Welcome to A Father’s Voice for May 2008. My Little Indulgence is about well, my little indulgence while my children are sleeping.

A Father’s Voice is my chance to share my voice with you about the challenges and rewards I experience trying to be a very involved father while having to work full-time away from our home. I write during the only disposable time of my day – my train ride to and from home.

My Little Indulgence

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

The tricky part is the hallway. I carefully try to place my foot on our wood floor hallway in the tiny spots that don’t creak loud enough for our neighbors to call the police. I gently place my hand on the door knob and open the door, without letting go because if I do it will slam into the wall. I look into the room and bask in the sweetness of my 5-year old twins sleeping silently, peacefully, infusing my heart and soul with love, affection and utter goodness.

This is my little indulgence.

To me, looking in on my sleeping children is like treating myself to dark chocolate in the afternoon of a very tough day at the office. It has become a special moment for me even though it probably lasts less than 90 seconds. But going to bed often reminds of what tomorrow brings, another day away from my children, a day of stress and pressure, and seeing them before I go to sleep is a lovely reminder as to why I am here and what is truly important to me.

The ironic thing for me about my little indulgence is that I have only started doing it in the past year or so. I remember hearing stories about how parents would sneak into their baby’s room and watch them sleep and couldn’t understand how they could do it. For what felt like forever, our children were awfully light sleepers and if we tried to get near their room they would wake up.

You can hear A Father’s Voice in my voice below, subscribe to A Father’s Voice podcasts, check out A Father’s Voice archives, read the rest of this month’s column, and even subscribe to Two Okapis, my Digital Daddy Diary. You can always share your voice with me by commenting on this site or emailing me.

Welcome to A Father’s Voice for April 2008. The Wisdom of the Band-Aid Theory is about how even when I think I am doing the right thing, I sometimes am only making things worse.

A Father’s Voice is my chance to share my voice with you about the challenges and rewards I experience trying to be a very involved father while having to work full-time away from our home. I write during the only disposable time of my day – my train ride to and from home.

The Wisdom of The Band-Aid Theory

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

I have been extremely frustrated with Elijah, my four-year old son, because of his refusal to go to sleep without screaming at night. And I feel certain that the issue involved in both school and going to sleep are very similar – separation. But I’ve been intensely trying to help him go to sleep smoothly at night for eight months now and I’m running out of patience. All for the same reason I am upset about leaving him at school – I don’t want him to feel like we are abandoning him, that we don’t love him – I have been unwilling to let him cry it out (okay, my wife also doesn’t want that to happen). But it doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, he insists on making the process as difficult as possible. Tonight, as I sit to write this, I have let him cry. I refuse to go up anymore.

It always comes back to this. I try everything I can think of to not let him cry it out and I always fail.  Always. For the past several weeks, every single time he got upset, I went upstairs to try and calm him down, get him into bed and help him think about all of his Happy Thoughts so that he could go to sleep. For the most part it only reinforced to him that if he gets upset he will get to spend more time with me. That was clearly not my goal. 

You can hear A Father’s Voice in my voice below, subscribe to A Father’s Voice podcasts, check out A Father’s Voice archives, read the rest of this month’s column, and even subscribe to Two Okapis, my Digital Daddy Diary. You can always share your voice with me by commenting on this site or emailing me.

Welcome to A Father’s Voice for March 2008. Having to Step It Up A Notch is my realization that I may be an involved father, but there was still quite a bit I didn’t know.

A Father’s Voice is my chance to share my voice with you about the challenges and rewards I experience trying to be a very involved father while having to work full-time away from our home. I write during the only disposable time of my day – my train ride to and from home.

Having to Step It Up A Notch 

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

I always believed, as involved fathers go, I was pretty high up there if you were to grade my level of involvement. As soon as I walk in the door from work, I herd our almost 5-year old children to the dinner table, sometimes even remember to set it, too. We talk about their day, I give them their medicines and vitamins. I get them changed into their pajamas, take them to the bathroom, and even take them to bed five nights a week. When they wake up in the middle of the night upset, I’m the one they call. On the weekends, I spend almost every moment I can with them, even often having special time with them, just the three of us. I have even spent entire weekends just the three of us when my wife has gone away. I couldn’t imagine how I could be more involved, to be honest.

Well, I am learning, now that my wife has started working full-time, that there was a whole area of their life I was not at all involved in; their school.

My wife, Gem, stayed home to be with our kids after they were born and it was easily the best decision we made in terms of our children. Who better to be with them than someone who has the most incredible capacity for unconditional love of anyone I have ever met? During the first couple of years when they didn’t have school she spent all day with them and I really felt it was my job when I walked in the door to try and take over some of the primary parenting roles so she could get a little break. Of course, my getting involved also served to build a strong relationship with my children – something we both felt strongly about.

Leaving every morning was very hard for me – and for some time hard on my kids – and I learned when I walked out the door to put them in a special corner of my mind so I wouldn’t feel too guilty about leaving and could focus on work during the day. When our kids started going to preschool, I had very little to do with it. Gem would take them every morning, pick them up every afternoon, and when I got home I got to hear how their day went. I was not involved, because it wasn’t necessary or really at all possible for me to be involved. I couldn’t take them to school without showing up to work two hours late and couldn’t pick them up from school if I went to work. My lack of involvement in school meant that I didn’t know what was involved in them going to school.

