Jarkko Laine » Family

Camping on the Balcony

Jarkko — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 20:30:08 +0000

If you have some imagination and an open mind, you have everything you need for a happy life. Sometimes you don’t even have to leave your home to experience an adventure.

This weekend, I experienced this first hand, when my wife and I did something we had been planning ever since winter and took our two kids camping — on our apartment block balcony. Some picnic treats, a few story books for Oiva and warm blankets were all that we needed to turn just another night into a great memory.

This is not a long post, and I don’t have much else to say. I just wanted to share this moment of joyful adventure as a reminder that most of the time we already have enough.

In Sickness and in Health

Following The Creative Toddler

Jarkko — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:27:51 +0000

Do you know why it’s so hard for a sushi cook to start a new restaurant that mixes sushi with Russian blinis? According to The Medici Effect, it’s mostly because of association barriers inside the chef’s mind: he is just too used to looking at the world through his specialized sushi master eyes to see the opportunity.

It could also be that sushi and blinis don’t match. But that’s a different story.

We are told to think outside of the box, but still most (if not all) of us often get stuck in our usual ways of thinking. It’s just so much easier to keep doing the old thing and ignore new options.

Too bad this approach doesn’t work that well with innovation.

It’s this approach that makes a software developer stick to his current tools even when a different programming language or development style would be more suitable for the project at hand. It’s the approach that keeps a manager from reviewing his rewarding practices even when they clearly have no effect on performance. It’s what makes everyone work overtime in their offices even if working less hours – maybe even outside the office — would be a cheaper and less stressful option.

Little kids are different.

They have just entered this world, and they are still open to every new thing that comes their way. Of course, not every child is the same, but if I asked you to define children with just one word, I’m pretty sure curiosity would be at the top of the list.

My son is just like that. He is always on the move, exploring the world. In a fraction of a second, you may find him standing on the kitchen table looking at cars outside the window. Shouting of excitement. Seeing a miracle in pretty much everything new he finds. Always learning.

That’s the spirit we, as grown ups, can learn from children. As Kim and Jason wisely put it, we should be childlike – not childish.

Yesterday, I took my family out in a forest near our home and filmed my son, Oiva, as he explored the unknown.

I see this video as an example on how we should live our insanely interesting September!

Insanely Interesting September

Now, let’s take a look at you. How has you insanely interesting September been so far? Let’s hear what you have learned, seen, or experienced so far – write your insanely interesting events in the comments!

If your month has been no different from August, it’s not too late to get started. Here are some ideas to make your September the most interesting so far:

Get on the level of a toddler, and look at the world from down there (you may also want to taste some of the things a toddler would put in his mouth). You’ll be surprised at how different things look like from that perspective
Write down all your ideas
Ask why — again and again. Don’t settle for “because I say so.”
Wake up early
Slow down
Make yourself accountable
Read about all kinds of topics
Start a new project
Take a chance

And share the things you learn with your friends (that’s us), through the comments. Have an Insanely Interesting September!

The Return of the Insanely Interesting September

Is Summer Costing You a Good Habit, And What To Do About It?

Jarkko — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:00:14 +0000

Summer is a hard time for maintaining habits. It’s hard to stay on a strict diet on a barbecue weather. It’s hard to keep waking up early when you don’t have to get to work in the morning. There are other times like this too (Christmas for example), but none of them can quite compete at the same level of habit-destructiveness with summer.

And no, I’m not untouched by this phenomenon.

The past two weeks that I have been on my summer holiday have been a relaxing two weeks, but at the same time they have made me watch my good habits turn into good intentions. Not completely extinct yet, but slowly degrading and almost being forgotten.

Habits rely on a routine

There are many reasons why a it’s hard to stay in shape throughout summer.

But on a more generic level, I think the biggest reason why keeping a habit alive during the summer is so hard, is losing your routine.

You have tied your habits to your daily routine, but then one day, that routine is gone – and so is your habit. Let’s take my morning ritual as an example. Here’s how it goes on a normal day:

Use an alarm clock to wake up some time between 5 AM and 5:30 AM
Do the ritual at the kitchen table while the rest of the family is sleeping
Go to work

Now, being on a holiday isn’t enough of a routine breaker to break this habit.

