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How to Win at Being a Dad
You may be wondering right now if it’s worth even trying to win. Perhaps your shortcomings make you feel quite the opposite from a champion. Perhaps your own father has been such a disappointment that you don’t even know how to start being a good father.
Don’t give up.
If you have a child, the question isn’t whether you’re a father. It’s how you’ll do the job you can’t turn down – and whether you’ll allow yourself to enjoy it.
Here's the Secret:
Championship Fathering is mostly about time and basics. You start doing the fundamentals and keep doing them. And the three fundamentals are:
- Loving
- Coaching
- Modelling
These are so basic to fathering that we’ll never outlive learning and practising them. The thing to note is that none of these parts is optional. We can’t just love our kids and skip the coaching or modelling. Neither can you coach without loving them.
These three basics have something in common. They all require involvement. When it comes to involvement, nobody can take your place. And involvement starts with being there.
Here's the Other Secret
Do you remember countless parenting discussions over quality time vs quantity time? I wonder if anyone has asked a child, “Do you know the difference between quantity time and quality time with your dad?” I’m sure the answer would have been, “HUH?”
Children can’t distinguish between quality time and quantity time. Most adults can’t, either. What we do know is that when there’s little quantity time, there’s not likely to be much quality time.
We have to keep our schedules flexible enough that we can enjoy unstructured or unplanned time with our kids. Perhaps we have to learn how to simply ‘waste time’ with them. That doesn’t mean just being in the same room, by the way. Surfing the Internet on separate laptops two metres apart isn’t quantity or quality time.
Spending time means being together, whether you’re planning your next family outing or having a midnight snack in the kitchen. And it’s the steady, smaller investments of quantity time that yield the best results over the years.
Extracted from Championship Fathering by Carey Casey
©2010 Focus on the Family Singapore. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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