Top Ten Suggestions for Being the Best Dad You Can Be - Part 1

Copyright (c) 2009 Lome Aseron

There are plenty of resources out there that help you understand how to give your baby a bath and when to start feeding them solids, but do you know how to make the most out of BEING a dad? Here are my top 10 (or at least the first five) suggestions for making the most of it.

1) Acknowledge that fatherhood is about your personal development. If all we got from being a father was having a little someone to play catch with and an extra mouth to feed, it would be a pretty raw deal. Being a father is all about challenges and how we handle those challenges. You're going to grow as much (if not more) than your child will - in a good way. Developing as a person is an important part of being a dad.

2) Clean up your relationship with your partner. Having a healthy relationship with your partner is essential to making the most out of being a father. Let me repeat that. Having a healthy relationship with your partner is essential to making the most out of being a father. You won't enjoy the journey of fatherhood if you're constantly at odds with their other parent. You don't have to stay in a messed up situation, but you do have to figure out how to make peace with the other most important person in your child's life.

3) Reconcile your relationship with your own father. It's hard enough being a father without having to fight through the emotional baggage of a dysfunctional relationship with your own dad. Reconciling your relationship with your own father doesn't necessarily require drastic measures, just a commitment to finding emotional peace around whatever pain you might feel. And we all feel some kind of pain around our parents. Someone once told me that to the extent we can't forgive our parents, we won't grow up. And does the world really need more fathers who need to grow up.

4) Forgive yourself. You've probably already made what you consider to be your first "mistake" as a father. If you haven't, you might want to start paying more attention. I don't mean an I-put-the-diaper-on-backwards type of mistake. I'm talking about losing your cool, making a decision about your child that didn't quite turn out the way you intended it to. I used to resent my son when he woke up in the middle of the night, not so much because I was losing sleep, but because it reminded me of how much my life had changed; how the life I had before was over. As soon as I forgave myself for feeling that way, I stopped resisting the interruption of his night wakings. Hey, you're going to be a father for a while, so give yourself a break.

5) Take 100% responsibility for the choices you make. We generally shy away from responsibility because we tend to equate it with blame. If I was forced to choose the greatest gift of fatherhood, I'd say that it causes us to stop off-loading our life choices to other people in our lives. When it comes down to it, your child will only have one YOU in their life, so there's no escaping the fact that YOU are IT when it comes to their male role model. Your son or daughter will (hopefully) have more than one male influence, but they will all take a back seat to you. You will be the standard by which men in his or her life will be measured for a long time. You've got the responsibility, so you might as well own it 100%.

Lome Aseron helps dads on the journey of fatherhood through workshops and one-on-one coaching. Recognizing that fatherhood is a personal journey for fathers as well as their children, Lome strives to balance the more traditional responsibilities of bread-winner with newer models of father as care-taker. For free resources and more information about how to be the best dad you can be, go to http://www.newdadforlife.com

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