of nearly every breath and movement that poured from these guys, I didn't know what it was. But that was me identifying behaviors, not me responsible for them. And in so many words, that's what I told my supervisor. 

"I understand that," he told me, "but that just makes you good at doing what every other adult in their lives has ever done - point out what they're doing wrong. And like you pointed out - he took pleasure in reminding me - there's no challenge in that. You're simply finding the obvious. If you ever want to be someone different in their lives, someone who makes a difference in them, you have to find a way to catch them doing something right." 

I had a lot of respect for this supervisor so I was troubled to hear him say something so stupid. I assured him the boys unloading chaos by the truckloads around us were not being failed by a leader who refused to acknowledge their redeeming qualities. To the contrary, if one of them ever dared show a glimmer of a good side, not only would I be the first to notice it, I'd be the one organizing a ticker tape parade to commemorate it. I encouraged him to take a look around, though, in case he had notions of a parade coming to town anytime soon.

I have a history of ignoring good advice in favor of my own incompetence, only to later discover what a bad idea that was. That's my explanation for writing off the challenge to catch them doing something right as a text book counseling strategy my supervisor was obligated to share, but inside, I was certain, scoffed at it every bit as much as I did. Over the next couple of weeks, though, in the midst of bad attitudes charging at me like burning lava from an angry volcano, I found myself senselessly looking for something right. And each time I wound up asking myself how my supervisor ever became a supervisor. 

But one day in the rarest of quiet moments while walking down a trail to breakfast, I noticed something unusual about Terrence Davis, the young man walking next to me. I noticed his shoes were tied. You're thinking that's not a big deal, I know. But had you ever arrived at the dining hall with our group on any of a thousand mornings, famished, only to be turned away because Terrence Davis had shoestrings sprawled and dangling behind his feet like a recently detonated can of Silly String, you'd not only understand the big deal in this discovery, you'd feel it. 

So upon this discovery I said, "Terrence, your shoes are tied. And nobody had to tell you to tie them. Great job."

Terrence cussed me the rest of the walk to the dining hall for issuing a kindergarten compliment to a fully grown juvenile delinquent.  In spite of his resistance to me catching him doing something right, however, we not only made it to the dining hall, when we got there we ate. Food always seemed to tame the sting of even the most vile profanities. At least for me. 

Here's the real moral to that compliment though. About a week later I realized Terrence hadn't been told to tie his shoes since that day. And I eventually realized he would never need to be told to do so again. Ever. 

So I began to notice kids who went five minutes without cussing, even if I knew deep inside they were simply too exhausted to spout another word. I made a point to notice boys who took even momentary breaks from pummeling the groups favorite punching bag Diego Rodriguez, even though I knew it was likely because they were simply bored with his crying. I noticed when they less than politely said "pass the salt" instead of screaming "give it to me." 


I noticed, to my growing surprise, that there were indeed fleeting moments of sunshine in what I had convinced myself was an untiring hurricane. 

With very few exceptions, the more I noticed these things - the more I caught them doing something right - the more I saw the right things come out of them.

Dads, in many homes we are the primary disciplinarians. It's so easy to allow ourselves to believe this responsibility is all about catching our kids breaking the rules, willfully defying our directions, and then taking on the mission of making sure they never do it again. I'm glad I learned with that group of boys in the middle of a forest that that approach is not only exhausting, but applied by itself, it is fruitless. 

The secret to getting kids to make the right choices, I've discovered, isn't about pointing out when they've made the wrong ones - although that is certainly a part of it. But our kids need to be motivated to make good choices, and I've found no better way to provide that motivation than catching them doing the right thing. Even if that choice is only as right as tying their shoes. 

We live in a world that most days seems perfectly constructed to highlight our own insignificance. We each inhabit an unimaginably small patch of the 197 million square miles of this planet, which we share with 7 billion other people. Unless you won the most recent season of American Idol or you respond Gates or Buffet when someone inquires of your last name, you are relatively invisible to the majority of your traveling party on this journey we call life. 

If that isn't cruel enough, in a world perfectly suited to live life unnoticed, we were born yearning for just the opposite. We emerge from the womb screaming for our mother's attention, and don't let up until our obituaries take one last stab at leaving a mark on this world, if only for the slightest chance someone will remember us. 

