The Playful Dad E-Book

Stephen Floyd

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Fatherhood is about loving, living, and learning alongside your kids. AND playing with them.

If you don't like to play, learn! Kids are fun teachers; ask them how to play. It is important that you do not shut them down.

Here are fifty ways to be a fun-loving father - including but not limited to:

Being athletic

Building a fort

Reading and play

Funny faces

Sarcasm

Affection and fun

Holidays

Pleasure in life itself

Leseprobe

PLAYFUL DAD

50 Tips On Becoming A Fun-loving Father

STEPHEN FLOYD

Copyright (C) 2020 Stephen Floyd

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint based on a painting by Alexandria Trudgen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

Contents

Introduction

Play

1. Anger

2. Discipline

3. Fairness in play

4. Puzzles

5. Other ways to play

6. Getting physical

7. Organized play

8. Being athletic

9. Camping

10. Fishing

11. Hunting

12. Travel

13. Building a fort

14. The quintessential backyard memory: a tire swing

15. Imagination

16. Silliness

17. Music

18. Reading and Play

19. Art

20. Shopping

21. Surprises

22. Holidays

23. Pets

24. Wild animals

25. Your dad

26. Repairs

27. Cleaning up

28. Chores

29. Frolic

30. Pleasure in life itself

31. Take a walk

32. Tickles

33. Costumes

34. Dress fancy

35. Tea party

36. Funny faces

37. Smiles

38. Laughter

39. Thankfulness

40. Faith

41. Transparency

42. Scatological functions are funny!

43. Fun at an other's expense

44. Don't play MEAN

45. Sarcasm

46. Dad jokes

47. Model play in how you play with your wife

48. How you treat your wife in general

49. Affection and fun

50. Food

Make a plan

About the Author

Introduction

There are no shortcuts to becoming a good dad. No pill to take. No book to read, not even this one. Fatherhood is a lifelong process. AS you walk along. AS you sit down. AS you rise up. DAILY work. Just like running or hitting the gym, the more you do it, the more it becomes part of your way of life; it doesn't necessarily get easier, but it doesn't require as much effort to get things rolling IF you work at it every day. It is easier to steer a moving car, right? Get moving on the path to being a playful dad and adjust your course as you go.

Some of you didn't have a dad at all, others had a father who was physically present, but emotionally absent. It will be easier for you, in some ways, to be a good dad, because anything is better than nothing. However, fatherhood is about loving, living, and learning alongside your kids. AND playing with them. If you don't like to play, learn! Kids are fun teachers; ask them how to play. It is important that you do not shut them down. If they ask you to do something that you find embarrassing or awkward, think about all the times your own parents let you down, and how nice it would have been had they been willing to be embarrassed for you.

Let me introduce you to the concept of 'The Playful Dad.' He is alive deep down inside every father who is too tired to get down on the floor and wrestle with Junior after work. The Playful Dad wants desperately to have his children as his friends, no matter how grumpy he may seem. The Playful Dad may have been worked to the bone and driven to find other ways to show his kids he loves them, but The Playful Dad can be awakened within each of us, if we but try.

There is a serious lack of fatherhood role models for today's young dads. Fatherhood dot org quotes data from the United States Census Bureau claiming that 24 million children in this country (roughly one in three) live without their biological father. That was 2010, and the trend has probably increased that ratio. With nearly half of all marriages ending in divorce, the likelihood that children have good role models for being a father is not high. Now that you are a dad, or soon will be one, you are thinking about how you can be a better father than your Dad was. That is admirable. The Playful Dad is a good father.

Historically, fathers would take their boys out into the field to help with whatever task was at hand as soon as junior was able to help. Whether in an agrarian setting, where Junior would learn how to plant and harvest crops, or in a community of hunters, where the pursuit of meat meant boys would have a 'coming of age,' when they were treated like one of the men, there was a direct line between father and son that has been lost in today's society. On the other hand, dads rarely got to spend time with their daughters in the aforementioned arrangements, and today's fathers have a leg up in THAT regard.

How much a father may have played with his children in bygone epochs is a matter of debate, since we tend to view survival as more important than play, but since so much play can be used to teach those skills, I am inclined to believe that playtime had an important role, especially with the younger ones who could not join Papa in the hunt or in the fields. Modern children hardly know their fathers, not just because of their living arrangements, but also because of the change in lifestyle that has removed Dad's livelihood from the homestead. How can you take a break to play with your kids when you go away from them to an office for 8 or 10 hours every day? How can you teach them life skills when they are being trained by strangers in everything from basic health and hygiene, like brushing teeth, to how to resolve conflict with bullies? Granted, not everyone can quit the 9-to-5 work routine and start a business or home-school or move into a rural area to practice a subsistence lifestyle, but have you considered what our modern standard of living has done to our children's ability to live well?

Just because you don't recall playing with your father doesn't mean he didn't try. However, do you remember your Dad being playful? Was he serious all the time? Was he able to make a joke at his own expense or do you remember him laughing only when you did something? The power that a father has over his children is mind-numbing, especially in the way it echoes through the generations. A father who makes his kids think that he is laughing at their expense is sowing seeds of inferiority that will blossom into a myriad of psychological issues later on in life. But a dad who makes his kids laugh, who plays with them in whatever way he can, who demonstrates an ability to smile in the face of life, this man reaps generations of happiness.

