I’m thinking over materials I’ve been reading, namely stuff about human development, faith development, and theological perspective. I’m bouncing around suggestions, mostly for myself since I’m trying to keep good notes on things I read that are worth keeping.

Photo Thanks to Jordan McQueen

Here is a list of suggestions for fathers (and the people who love them), particularly those between the ages of 30 and 39:

1. Investigate your weaknesses. Name them for what they are: areas where you’re not strong. Model the gesture of naming your frailties even while your children think you’re invincible. Be honest with yourself that you aren’t what you thought, hoped, or believed. Then you can turn to your strengths.
2. Set growth goals as a father. You can grow while your children grow. You may as well plan for it. You may as well mark your own growth. What kind of person do you want to be because you’re a father? Get at it.
3. Work and play. In this phase it makes sense to turn your energy and focus to work, but there’s more to life than work. Take care of your family and go to work in order to do so. And try to play. Keep at the balance and the tension or the dance.
4. Listen to your child’s mother. Hear her as best you can, even if that doesn’t mean agreement. She’ll teach you and you’ll be different because of her. While you may be many other things to your child, let your child see, identify, and remember you as a listener to her/his mother.
5. Relate to your own father. Whether alive or dead, you can relate to your father. Develop that relationship. Nurture it so that you can notice things about him which you didn’t before. Befriend the memories that are helpful. Re-imagine those that aren’t.
6. Think ahead as much as you can. Decide what kind of child you want to raise, what kind of qualities you want her/him to have, and how you want people to talk about her/him when they do.
7. Consider the big questions for yourself and your family. Every family has values, implicit or explicit. Find yours. Notice what you “go to bat for” and what you’d suffer for as a person or family. Ask, “Who do I want us to be?” and “Who would make us change our schedules?” and “What is fatherhood worth to me?”

What would you add?