Today’s blog is the collection of 10 tips for fathers on how to be to a better father. They’re in no particular order but all of them are definitely helpful. Enjoy.
- Spend as much time with your children as humanly possible, especially when they’re younger. Children grow up incredibly fast and, before you know it, they aren’t children anymore.
- Tell your children as often as possible that you love them. Trust us, there is no limit to how many times you can say it and, even if they protest (as teenagers tend to do) say it anyway.
- Play with your children. It doesn’t matter how old they are, or what toys they happen to be playing with at the time, whatever it is just join them and play. There’s nothing better you can do to forge long-term, unbreakable bonds with your children than to play with them.
- Try to say the word “no” as infrequently as possible. Here’s a fact; the word no is a negative word, even though it’s also one of the most popular words in the English language. If you say it too often, that negative connotation can oftentimes leads to a child feeling that they can’t do anything (right and/or wrong).
- Listen to what your children have to say. Yes, there will be times when you need to ask your child to not interrupt but, unless you’re doing something extremely important, you should allow them to interrupt you if they have a question to ask, something important (or even not so important) to say, or otherwise want to say something to you. Here’s the thing; if you tell them to not talk to you often enough, they’ll stop… and might never talk to you at all.
- Lavish your children with praise but, when it comes to punishment, be sparse.
- Be honest with your children. You’d be amazed at how intuitive children are, especially when it comes to lying. If you tell them the truth, your honesty will come back to reward you in the future when they do something that begs an honest answer.
- Whatever they want to do, be supportive. You might want your son to play football but he might want to join the chess team. Whatever he, or your daughter, wants to do, even if you don’t particularly agree with it, you should still support them.
- Be approachable. If your child knows that they can come to you with whatever problems they have, if they ever have a big problem you can be sure they’ll come to you instead of hiding it.
- Accept your kids for who they are, no matter what.