But then, add some more ingredients:

If you are on a trip where the one-year-old sleeps in the same room with you, you can’t use an alarm clock. After all, if the kid wakes up at the same time as you do, it’s “so long, morning ritual!”
If you manage to wake up at the right time without an alarm clock, then comes the problem of not being at home. Going to the kitchen table is not the same if you risk being interrupted by your parents in law.
Not having to go to work? That’s good. You have more time in your day, and that’s something you can use in favor for your habits – if you want to.

No routine – no habit?

You lose the routine. You lose the habit.

It can be this simple. But does it really have to be?

I don’t know the final answer, but so far I have come up with two rather good alternatives. If you know more, please share them in the comments so I can learn from your ideas too.

Be flexible. Flexibility is a tool that I have been using ever since my son was born. With a child in the house you can never know when your schedule will change, so the only thing you can do is to work on your projects and habits whenever there is some time at hand. It might not be every day – and most certainly, it’s not always at the same time of the day. But if you don’t worry too much about such details, it can help you get things done even on your summer holiday.
Get support. When you can make your family support you on your habits, they will make time for you to get them done. Often, this means that you pick the most important habits, that are important not only for you but also to the people you live with.

Together, these two partial solutions might well keep your habits from dying. It doesn’t mean a triumphant, victorious season full of productivity and getting things done. But that doesn’t matter.

It’s OK to go on a lighter schedule for a while if it means spending more time with your kids, or getting some important project finished. Just make sure to get back to your routines when the time is over. That’s the only way to keep learning and working your way towards the top.

It’s The Journey, Stupid

Jarkko — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:00:24 +0000

Having a big dream is exciting. You treasure your dream, make plans on how to get to it, work hard to implement the plans. The dream consumes you.

But when the dream starts to rule your life, you start missing on things: you live in the future, so things happening in today’s world don’t mean anything to you.

That’s why today, I thought it’s about time to balance all this talk about dreams, doing more, and making things happen a bit and make a short trip back in time – from tomorrow back to today.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.
- Greg Anderson

More than anything, this is a reminder to myself not to let my dreams become the only reality – because that would mean losing my life. It’s the journey that matters, not the destination!

Dreams are good

We need dreams to define who we are, and who we want to be.

We need dreams to tell what we value.

We need dreams to give meaning to life.

We need dreams to feel alive.

A person who is not dreaming might just as well be dead.

You only have this day

Tomorrow is not here yet, or as Nora Dunn wrote back in April, there is no tomorrow!

So, what’s left for us?

Today. Right now.

The only moment we can touch, feel, and have an effect on.

Dreams matter today

My big dream is to stay at home to be near my family while making my income from running a successful Internet business.

That’s not going to happen overnight, so I have a choice to make:I can just work hard and spend all my todays thinking about that still far away tomorrow, or I can keep moving towards the goal, but make sure that I’m living according to that dream already today.

The reason why I want to be a stay at home dad is that I love being with my family, so if by chasing my goal I lose the time I could spend with them today, I’m doing something wrong.

This is all about the big picture.

When you understand your destination, you realize that it needs to serve as a reminder of all the things you value on your journey so that you don’t forget them today. Not just as a goal in the distant future but as something that you can already feel today.

That might just be the secret to making your dreams become reality.

Joining The Make Money Online Challenge To Stay at Home

Jarkko — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:04:46 +0000

I have written about dreams. I have written about goals. Soon I am going to write about actions. But there’s one thing I have avoided all the while: sharing the details for the one dream and goal that drives me to all the side business activities I write about.

I want to be a stay-at-home dad.

When I go to work every day and spend most of the day away from my family, I risk missing out on many important and exciting events that take place during the day. Things like Oiva taking his first step, or learning his first real words. And it breaks my heart to hear him cry when I close the door in the morning.

But there are two things that make this quite a bit more complicated than just taking few months off and let the government support our family:

First, to do that we would have to lower our living standards significantly. Mari is still studying, so we can’t just switch roles.

Second, I would love to make this a more permanent thing than just a few months.

Which leads to my goal: to be able to support my family by ~~working from home~~ running my business from home in a way that lets me concentrate in my family rather than work like crazy.

That’s my 4-hour workweek dreamline.

