The tricky part is the hallway. I carefully try to place my foot on our wood floor hallway in the tiny spots that don’t creak loud enough for our neighbors to call the police. I gently place my hand on the door knob and open the door, without letting go because if I do it will slam into the wall. I look into the room and bask in the sweetness of my 5-year old twins sleeping silently, peacefully, infusing my heart and soul with love, affection and utter goodness.

This is my little indulgence. (more…)

I have been extremely frustrated with Elijah, my four-year old son, because of his refusal to go to sleep without screaming at night. And I feel certain that the issue involved in both school and going to sleep are very similar – separation. But I’ve been intensely trying to help him go to sleep smoothly at night for eight months now and I’m running out of patience. All for the same reason I am upset about leaving him at school – I don’t want him to feel like we are abandoning him, that we don’t love him – I have been unwilling to let him cry it out (okay, my wife also doesn’t want that to happen). But it doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, he insists on making the process as difficult as possible. Tonight, as I sit to write this, I have let him cry. I refuse to go up anymore.

It always comes back to this. I try everything I can think of to not let him cry it out and I always fail. Always. For the past several weeks, every single time he got upset, I went upstairs to try and calm him down, get him into bed and help him think about all of his Happy Thoughts so that he could go to sleep. For the most part it only reinforced to him that if he gets upset he will get to spend more time with me. That was clearly not my goal. (more…)

I always believed, as involved fathers go, I was pretty high up there if you were to grade my level of involvement. As soon as I walk in the door from work, I herd our almost 5-year old children to the dinner table, sometimes even remember to set it, too. We talk about their day, I give them their medicines and vitamins. I get them changed into their pajamas, take them to the bathroom, and even take them to bed five nights a week. When they wake up in the middle of the night upset, I’m the one they call. On the weekends, I spend almost every moment I can with them, even often having special time with them, just the three of us. I have even spent entire weekends just the three of us when my wife has gone away. I couldn’t imagine how I could be more involved, to be honest.

Well, I am learning, now that my wife has started working full-time, that there was a whole area of their life I was not at all involved in; their school. (more…)

My little girl loves me. In fact, the other day she told me, “I love you too much!”

And I just looked at her.

“Do you mean you love me so much?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah. I love you SO much!”

But it made me wonder if my little girl’s love for me feels like too much for her. Or maybe it is too much for me? (more…)

Many fathers are breaking new ground by becoming more active, more involved in their family – especially with their children. Previous generations defined fatherhood more in terms of providing the economic necessities families need. But this generation, more than any other, has determined that their role as a father does not end with providing economic security, but continues to building a strong bond with their children. Unfortunately, so many of these fathers don’t have role models, don’t have a blueprint to follow in terms of what being involved in the lives of their children actually looks like.

January is National Mentor Month and that seems a perfect time to make sure all of these trailblazing fathers understand that while they may not have a role model for the kind of father and man they want to be, they are transforming themselves into the role models they never had. Today’s involved fathers, in their quest to be a better father, to better meet the needs of their own children, are ensuring that their children will never be without a wonderful fatherhood mentor. (more…)

Ahhh, the holiday season. The season of lights and presents and holiday cheer. The season of shopping and stress. The season of overwhelment. But this year we have a solution to it all. This year, we’re going to Disney World!

Really.

Not only are we one of those families where we have both Jewish and Christian members so we celebrate Chanukah at our house and Christmas with my wife’s family, but we also celebrate a birthday during December as well.

Or two.

Actually three.

Okay, we celebrate four birthdays during the month of December.

Well, to be completely honest we celebrate four birthdays in one week of December. In our family, we have four birthdays during one week and then we spend 51 weeks of the year recovering from and preparing for that one week. (more…)

When we started selling our house and looking for a new one last year, I drew upon my years of therapy training and experience and my well-honed instincts and sat down with my almost four-year old twins and explained to them that we were looking for a new house. Every weekend we were going to be having open houses as well as looking for our new home. I didn’t want my children to get stressed out by what they were seeing, all the strange people, all of the talk of a new home. I wanted them to understand what was happening all around them.

That was easily my biggest mistake in the moving process.

My children – especially my little girl – became so stressed, so anxious, I’m not sure she has been the same since. She became afraid to go to school in the morning, afraid every time we left, afraid we were going to move without her, afraid she would be all alone, afraid she would not have a bed to sleep in. She became afraid to go to sleep at night and began having trouble sleeping through the night, waking up with nightmares. It was horrible and I felt terrible. I knew my talk had actually made everything worse for her instead of easier. (more…)