How To Be A Good Dad

  1. Be a good man.

  2. Have your partner give birth to wonderful children.

  3. Never stop believing they are wonderful children.

  4. Always think of them as the amazing gifts they are.

  5. Be there. Whenever there is a choice between anything else and them, choose them.

  6. Show them your values, don’t preach to them. Don’t try to pass on to them an earlier generation’s values that you don’t really believe in yourself anymore. Forget tough love. It is the first cousin to no love.

  7. Give them pets. As many as your house will hold. The pets will do more teaching about love, selflessness and empathy than you can.

  8. Be real. Cry openly. Laugh heartily (but not at others). Get mad. Apologize.

  9. Let your children teach you how to be a good dad. When they protest, they are telling you where the boundaries are. Respect
    those boundaries.

  10. Be your children’s friend. Ignore those who tell you that is a mistake. Some day they will be adults. They will need you as a friend. If you weren’t one as they grew up, it will be hard to become one later.

  11. Put your children first but don’t bother pretending you are doing that. They will know the truth.

  12. Shut your mouth and keep it closed. Offer suggestions if you are asked for them. They need to make mistakes and learn from them. And remember, you were not a perfect child and you didn’t have a perfect Dad. If you were lucky, you had a good one. Impossible to be a perfect one. Not too hard to be a good one. If you have people in your life who call you Dad, you are the luckiest man on Earth.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.