The real problem with this yearning comes when our desire to be accounted for starts competing with the desires others have for the same. We are all lured to believing at one point or another, and we often go there quite willingly, that recognition and belonging comes in the form of the biggest house, car, or 401K. We stand at the edge of the grocery checkout lane, mesmerized by the fame and fortune slapped half naked across the front of People magazine, or eloquently listed up and down the Billboard Top Twenty. When we buy into this competitive and envious version of recognition, we've entered a competition that never ends. One we'll never win, a reality we find opportunity to discourage ourselves with each and every day.  

As dads, we have the opportunity to help our kids steer clear of this race to nowhere. Our kids come into this world unarmed with bulging at the seams bank accounts or world renown talents. They can't buy our recognition or ask us to score their routines. All they have to offer is the heart of a child - humanity in its simplest form. Dads, how we choose to notice that heart, and how often - that will largely influence what it becomes and where our children ultimately seek their recognition.  

This need for recognition. This desire to be noticed. It really boils down to the smallest denominator of this human race - one simple human being among seven seas of them - feeling like they're living a life of value in a world presumably overflowing with it.  Early on, as children, that value comes solely from being noticed by our parents or those closest to us. When we took our first steps, our parents clapped and made unapologetic fools of themselves - and we smiled.  When we told the lady at the counter thank you for a piece of candy, our parents gave us a light but approving pat on the back - and we smiled. When we floundered about in the swimming pool like a rapidly deflating beach ball, yet somehow believing we were unveiling aquatic pageantry, our parents divorced all credibility and gave us a big thumbs up. And we smiled. (Read: More Than Love Our Children Want Noticed)

Not all children get noticed, though. Some of their first steps are to places of sadly familiar silence. Some of them wouldn't dream of looking up long enough to say thank you. And some are always the first in the pool of splashing children to realize no one is watching. 

That no one is ever going to watch.  

That's a sad reality to face - no one is ever going to watch. Few face it without a fight. If nobler behaviors and decisions won't find us recognition, some affirmation that our lives have value, we'll often pursue it through less respectable means. Doing drugs, joining a gang, promiscuous sex, constantly picking the next fight - I don't think any of us would suggest these things add value to a life. But for many, they provide an opportunity to get noticed. For those of us who've always had people notice what we contribute to their lives - and to the world in general - these seem like highly irrational steps to take. To those who've felt less visible than a ghost in their own homes, through the neglectful eyes of their own parents, these steps seem like a sensible path to becoming valued. 

Dads, nothing will send a child searching for value in all the wrong places faster than the realization their own father is never going to notice them.  From the moment a child is old enough to realize they should be worth something, which comes along about the same time they begin staring at you to see if you'll stare back, they begin looking to you for affirmation their life has meaning. 

Here's the beautiful thing dads. Especially when our kids are young. They flood us with opportunities to notice them. 

So please, notice them.  

Notice their corny jokes with a laugh, even if it's a fake one.
Notice their messy hair as they head off to school; tell them you used to sport the same style way back when you had hair. You're surprised it's still in today.
Notice how they kiss their mom goodnight. Tell them there are some things in life you should do forever.
Notice when they win. A high five should work.
Notice when they lose. Tell them the life lessons in losing are far more valuable than the ones that come along with winning. Ignore the blank stare you get in return. 
Notice the things they do better than you. Please - let them do things better than you.
Notice they are your children. Acknowledge it's true - there are a couple of billion other kids in the world, but God gave you just the right ones.

Remind them of that every day. And take time to notice all the reasons you're sure it's true.  

On a Saturday afternoon several months ago, I took our boys to the local YMCA to go swimming. Upon arriving there it became chaotically clear that either half the men in town had come up with the same idea for killing a Saturday, or half the women in town had simultaneously decided to kick their husbands and kids out of the house to prevent a Saturday spent killing them. Whichever the case, it wasn't long before the boys were easing themselves into the turbulent waters of a million or so kids performing previously unimaginable variations of the act of swimming.