The 4-hour Workweek for the insanely interested

Photo by chris1h1

Again, two things:

First, if you work on a side business, adding more and more work to your days is hardly a feasible solution. In fact, it gets really hard rather quickly. Even more so, if you don’t want your life to be just about work.

Second, if you are insanely interested in everything, you want to be free to play experiments on different things, not just get a lot of work and then keep doing it day in day out.

I just finished reading Tim Ferriss’s much discussed book, The 4-Hour Workweek, today and concluded that the muse business approach presented in would be perfect for me for both of the above reasons. A business that takes four hours a week to maintain is much more suitable as a side business than one that requires always more hours with every new customer. And a business like this gives you the freedom to use your time any way you want! Exploring all the things you are insanely interested in (like learning baking from a real French baker or watching your kid learn new skills).

Earlier this week, my friend from the Caribbean, Mark Hayward started his Anywired-Middlebrook Make Money Online Challenge.

Mark is planning to get something started by the end of April, and this post is my way of saying that I will do the same. By doing so, I will be moving closer towards my current ultimate goal of stay-at-home fatherhood. And naturally I will keep you posted on everything that I’m doing to get there, as well as all my results, both successes and failures.

In upcoming posts, I will share my ideas and more details on my plan, but right now what I really would like to do is to listen to your ideas. What do you think I should do to reach my target this month? Feel free to suggest anything that comes to mind and I’ll see how it fits into my plan.

Even small ideas matter

And finally the last piece of inspiration that finally got me started with this project: the one and only Christine O’Kelly. Her blog post on how she made almost $3000 with her 26-page eBook shows that it’s worth chasing even the small money and not getting stuck at thinking that if you can’t make millions right away with your idea, it’s not worth doing.

Let’s try out things, and then tune them as we go, shall we?

6 Thoughts That Crossed My Mind During a Week Offline

Jarkko — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:00:46 +0000

On the Friday morning before Easter at six A.M. our plane left for Costa del Sol, Spain. It was a relaxing week of sun, warmth, singing together with our Church Choir, and away from the online world.

Now, I’m back, and trying to find my place on the blogosphere again.

To resume my life online, I decided to share some bits from my mind from the past week. In no particular order.

I hope you’ll find them interesting.

Traveling is fun!

…and taking a child with you makes it twice as fun (and challenging)

Oiva was a good chap and enjoyed the warm climate, sand, and all the new things all over him.

On the other hand, he pretty much dictated our pace, the times we could use for relaxing (not during the days, that is), and pretty much everything. But while it was challenging at times, there is no question about it – the good brought by this young traveler beat the challenges 100 to 1.

My lesson learned: having kids is a poor excuse for not traveling. After all, who of us didn’t like to travel when we were young?

And, if you want to get away for a while but can’t afford it right now, here’s a free way: How to Travel the Globe for FREE Using FLICKR

Work as a meaning for life is overrated

Before leaving for Spain about a week and a half ago, I wrote a post about planning your work and life as one thing, and not too separate entities. This idea can be implemented in two ways.

One is to make your work the meaning for your life.

The other is to plan your work so that there is more room for a full life.

I often find myself thinking that without work, things would soon get boring. Not during this holiday. Throughout each of the seven days, there was always something to do and experience.

The four-hour workweek starts to make sense.

There’s nothing wrong in a bit of a backup plan

Sure. I want to do big things.

But I’m not in my early twenties anymore. At almost 28, I’m closing in to thirty, have a wife and kid, some mortgage, and packed my bags full of baby food and diapers for the holidays. Just in case.

Actually, it was my wife’s idea, but I agreed. Just in case.

Just don’t let your carefulness stop you from doing the big things you are planning.

I don’t need all that information

When I returned home from my trip, I had 1000+ unread blog articles waiting for me in my Google Reader. Multiply 1000 by 52. That is 52,000 articles per year!

Sure, I like to brag about reading all the time. But I think this is too much.

So, yesterday I spend about an hour cutting down the number of blogs I subscribe to about half of what it used to be before the trip, getting down to 127 subscriptions. Not a small number, but at least a bit easier to handle.

If you have a similar problem, check out SproutWire and let us spot the best articles from the noise for you. The site just went live yesterday, and is now ready for the masses!

Life is full of new things to learn

It’s interesting to see how thoughts evolve.

