About a year ago, when my daughter Alexis was six months old, I began to notice how differently I interacted with her than my wife did. As Leah would carry Alexis down the hall for her morning bottle, Alexis would point to portraits on the wall, and they’d stop until she wanted to move on. When they’d read books or play blocks, Leah would be able to make the transition with her to a new activity without Alexis getting impatient or frustrated each time she wanted to do something else.

This realization made me feel a bit brutish, honestly. Whenever I carried Alexis down the hallway, it was always to get to the kitchen and give her the bottle. It never occurred to me to look for anything else she might be interested in along the way. When I played with her, I’d usually end up lost in my own thoughts after a few minutes, or I’d be just as engrossed in the toys as she was. And when she cried without an obvious reason, my only two solutions were to distract her by whooping or toss her in the air until she started to laugh.

Seeing Leah respond with such awareness to Alexis’s feelings made me want to be more aware myself. While my family experience and personality have made that difficult, I’ve learned recently that there are identifiable patterns in how typical dads play with their kids that are different from how mothers do it—and that these differences are good.

All this seems obvious enough, I know, but since I’ve always thought that a lack of paternal attentiveness to kids’ feelings is inherently bad, hearing that dads can’t, and shouldn’t, compete with moms in the category of emotional receptivity was liberating for me. In his book ‘The Good Father: On Men, Masculinity, and Life in the Family’, Mark O’ Connell explains how the kind of involvement that I have with Alexis as characteristic of dads.

Fathers, says O’ Connell, tend to play more vigorously and unpredictably with children than mothers do. He cites other psychologists, namely James Herzog and Steven Cooper, who have come up with the terms “disruptive attunement” and “benevolent disruption,” respectively, to describe concepts of paternal involvement that are beneficial to kids. Whereas mothers tend to adjust to the children’s moods, fathers are more likely to “intrude, disrupt, stir up, demand, and insist”—to adjust the kids to fit their moods.

How does this help? O’ Connell believes that these expectations can actually enable kids to adjust themselves to confrontational situations in life—whether it be immediate physical danger or the long-term struggle between achievement and avoidance.  He states, “And, in seeing his children as he wishes them to be he might not be acting like a narcissistic son of a b****. He might, in fact, be holding out a vision of hope, of growth, of possibility—indeed of the future.”

The moral of the story for me (and the premise of O’ Connell’s book): we all need to change in order to become better dads, but that change doesn’t mean acting more like a mom. We can admire our wives’ mothering qualities, but we need our own fathering role models. That, I believe, is an important purpose of this blog. Keep it up, guys!

One of the unavoidable things about living in an Asian country is getting a lot of attention because of our light skin. At least in Europe, we would be able to blend in more! In our first year or so here in Asia, as a childless couple, it seemed that Jane got most of the attention - usually from guys. I was typically very proactive about screening Jane from their view, constantly repositioning myself as we walked so that my large body would continue to obscure Jane from their line of sight.

Once we had Junior, it was almost as if Jane didn’t exist anymore. She very rarely gets the eye these days while we’re out and about - but trust me, it has nothing to do with her! Despite her girlish figure and alluring looks, it’s Junior who gets all the attention. From the very first months until now, people can’t resist pinching his cheeks, making childish sounds or just ruffling his hair. Usually it’s nice; we feel flattered that people enjoy our son.

But sometimes, people - even strangers - are a little too friendly with Junior. No, not in that way. I mean that they may try to hold his hand to help him negotiate a curb, or may be a little too in-your-face “What’s YOUR name?” with him. In those circumstances, Junior reacts. At best, he simply bobs and weaves like a pro boxer until he’s clear of the offending party’s hands. At worst, he shrieks and walks/runs with a little more purpose to return to us.

When this happens, I at first found myself feeling apologetic. It’s not a nice thing to be rejected, and when the person doing the rejecting is my own son, I feel bad for the rejectee (the reject?). But Jane helped me to see that it’s a good thing for our son (and daughter) to dislike being manhandled by strangers. A certain amount of distrust is healthy.

Now to find the balance between encouraging a “don’t talk to strangers” attitude without offending the warm and child-friendly culture here. For after all, we’re the ones who are strangers to them.

