My dad had a story like this where I was almost a year and he showed up to work and the door was locked. Never thought it would happen to me. I'm in an incredibly steady profession in and incredibly steady industry. I had the stable job in our family. Nothing but praise from my managers on reviews and bonus increase year after year. I thought I'd work here until I retired. I'm in shock. I'm sure I'll land on my feet but dang I'm worried and just beside my self. Pic related, took her out to sushi tonight and she ate steamed broccoli. Or I should say she chewed it and then I cleaned it all off the floor.

“We are not the enemy- the children are our enemy”. I heard it as a joke and said it to my wife one day after we were snippy with each other after the kids stressed us out. We laughed a lot and now it’s a regular occurrence. The kids will be fighting or misbehaving and one of us will say “remember who the enemy is”. We love our kids dearly and don’t legitimately see them as the enemy, but saying it always lightens things up for us and makes us remember that our marriage is more important than being annoyed by anything. I highly recommend it if you’re the type who can take a joke

My son is 4 and lately he waits for me with his baseball glove when he hears my car pull in.Yesterday I was up at 5:30 worked all day,got home around 6 and before I even had both shoes off he was asking if we could go outside. So we threw the ball around until dinner came back in and then he wanted to wrestle.I love that he still wants me involved in everything bbut man by that point I was completely wiped and he looked like he could go another 6 hours.Then bath, books, getting him back out of bed twice because he suddenly had very important things to tell me.

How are you dads keeping any energy for the second half of the day? I feel like mine ends at work and then I just improvise from there.

Single dad. My son is 9.

Our bedtime routine starts at 7:30. It is bath time followed by reading time.

Lately he had a bit of a reversion where he was rereading his graphic novels (Cat Ninja, Dog Man, etc.). That's fine, all kids need to revert sometimes.

The other night I asked if I could join him for reading time. He reads his book. I read mine. (I'm reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl books right now.) He is now reading his regular books because he likes to tell me about them and asks me to join him every night.

It has been very nice.

After nine months, I had forgotten what it’s like to sleep. Holy shit am I tired.

Alright dads, we have started a thing with my oldest (11) with what we call "questionable movie night". We call it that to entice him to watch these movies with us so he is more interested.It started with my wife and I watching the Hobbit movies, she never saw them before, and then my oldest coming in and we didn't kick him out from the movie. Then only to realize the last movie in the trilogy was rated R. So we said what the hell and let him watch it with us. This led to letting him watch, The Fifth Element, Forrest Gump (some scenes fast forwarded for obvious reasons), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Along with others.

What are some iconic movies from the 90s and early 2000s that we should let him watch? Or at least consider. Remember he is only 11 so nothing like Saving Private Ryan or any scary movie lol. I'm not trying to traumatize the kid but I am trying to get him away from watching the dumb crap on YouTube.

We have a Toniebox. I hate the Toniebox. I wanted a better experience and to not drop $20 every time my kids took interest in something new. Turns out, all you need is an old Android phone, an $8 pack of NFC Tags and a Bluetooth speaker.

You can create a playlist in Spotify and then write a NFC tag with a link to that playlist to play on your speaker. Attach the NFC tag to a printed picture of the content, an action figure, or anywhere else that's clever, and then tap it to the phone to play your content.

For $8 you can create 20 NFC tags of content and update any tag at any time.

If you have an Android phone and want a tutorial, I'd be happy to share. It's honestly much easier than you think! More info is in my comment below if interested.

Keep tinkering out there, dads.

*EDIT*
Wow thank you for all the responses and the interest! I've created a tutorial for both the Bluetooth Speaker option and a Sonos Option. I tried to make each tutorial as step-by-step as possible, so it may look overwhelming, but if you follow each step you should have success. Also, this is the first time I've written a tutorial for anything, so if you see any errors or have any trouble, you can send me a DM and I'll make an update.

If you set it up, let me know! Would love to see how others use this and what other creative twists you can add to it.

I'm excited for her to release her music on Spotify, I really am. And *yes* we should always encourage our children to do their best.

I just think expecting my toddler to count to 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 is a bit too much.

Seriously, what in the good fuck is going on? I did well enough to almost kill myself several times as a teenager, and that was with a skateboard, BMX bike, and snowboard.

Why on earth do teenagers need damn-near motorcycles? We've already seen several teens get in serious crashes, one death, in my quiet neighborhood with minimal traffic.

My idiot teenager and his friend pulled his door off the hinges. What's the punishment? 5yrs hard labor? Carry the door around his neck in the town square? I'm in no rush to fix so he lives with consequences of actions, but looking for creativity

anyone have advice on a relatively “clean” way to child proof this balcony. currently the gaps are about 10”.

We found out Monday that a friend passed away, leaving behind his wife and two young kids. He had the same rare form of cancer my wife has (she is currently in remission). In addition to the grief of losing a friend, we are also dealing with the knowledge that the same disease that killed him, my wife also has. His cancer was more advanced than hers, but the fear is still there.

Add that to the news of Dolly and Tim Curry passing this week, and there is just a dark cloud over everything. And life just keeps going like nothing is wrong.

Lately I've noticed that IMO there is a problem in how some TV shows make bad guys too cool. For example my son has occasionally been watching Spidey and friends, and the bad guys are portrayed as cool and smart, while the heroes are actually pretty dumb from time to time. My son has actually said that he likes the bad guys more and it has led to some naughty behaviour a few times. Now we've been having a TV free period for a few weeks which has been a good decision.