Before I started blogging I had no idea. Because unless you write down your thoughts, you’ll never remember what you were thinking a year ago, or even a month ago.

This, I think, is the beauty of blogging: a blog is a record of the small changes that happen when your brain interacts with the world. A full version control that shows the path you have gone through to get to where you are today.

If you are not blogging yet, try it now!

Back to normal scheduling

This was my quick way to say I’m back, and had a lot of fun on my short vacation. It was warm and sunny. It was hard at times. And it was relaxing most of the time.

New, more structured posts coming up later this week. Welcome to all new readers and the rest of you, thanks for sticking around!

Cheers!

How To Triple Your Week Without Anyone Noticing

How a Side Business Forces You To Balance Your Life

Jarkko — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:11:31 +0000

Some of my most popular posts so far date all the way back to August, when I wrote a five article series on securing your finances with a side business. It was an amazing coincidence that just when I was planning to start my second series looking at the same topic from a different angle, both Naomi from IttyBiz and Skellie from Anywired linked to one of the posts in the original series: The Seven Deadly Sins of a Side Business Entrepreneur.

The new series starts today.

Last time I wrote about side businesses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), I focused on the monetary side of things: how building a side business makes you less relying to your employer and how you can maximize the amount of money you can make through your side business.

This time will be different.

Instead of money I will concentrate in the more spiritual side of balancing your life and making your life more meaningful through a side business. That’s why in the coming up posts you can quite easily replace the work “business” with “project” if you don’t feel comfortable talking in business terms. But for the rest of us, it’s business that what we will be talking about.

During the next two weeks my plan is to post a total of seven posts (including this one) about starting, running and balancing a meaningful side business. If you want to make sure you don’t miss any of them (or want to get notified when the whole thing is over and I’m getting to some other topic), subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up to get the latest posts delivered straight to your e-mail inbox.

Some background information before we start:

I’m a dad with a nine-month old kid.
I’m a blogger.
I work 5 days a week as a programmer for a games company.
And I’m an entrepreneur building a side business in freelance writing for blogs, magazines and businesses.

And I have the same 24 hours a day everyone else (both the super human who does all of this plus some more and the regular Joe who just goes to work and watches a movie from TV every night).

That’s why I haven’t slept that much lately. But sleeping is not the topic today, let’s talk about balance instead.

A side business will force you to prioritize your life, work, and business.

When the amount of time you have at hand is limited, you have to use it wisely.

Your side business requires time.

Your family requires time.

And your day job requires time.

They all compete for the same 24 hours, so you have some math to do. And I don’t say this wishing I had 30 hours, or even three extra hours a day. I think it’s a good thing as it forces you to think about your usage of time.

Day job: 9 to 5, which is 8 hours. Plus overtime.

That’s the first thing where you can cut some time from. If you can’t cut overtime for good, cut at least most of it. Your employer most likely isn’t paying for your extra hours anyway so why not use it for something profitable like a side business?

Side business: This one can take as many hours as you give to it, so I try to work wise and keep the amount of work required to the minimum (more on this in the upcoming articles) working only one to two hours every morning.

Family: We’re talking about your priorities, so you can do whatever you want. But my advice is to not cut time away from your family if possible. Find ways to work so that you are present to your family, or maybe even do some of your side business work together with your spouse. But after that, make sure you still give your full attention to every small event happening around the house.

What to drop next? How about TV? (TV is fun but you can live without it – I have tried it) Or surfing the Internet? (this is harder, though…)

But that’s really the beauty of it: because of the limited time we all have, you have to get creative. You have to think how to use your time to make it mean the most to you, and not just pass by. And that tenderly pushes you to live rather than just exist.

Balancing the things in your life will never be easy. But it’s an interesting adventure that will teach you more and more about who you really are and what matters most to you. With this newly found insight you are already much better prepared to the new choices that come your way every day.

On Friday we will continue the adventure by setting up goals for your side business venture. But until then, let’s chat about priorities: what are the most important things for you in life? And how does that show in the choices you make every day?

Photo by max_thinks_sees

In Sickness and in Health

Jarkko — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:40:37 +0000

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” said John Lennon. While that’s true to every one of us, adding more people to your family brings the truth in those thirteen words to all new dimensions.

It’s time for a real life story. You decide if there is a lesson to be learn from it or not.