Play

Even if you don't know HOW to play with your kids, it's important that you try. Children are very forgiving if you don't know the rules to their game, whether it is a structured board game or a made-up role-playing adventure using stuffed animals. Simply by showing interest in what they're doing, by getting down on the floor next to them, you are assigning honor to their little psyches and are telling them without words that they are important to you. They are more important than your career. They are more important than the news. They are more important than your own relaxation. Whether you take your little ones outside to play catch or sit at the card table and have tea with "Mrs. Nesbit," your play teaches the next generation so much about their own worth, regardless of any skill that may also be passed along.

The younger the child, the easier it is to keep them entertained; from making silly faces and odd noises, to playing hide-and-seek with your hands over your face, you will find that little ones will delight in the attention you are giving. You may find them laughing hysterically or attempting to mimic your face, noise, or action, even within the first few days of life. Don't be discouraged if the little one just sits there like a lump and stares at you; some kids develop faster than others, and some seem to just soak it all in without ANY response, but the time you are putting in, face to face, is shaping that youngster, as you become a regular, normal part of life. If you add in singing and plenty of touch, from simple snuggles, to hand-holding, to games of patty-cake, your babies will KNOW that you love them!

Once you hit toddlerdom, the games will change in complexity only in how the connections are being made in your child's head. Simple games like patty-cake and hide-and-seek move into full-body mode, as you add in more than just gross motor skills. I find two- and three-year-olds to especially love it when you get down on the floor with them, whether to become a 'horse" to be ridden, or just to lie on the carpet and color together. Matching games can help make connections in their brains, and you will be surprised at how well little ones can do, especially when they don't have the distractions of news and business and interpersonal relationship squabbles that we adults have. Don't be surprised if they win! Don't get angry, either. But that is another issue, isn't it?

Graduating to board games can occur at a rather early age, if your child can read, but even Candy Land can be fun, especially when you have more than two players. It is important that YOU play by the rules, even if your youngster doesn't quite understand them all. If you teach your kids that cheating is okay if YOU do it, then any attempt to undo that later in life will be met with scorn. You show yourself to be a hypocrite if you permit yourself to cheat, even on a silly game, and it is VITALLY important to live out the values you claim to espouse ALL the time. This is one of the reasons being a playful dad is so important, because your kids will see what values are paramount to you when your guard is down. Likewise, don't let your kids cheat! Some dads think it's good to LET their kids win. Personally, I don't. Whether it's a game of chess or Candy Land, I strive to beat the pants off my kids as if I were in a championship game for world domination. Why would I do that? Because it's not JUST about having fun, it is also about assigning value. Your kids will KNOW if you let them win and that will make them feel worse than if they NEVER win when they play a game with you. This is another reason that games of chance, like Candy Land, are so important, because you WILL sometimes lose.

Playing is not just a matter of games, but also of toys. Cars, balls, blocks, dolls, action figures, stuffed animals, anything that can be made to move or build or represent something else; these are toys that dads should use in playing with their kids. And don't just use them as "intended," but use your OWN imagination. Does your toy truck talk? Can your stuffed teddy bear fly? Can you build a tower with balls? This teaches your kids that play is not confined to other people's rules or expectations and unleashes a plethora of pathways into your child's OWN imagination.

50 Tips to Becoming a Fun-loving Father:

1

Anger

How we dads handle our anger is very important, not only to the development of our children's own psyches, but also to how they view themselves when they become adults. If we show our kids that it's okay to get out-of-control when something does not go our way when simply playing a game, aren't we communicating that lack of self-control is acceptable ANY time? If, instead, we demonstrate that, even though we may not be HAPPY about a situation, that we handle it in a calm manner, then we can be teaching problem-solving skills that are indispensable later in life AND we inculcate the value of self-control. One of my boys was a real fit-thrower as a youngster. He would toss game pieces into the air, destroy toys that angered him, scream and cry, and generally ruin the experience of playing with him. He did NOT get that from me. What he DID get was the advice, "Control yourself or someone else will have to control you." This is something that we can model for our kids when we play with them. If I get stuck in the licorice while traversing the Lollipop Woods and my child gets Princess Lolly and blows right past me, what would I be teaching if I threw Candy Land up in the air?

A good example

One of my personal strengths is that I generally do not get angry easily, therefore it is much easier for me to talk about keeping your cool than for someone who has a naturally short fuse. That is not to say that I never get angry, but rather, it takes a lot to get me to the place of losing my cool. Some people suggest counting to ten to give yourself time to cool off, but something that works better for me is to get up and walk away for a moment. A word of caution: walking away can look like conflict avoidance, and it can easily become that, especially if you do not return to the situation to resolve it completely. In the moment, however, it is a good way to keep oneself from saying or doing something that cannot be undone. Words are far more powerful weapons than we give them credit for being, and we can wound our kids so easily. Have you heard the expression, "You can't unpluck a chicken?" That is the way words work.