When you appreciate your wife, you let your children know that your marriage is important, and you set a great example for them.
8 Classic Things to do with Your Son
Looking for activity ideas to do with your son? Download our Tools for the Journey: 8 Classic Things to do with Your Son!
Moral and Spiritual Guidance – Secondhand Lions
What do you believe is most important about life, and about being a man? Kids need to hear from their fathers and father figures about that.
Moral and Spiritual Guidance – Blood Diamond
Dads can be major forces in helping their children choose to do what’s right...
Video: “It means everything to have integrity”
A dad in Houston got together with his two adult daughters and made a video to help promote one of our events.
Forgiving Our Fathers
Father's Day has a way of bursting through any barriers around my heart and releasing my feelings to splash all over the page before me. A gift of a tear or two to cleanse the soul–or at least, my soul ….
Audio: Answer Questions with Questions (like Jesus)
Kids are curious. They love to learn — especially from you, dad. And the teaching method that Jesus used still works today.
The Lion Outside My Door
The sun shone brightly through the windows as my kids played together all throughout our home. As I walked into the living room, I noticed the front door had been left open, presumably by one of the kids. With a tinge of frustration I walked over to the door to close it, calling out to the kids to make sure to leave the front door shut.
A Challenge to Urban Churches
The church has been a dynamic support to the African American community, but I believe it can do better. With churches on seemingly every corner in some communities, they have been successful at delivering services and support to African American women and children. But they have fallen short-far short-in reaching out to and engaging African American men. And without these men, they are missing a key contributor to the overall health of the African American family and community.
Abba, Father
Turning Hearts to the Children
In many ways God has blessed our nation. We are world leaders in many areas including economy, medicine, science and military might. However, there is one area that is a shame that we are world leaders: fatherless-ness. Tonight more than 40% (25 million) of our children will go to bed without a father in the home. In Kansas City more than 160,000 children are growing up in homes without their fathers.
The Heart of Fathering
Turning Hearts to the Children
Being a father is more of an art rather than a science. Science involves facts of the mind but the art of fathering involves feelings of the heart. And at the core of these feelings is the love of God expressed through being a godly father. Science is about what you know, but art is about what you do.
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Welcome to the fathers.com fathering library.
Tension with Our Kids’ Mom Deeply Affects Our Fathering
When there’s tension with your child’s mother, it impacts everyone. That might be an odd message to convey so soon after Valentine’s Day, but we all know what real life is like all the other days of the year that aren’t our anniversary or a special date night. And for...
A Dozen Activities to Help You Win Your Daughter’s Heart
by Michelle Watson Canfield, PhD, LPC With Valentine’s Day less than a week away, here’s a reminder that the holiday isn’t reserved only for romance between sweethearts. It’s also an opportunity for a girl to be treated in an extra special way by her dad, thus...
Winning and Losing in Father-Child Contests
by Ken Canfield, Ph.D. Bob’s two teenage sons were challenging him in many ways physically—arm twisting and wrestling and so on—and they talked about racing him to see if they were faster. It leads to a common question for dads: What’s the impact of winning or losing...
One Way to Restore Hope to Your Fathering
by Ken Canfield, Ph.D. What keeps a dad motivated and hopeful? That’s a key question that I’ve been pondering and researching for some time, and I’ll have more on this in the coming weeks and months. I’m more and more convinced of this: Hope is a powerful force and...
Birthday Reflections: A Father’s Legacy
by Ken Canfield, Ph.D. I recently gathered with many of my children and grandchildren to celebrate a birthday: my 70th. It was a wonderful and sometimes wild time together. During the days before that celebration, I came up with a sheet of reflections that I handed...
Game Time! Have a FUN Family Christmas
Are there gamers in your family? Actually this isn’t the kind of gaming you’re probably thinking of. And it has very little (if anything) to do with phones, computers or keyboards (unless you come up with one that involves a piano). This is about playing games with...
3 Fathering Insights from Joseph
by Jeff Zaugg Have you ever had dreams or expectations that fell flat or didn’t materialize the way you hoped? That happened to my family and me a few years ago when we were on an RV trip in Texas. We had plans to spend a few days at a lake that looked beautiful on...
Perfume Day: A Powerful Dad-Daughter Holiday Tradition
by Michelle Watson Canfield, PhD, LPC Per·fume [pərˌfyo͞om] · a fragrant liquid typically made from essential oils extracted from flowers and spices, used to impart a pleasant smell to one's body or clothes. Day [dā/] · a period of twenty-four hours as a unit of time;...
What’s Your Plan for the Holidays, Dad?
It’s the week after Thanksgiving, and in case you didn't know it, dad, last week was a test—or maybe a warm-up. How did you do? It’s good to ask yourself questions like: “Did I help make the celebration all it could be? Or did I just kind of show up and let things...
A Year-End Message from Dr. Ken Canfield
Dad: Please watch this short video and then keep reading below for a year-end update and request from me ... https://youtu.be/1jYUmQOTfEg Dads: This is an exciting time of the year. I love the Christmas season for many reasons. It's also a time to reflect and take...
3 Ways Dads Can Be Intentional on Thanksgiving
by Jay Payleitner Thanksgiving? Already? If the days are moving too quickly, that's all the more reason to approach the holidays with thoughtfulness and intentionality. I do hope you're feeling grateful. Even if you've had a tough year,...
5 Things Single Dads Should Do Consistently
by Matt Haviland As a father, I try to operate with the ever-present knowledge that my words matter, and often more than I realize. Of course, that isn’t easy; we all say things that are careless and insensitive sometimes. And often the challenges increase when you...