(I guess this is my turn to go strip blogging then, Jonathan?)

I have a goal to publish three blog posts a week, have a job, and build a freelance writing business on the side. And I have a family: a lovely wife and the most wonderful 9-month old kid on the planet. I guess you can already see that this isn’t the easiest equation out there, but then again, I’m not the only one doing it (This guy, Ultrarob, does all of it, and runs ultramarathons. And Naomi, while she doesn’t have a job outside her home, works all the hours I do, plus some more…).

When everything goes as planned, I have found a nice balance: I write in the morning, or late at night, depending on how the rest of the family sleeps. Then I go to work for the day. And spend the rest of the day with Mari and Oiva. It works.

But it’s a really fragile kind of balance.

The fact that my last blog post was published more than a week ago proves that. Here’s what happened:

First, I had to do a few long days at work (This was mistake number one: not following my own advice on never working overtime again). On Wednesday, I did a few hours of overtime, and then on Thursday I worked for a full thirteen hours, from 8 AM to around 9.15 PM. And naturally, family comes first, so Friday evening was devoted to quality time with Mari and Oiva. Well, that’s fine, I thought. I had a writing job to finish for Sunday, and after all, if I posted a blog post on Saturday, I would still have almost reached my weekly posting goal.

Well, while I was busy making my plans, life had something else in mind.

On Friday night Oiva got sick (he’s still sick by the way, so if you pray, feel free to keep him in prayers) and threw up for the first time. We washed him, got him clean bedclothes, and got back to bed hoping everything would go by and he’d feel better the next day. And I guess he did, although kids apparently aren’t really good at knowing if they are sick or not. Oiva was his normal smiling self, but still he kept vomiting once per day for the whole weekend.

But, as it is often the case, Oiva was just the first in the family to get the disease.

Mari was next.

On Saturday evening I found myself not working on my blog nor the writing job but taking care of the two better members of my family. Sunday went by with the same programming – with the only difference that slowly I started to realize that I’m not feeling that well either. And on the night between Sunday and Monday it was my turn to throw up. Luckily that happened late enough so was able to finish the writing task on time on Sunday and still get some sleep before the sickness really struck me.

On Monday it was then my turn to stay in bed and let Mari take care of me and Oiva. Thank God she was already feeling better!

And now, as I’m writing this, it’s one hour and 12 minutes past midnight. We returned from the hospital (we went to show Oiva to the doctor to make sure his disease isn’t getting too bad) about an hour ago. And finally life has given me something back in form of this real life story that I can use for getting some content to my blog.

Wise man, that John Lennon.

Life really is what happens to me while I’m busy making other plans.

PS. Make sure to sign up for the SproutWire beta if you haven’t yet. I’ll post more information on it as soon as this life thing gets sorted out and I can get back to my other plans. Some time later this week, I hope.

Be A Hero Dad and Have More Fun With Your Kids

Jarkko — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:00:55 +0000

Being a great dad is something that every father out there is (or should be) striving for. But what exactly is a great dad?

Steve Caplin and Simon Rose think they have it figured out: a dad should be a hero that provides the fun and the spice that makes life entertaining and enjoyable.

Steve and Simon are authors of popular dad books, Dad Stuff and More Dad Stuff. Combined, they have collected more than fifteen years worth of experience in being a dad, so you can imagine how excited I was when I got Steve to answer my questions and share some tips on fatherhood.

Check out what Steve had to say, and then share your own thoughts in the comments!

You and Simon are the dads who wrote a book about being a here to your kids. What makes a hero dad?

A hero dad is one who’s never stuck for an answer to a question – or if he is, he’ll go and look it up on Wikipedia and then find a way of making it palatable for young minds. A hero dad will always be able to come up with a game or activity, whether it’s in a car, train of plane, in a restaurant, or just around the table at home.

Why do you think it’s important for kids to see their dads as their heroes?

Kids depend on their mothers for the essential, day to day stuff: having clothes that fit and aren’t filthy, having meals on the table, patching up their wounds. But they look to their dads for the fun stuff, for the added excitement, for the spice that makes life entertaining and enjoyable.

What made you write a book on this topic?

That, really, was our motivation: how to have fun even though you’re looking after your children.