You can hear A Father’s Voice in my voice below, subscribe to A Father’s Voice podcasts, check out A Father’s Voice archives, read the rest of this month’s column, and even subscribe to Two Okapis, my Digital Daddy Diary. You can always share your voice with me by commenting on this site or emailing me.

Welcome to A Father’s Voice for January 2008. Can She Love Me Too Much is my exploration into the sometimes overwhelming love between me and my daughter.
A Father’s Voice is my chance to share my voice with you about the challenges and rewards I experience trying to be a very involved father while having to work full-time away from our home. I write during the only disposable time of my day – my train ride to and from home.

Can She Love Me Too Much?

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

My little girl loves me. In fact, the other day she told me, “I love you too much!”

And I just looked at her.

“Do you mean you love me so much?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah. I love you SO much!”

But it made me wonder if my little girl’s love for me feels like too much for her. Or maybe it is too much for me?

Her love is strong, so intense, that sometimes I get scared about how much she loves me. Is her adoration, bordering on idolization, just setting us up for future problems? Sometimes as she caresses my face, seemingly memorizing every feature, I find myself wondering, will she end up with a completely unrealistic view of love based on her feelings for me? Am I destined to fail her, to never live up to the intensity and purity of her feelings for me? What would that mean for our relationship? Will she end up with unrealistic expectations of her partner because of how special our connection is? Am I making it impossible for her to have future relationships?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

You can hear A Father’s Voice in my voice below, subscribe to A Father’s Voice podcasts, check out A Father’s Voice archives, read the rest of this month’s column, and even subscribe to Two Okapis, my Digital Daddy Diary. You can always share your voice with me by commenting on this site or emailing me.

Welcome to A Father’s Voice for January 2008. You Are The Foundation For All Who Come After You is my message to involved fathers for National Mentoring Month.

A Father’s Voice is my chance to share my voice with you about the challenges and rewards I experience trying to be a very involved father while having to work full-time away from our home. I write during the only disposable time of my day – my train ride to and from home.

You Are the Foundation for All Who Come After You

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

Many fathers are breaking new ground by becoming more active, more involved in their family – especially with their children. Previous generations defined fatherhood more in terms of providing the economic necessities families need. But this generation, more than any other, has determined that their role as a father does not end with providing economic security, but continues to building a strong bond with their children.  Unfortunately, so many of these fathers don’t have role models, don’t have a blueprint to follow in terms of what being involved in the lives of their children actually looks like.

January is National Mentor Month and that seems a perfect time to make sure all of these trailblazing fathers understand that while they may not have a role model for the kind of father and man they want to be, they are transforming themselves into the role models they never had. Today’s involved fathers, in their quest to be a better father, to better meet the needs of their own children, are ensuring that their children will never be without a wonderful fatherhood mentor.

Most dads know they want to give more than they received. They want to see their children more than their fathers saw of them. They want to feel more than their fathers felt with their family. They want to know their children. They want to witness their child’s firsts – first crawl, first word, first step, first throw, first hug, first everything. They want to be there to soothe when their child is upset. They want to help ease their fears and also make them laugh. They want to be more than just the disciplinarian – they want to play and have fun. They want to be a central part of their children’s lives and not just a play a supporting role. They want to be more than just a one-dimensional parent. They want to develop a three-dimensional relationship with their children. The trail this generation of fathers is blazing will make it so much easier for their own children to follow.

You can hear A Father’s Voice in my voice below, subscribe to A Father’s Voice podcasts, check out A Father’s Voice archives, read the rest of this month’s column, and even subscribe to Two Okapis, my Digital Daddy Diary. You can always share your voice with me by commenting on this site or emailing me.

Welcome to A Father’s Voice for December 2007. This month’s column is called This Year We’re Going to DisneyWorld. It is about how chaotic this time of year can be - especially for our family - and our solution to deal with it.

The exciting news this month is that two things I worked on and mentioned here are now available for your viewing and reading pleasure. First, Business Week TV interviewed me about fatherhood and the workplace and it is now available if you would like to take a look. Second is that Parents Connect, a parenting web site, has finally posted their Expert Answers section of their web site. I was fortunate enough to be asked to answer 7 of their questions - mostly from or about fathers. Feel free to check them out. I am also halfway through my 40 pieces for BabyZone.com’s new pregnancy newsletter where I will be writing for expecting fathers. When that becomes available I will be sure to let you know.

A Father’s Voice is my chance to share my voice with you about the challenges and rewards I experience trying to be a very involved father while having to work full-time away from our home. I write during the only disposable time of my day – my train ride to and from home.

Have a wonderful holiday season and I hope your new year is everything you want it to be.

This Year We’re Going to DisneyWorld

By Jeremy G. Schneider, MFT

Ahhh, the holiday season. The season of lights and presents and holiday cheer. The season of shopping and stress. The season of overwhelment. But this year we have a solution to it all. This year, we’re going to Disneyworld!

Really.

Not only are we one of those families where we have both Jewish and Christian members so we celebrate Chanukah at our house and Christmas with my wife’s family, but we also celebrate a birthday during December as well.

Or two.

Actually three.

Okay, we celebrate four birthdays during the month of December.

Well, to be completely honest we celebrate four birthdays in one week of December. In our family, we have four birthdays during one week and then we spend 51 weeks of the year recovering from and preparing for that one week.

You can hear A Father’s Voice in my voice below, subscribe to A Father’s Voice podcasts, check out A Father’s Voice archives, read the rest of this month’s column, and even subscribe to Two Okapis, my Digital Daddy Diary. You can always share your voice with me by commenting on this site or emailing me.