I took a seat in a row of chairs that lined one end of the pool. Like most of the other dads, apparently, I felt much safer there than braving the water before us. With each flailing arm and new splash, the pool itself was beginning to make the shark infested waters of the Atlantic - often home to suddenly limbless surfers - seem inviting and absolutely swimmable. 

I'm not sure how it began, I have to assume without much planning, but as we sat there, a chant of some sort erupted from the pool. I couldn't make out the words - at first. But one by one, in no distinguishable order along the row of dads, heads began to nod in inexplicable recognition of the gurgled pleas and shouts springing from the choppy waters below. One after another dads were rising and moving closer to the pool, quite trance-like. Before I could completely understand what was happening, I recognized a voice of my own. 

"Dad, watch this," roared the plea from my 5 year-old son, Ian. 

As loud as it was, it was a plea that could have easily drowned among the chorus of similar shouts coming from the children around him. But it didn't. Even in the midst of chaos my child's voice sequestered itself in a quiet pocket of air where only I could hear it. I've no doubt this is evidence of how intensely he longed for me to notice his swimming abilities above the many others on display. Far greater evidence, I'm afraid, than my desire or willingness to notice them. 

But because I'd discovered long ago just what it means to a child to be noticed, I knew what I was witnessing in that water logged scene of attention seeking that Saturday.  

What It Means To Be Noticed

It was an early morning, much like many mornings before. I woke the group of ten boys I was responsible for and encouraged them to get their days started. For them, that meant get up, get dressed, and make your beds. To this day I'm amazed at how critical bed-making was to our program (Eckerd Youth Alternatives) and a group of boys and counselors living together in the middle of a national forest. To whom does bed-making even come to mind when considering life in the wilderness.

The previous morning I'd taken time to teach one of the new guys, Michael, the proper way to make a bed. Because we did indeed have a proper way. It took me awhile to learn it myself. It involved hospital corners and tight tucks. Much different from the bed-making technique I'd practiced growing up - and well beyond I suppose - which was to throw a thick comforter over all the sublayers of bedding and remove the best I could all the wrinkles and humps that might otherwise suggest to someone the bed was actually unmade. And that was simply the days I practiced bed-making at all.

When I met Michael at his bed this particular morning to check his work, because it was important that we ensured hospital corners and tight tucks were in place, I encountered a bed-making masterpiece. It was as if Michael had stayed up all night long wrapping the bedding around his mattress, much like Sargento might wrap a block of cheese - airless and impenetrable. Michael stood tall and straight beside his work, looking tentatively proud. I positioned myself beside his bed, but not so close as to disturb it. I stared down at the waveless grey blanket, instantly sure I could stare all day and not find a stitch of cloth out of order. Then I turned to him.

"Michael, this is the best made bed I believe I've seen in all my years at camp. In fact, it may be the nicest made bed I've seen in all my years of anything," I told him. 

As I looked at him, I'm not sure what I expected his face to do, but it broke into an unnatural smile. Like it and all of its features were forced into an arrangement it had never before attempted, but one Michael willingly accepted. And then his eyes widened a bit as a hint of tears appeared. His expression froze there for a moment. The smile. The tears.  It remained that way only long enough for me to know and to memorize what it looks like when a kid is noticed for the very first time. Even over something as seemingly inconsequential as making a bed. 

I learned that day that far more than being loved, our kids need to be noticed. You may argue they are one in the same. I assure you they are not to a child. Many children are greatly loved but too often unnoticed. Michael taught me that day they would gladly trade one for the other. 

Noticing A Child Tells Them They Are Worth Noticing

When I heard Ian's voice coming from the pool that day. And the voices of so many other children competing to be heard above his. When I saw my fellow dad's slowly rise and respond, when I saw them notice their children. When I saw the chaos of child after child begging to be noticed turn to waves of smiles as they were. I thought of Michael. I was reminded that far more than my child inviting me to watch his very un-olympic attempt at swimming, he was inviting me to confirm he was worth my time to respond at all. It's an invitation that too often and quite sadly goes unanswered by dads. 

In the next two parts of this chapter, I'm going to talk about why it is so important for dads to notice their children. How in doing so we can provide them two things they need us to provide each and every day. Affirmation and motivation. 

I hope you'll come back.