We’re both dads who work at home, and who have to look after our children during school vacations. It was during one of these that we got chatting, talking about what we could do to keep our kids amused and entertained – and between us, found we had a good store of games and pastimes. When we tried to look for more inspiration, we found there were no books on the subject. Sure, there were dull, worthy parenting books, but none that emphasized the fun part of being a dad.

That, really, was our motivation: how to have fun even though you’re looking after your children.

It was great to notice that your books build an image that great dads are in fact insanely interested in everything. Do you agree? What about dads who are really specialized in some set of skills?

Specialist dads do, of course, have one particular line of interest for their children. But they do need to make sure they don’t push this interest too far; we’ve known several musicians whose kids have been put off by their dads’ insistence that they learn an instrument, for example.

Even if you’re the best magician in your city, you can expect your kids to groan every time you bring out a new trick. It’s just the way kids are: what they grow up with is mundane and uninteresting. Don’t force your specialism on them!

But when their friends come around, let your kids bask in your reflected glory as they’re the ones who will be impressed the most.

What are you most interested in?

We’re both into music, of course. Simon’s a serious film buff, and Steve’s really into making stuff. But we’re both into games and puzzles, and this is what kids like the most.

How about your kids?

Kids are too easily sidetracked by video games, FaceBook and TV. But all our kids enjoy music, and – fortunately – they all get a kick out of trying all the games, puzzles and activities we dream up or come across for our books. Just as well – we couldn’t write the books without them!

Are there any special favorite tricks in your books that you kids just can’t get enough of?

They love magic and rubber band games, as these can be done anywhere. Some of the car games are long-standing hits, too. And, of course, big-finish games like standing on balloons and the Great Egg Trick always go down well.

Can you really stand on balloons without bursting them? Did you try all the tricks presented in your books?

Yes, we can do it – try it for yourself!

And yes, of course, we did try every single one of the tricks in the books. For each trick that appears here there are half a dozen that we rejected as being too boring, too unworkable or just too difficult.

Are all kids curious? Do you think your tips work on every child out there?

All kids are curious, for certain. They have to be: that’s how they find out how the world works, and how to adapt to it.

The trick is extending that natural curiosity into areas they wouldn’t have considered examining, such as mathematics, language and science. It’s all a question of making the subject entertaining.

And a question I’ve been thinking a lot lately: how can I raise my son so that I can keep his curiosity alive throughout the years?

The method we’ve found the best is not to give him an immediate answer to his questions, but to encourage him to work the answer out for himself through hints and suggestions.

There are two reasons for this: first, it will build his self esteem, and make him realize that he has the potential to work out problems. Second, he’s far more likely to remember the answer if he’s had to work at it; a one-word answer can be forgotten just as quickly as it’s learnt.

Are there any other super-important tips for beginner dads like myself?

The main one, really, is to lighten up. Dads – ourselves included – can all too easily get strung up about minor issues, and upset and irritated by things that really shouldn’t bother us so much. Try to take the time to step back from each problem and, if you can, look at it from the kid’s point of view.

This sounds much easier than it is, but if you can manage it you’ll have fewer arguments and more fun.

What do children teach you about being a dad

Your kids turn you into your parents.

The first time you find yourself wiping away an ice cream smear with a kleenex, or reminding them to put a coat on when they go out, or telling them not to fiddle with their knife and fork, you’ll blanch with horror: this is exactly what your parents used to do to you! And, initially, it’s horrifying. But it does help us to re-evaluate our own parents; we’re the reason they became what they were.

Is there something more you would like to say to all the dads reading this post?

Have fun with your kids!

Every time you take them to the park, or on a car journey, or out shopping, don’t look on them as an encumbrance and count the minutes till it’s over. Find puzzles on the street for them to solve, so you keep up a dialog with them and help them to learn about the world around them.

Why does that building have a drainpipe running down the wall?

What do you think might be carried in that truck?

Why is that man carrying an empty box?

Do you think that tree is taller than our house, and how could we measure it?

How many lemons do you think there are in that crate?

There are always games to be played, puzzles to be solved, and conversations to be had. Use your ingenuity, encourage your kids to ask and answer questions, and remember: as a dad, you’re always on duty.

Now, your turn: What do you think makes a great dad? And to all the moms out there, how does this idea of dadhood sound to you? Let’s talk!

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