Chinese New Year means a lot to us in our house. It is one of the special times that we get to celebrate our daughter’s heritage. So it is a great benefit that we live close to San Francisco and we get to see the parade in person.

I have done this even before my wife and I were married. I get to work on the parade. I won’t tell you what I do for the parade because this is not about me but about heritage and sharing this with our family. Our girls get to see that there are people just like them, that look like them and we even get to see and talk to families just like ours.

About 4 years ago, we were deciding where to have breakfast and walked by a diner. Inside the diner was a family of three with a chinese daughter. Just the Monday before we had received the referral for our first daugter so we had to go in and try to talk. We did and ended up sitting right next to them. We ordered and tried not to stare. It was hard. Really hard. We kept wondering if our family would look like that one. Toward the end of breakfast I finally spoke up and told them that their daughter was beautiful. There was the opening that started a full blown conversation. We told them we had just gotten our referral and the mom started to cry. She wanted to hear all about ‘The Call’. It was a great time. The funny thing was they didn’t even know that the parade was that day. They were in town for a convention and wanted to introduce their new addition to their colleagues. My wife saw them later that night walking and they thanked her for talking to them and told her they had a great time. They wished us a speedy travel and a safe trip. Sometimes it is great to be at the right place at the right time.

The moral of this story is, if you are a waiting family and you see another family out and about, try to spark up a conversation. You never know what might happen.

Sometimes I don’t take the time to realize just how much our little son, Colby, loves God and church. He is learning so much and is, at times, asking some really hard questions for a kid his age. He is only three years old and has already asked us about communion at church; He wonders why we do it and says that he wants to join us in taking communion.

The first time Colby asked, Misty told him that we do it because God is in our hearts and that we take communion because we are remembering Him. The next week, he wanted to take communion. When Misty asked him why, he told her that God was in his heart and that he wanted to remember Him. How can you argue with that?

Anyway, I was working recently and listening to some of my music when a song started playing that I had downloaded for him. Listening to the song, I began to realize how much fun he has. He is in a life group and spends at least two church services in his children’s area. Sometimes it takes all we have to get him out of there.  He has made some good friends at church and loves his teachers. Our children’s areas are getting back to the basics in learning the basic children’s Bible stories. Thanks to stuff like Veggie Tales, he is learning them.

You know, I really have no idea where this post is headed. I guess I wanted to share a thought that went through my head when I heard his song.

One of these days, I need to peek in and just watch him. With my luck, I would get caught and he would come running over to me; but he would probably just tell me it’s not time to leave yet.

One of the things my daughter and I love to do is draw together.

I have purchased the big drawing pads so we are able to share a page. Kristin has loved happy faces since she was two. If we saw something with a happy face on it, she had to have it. Of course, since she has been two she also likes to draw happy faces. At two, her drawings didn’t look much like happy faces. Now that she is three, she can draw real nice happy faces.

Another thing we like to do is put a drop sheet on the floor and put finger paints in the middle. I squeeze out a little of each color and away she goes. Each time she seems to suck me in to being a part of this activity. I have to help her as she likes to make imprints of her feet and hands. This is a good way to track her growth also. During this process of me helping her, she will take advantage of me being close to start to use me as her paint pad. Now as a middle-aged man with a rather large forehead due to being follicly challenged, it is obvious why she sees my forehead as a large canvas board. After a lot of laughter and paint, we are both well-decorated and ready for picture taking. Great memories. Of course, the next step is a quick shower for both of us to get rid of the paint.

On one of our artist days, we were laying on our bellies in the front room drawing and coloring on our paper pad. As we lay close to each other, she looked at me and said, “Dad, I love you”. She surprised me and it took a few seconds to answer back that I loved her too. As I lay there with her, I realized that I was enjoying our together time and that it meant a lot to her. It sure means a lot when your child says they love you and you know it is for the way you make them feel, not that they were told or asked.

Much like all our parents, I never experienced the true expression of love around the house. However, I have learned that it is very important to express love to family and loves ones. Since the adoption of my little girl which is the first child of my own, I have found this expression of love quite easy. I tell her I love her when ever she makes me feel good or when I just feel like telling her. I can see she is learning from me that expressing your love is a good thing and to be open about your feelings.