1. I am fully equipped for the task of being your dad. I have what it takes to love, encourage, discipline, and help you to find the most productive and fulfilling track for your life.
2. Quite apart from its significant impact upon you, I will continue to respect and speak well of your mother no matter what circumstances arise or already exist between us.
3. While it may not always appear as such to you, I have your highest interests at heart.
4. I want you to be more successful than I am; to out-pace me, to go higher, further than I have in every way and in every good and worthwhile endeavor that has ever captured my attention.
5. Where I have failed, I want you to succeed. Where I have shortcomings, I want you to be strong. Where I am ill tempered I hope you will be patient. I want you to be a better person than I am.
6. I will love without manipulating, I will guide you without dominating, and I will correct without intimidating.
7. I will love, accept and support you at every stage of your life and eagerly await the day that you will be fully adult, and we are capable of being close friends.
A challenge to dads: read this to your sons and daughters….
6 Comments to “A challenge to dads: read this to your sons and daughters….”
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Thank you for your post! Thank you! Thank you! Oh my, I can’t read it enough. If you only knew what this means to me!
Thank you God for loving me! Thank you God for this man who Blogs! Bless his life!
It is a miracle that I landed on this page – wow! Unbelievable!!!
Again, thank you!
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Thank you Dear Reader:
I got your email and removed your name as requested.
May you have a fabulous week!
Rod Smith
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Substitute “mom” for “dad” & it works just as well…
Thanks, Ron -
Thank you Mr. Smith!
I would like to say how impressed I am with the loftiness of the parental objectives you have shared. I particularly appreciate the motivation behind each affirmation being nothing short of the development of excellence as a defining characteristic within our children and ourselves. These talking points remind us of our limitations as fathers, and more importantly of our ability to rise above these shortcomings. Do you have any other writings on father-child relationships? I am interested in reading more! -
Dear Kyle:
The best book I can point you to has little to do with parenting and everything to do with it all at the same time: FAILURE OF NERVE by Ed. Friedman.
Thanks for your comments. The blog is full of stuff about parenting.
I look forward to hearing more from you.
May you have a great New Year.
Rod Smith
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I do love this challenge, Mr. Smith.. I copied and pasted it into an email to my children and my friends, I hope that’s agreeable. This is truly a wonderful guide for fathers AND MOTHERS, grandfathers and grandmothers.. to pass along to their children and grandkids. Thank you SO much for posting this! I’d also love to read more!
difficultrelationships.com 