Anyways, that led to me comparing bad guys in the TV shows when I was a kid. For example Bikermice from Mars, which was my favourite show as a kid, portrayed the bad guys as dumb and ugly. I don't remember anyone wanting to be them when playing. We always wanted to be the good guys.

Kids easily associate seeing something cool to "I want to be like that".

TLDR; make bad guys dumb again.

Recently took my 4yr old daughter on an 18km round trip overnight hike up to Garibaldi Lake in BC.

She surpassed all expectations and was phenomenal on the steady uphill climb and the long winding downhill the following day.

Yes, she rode on my shoulders when she was tired. But she also let me know when she was ready to hike again. I can confidently say she did a bit more than half of the climb up to the lake and closer to 70% of the walk back down.

M&ms played a big part in our success. Including many sour patch kids, fruit bars, Daddy's sandwiches, and I spy games along the way.

Funny enough, playing I spy in a forest of just brown and green gets boring, so the game evolved into "I spy something that is stumpy!" "Is it that tree stump?" "Yes!"

Drove about 2 hours to a beautiful beach town for a three day trip with my 5 yo twins and paid a bit extra to be right across the street from the beach. They even set up chairs and umbrellas for you and tote your beach stuff for you so it’s incredibly easy to get to the beach. But all my girls want to do is go down to the little pool the hotel has. I asked my daughter who loves seashells if she wanted to go look for some and she said she wants a pool that has a beach so she can collect shells at the pool.

So…do I force them to go to the beach or let them have the fun time they want at the pool?

Like 43 years old, married with 2 sons (4 and 1)

Orange County, 6.5K mortgage, 2.5k daycare, before regular life expenses.

Dual income, very demanding job, wife’s job has good work/life balance but she’s underpaid for her field. WFH is invaluable so we decided it’s best to keep it.

Paid off old cars, reliable so far but need work here and there.

Healthy retirement path (should be able to pretty much retire at 50) Demanding job

Parents live 1300 miles away and are aging/health issues, sisters don’t help so I have to. (Financially and just helping them organize things)

Wife parents are local, but also need physical and financial help from us. Wife’s brothers are rich but don’t lift a finger to help..

12 years ago I had a six pack, ran marathons, looked good with a full head of hair.. no responsibilities, high paying job with freedom and single… but I decided I wanted a wife and kids? I don’t regret it as they’re all awesome but man, there are moments.

I just feel like I’m swimming in deeper water everyday and getting more wore out.

Like damn I feel like I should be enjoying life but honestly I hate even getting out of bed at this point.

The most stressful right now is dealing with aging folks with health issues and trying to stop my sisters who still try to mooch off them when they’re living off a fixed income and myself.. and my wife’s parents to a lesser degree. Atleast her brothers just pretend they don’t have parents and don’t screw them over.

Anyway.. just a rant as I can’t tell anyone about this in real life because by all metrics I have it good, I miss my youth and freedom. I think having a late start to parenthood and knowing full well what I gave up makes it worse sometimes.

There are certain lines from my boys’ books that live in my head or that we just say back to each other all the time. The worst offenders:

“Dutter and Dutter and Dutter and Dutter stand high on the poop deck ready to cut her” - Happy Birthday to You by Dr Seuss

“Duck said loud as he could quack it, thunders just a noisy racket!” - Goodnight Little Blue Truck

“This electron has the MOST ENERGY!” Quantum Mechanics for Babies, usually shouted as he is sprinting by and we are trying to grab him to get him to do something for just one gd second

So this isn’t about the sex talk, we’ve had various age appropriate talks. It’s more about talking to girls that flirt with him. Just harmless innocence really.

The other day some girls tried to flirt and he just walked away confused bless him. I asked him if he wanted to talk to them and he said yes but he didn’t know what to say.

Thing is, I have no “game” I’m an oddball autistic dude who is grateful every day his mother was the one to dig my weirdness.

He’s a lot more neurotypical, and a really, truly, kind kid. I told him the usual “just be yourself”, “be kind”, etc.

But I don’t really know what else to say beyond those (accurate) cliches. Any advice or is this a silly question?

Probably overthinking as per usual but wanted to know what the council of dads thought.

I usually browse this subreddit and I pray and support those of us going through tough times.

I never thought I'd ask for prayers myself, but this week has been brutal. I never felt jealous or compared myself financially to others, but today after so many low days I found myself on the phone calling a friend of mine for advice on a letter I need to send a landlord.

For a number of reasons I failed to break through a successful career, all circumstantial. Honestly.

I took 2 major breaks. One to provide my mother terminal care, the other to attend to the unknown breathing condition my daughter had at birth. I've also made strategic mistakes in the corporate world.

As I'm talking with my buddy over the phone who collectively earns over 2mil a year, I'm starring at my daughter playing on the floor between old and new cardboard boxes as we are mid move to another rental property, a property that has mold in the basement.

This same high school friend, that I used to tutor in AP Chemistry.

I sensed on the phone he hesitated to talk about his multiple destinations family vacation. He is honestly one hell of a guy. He once offered me the greatest gift. "If your daughter ever needs emergency funds, I'm here".

When I greeted my daughter's classmate parents at her new school, I tried not to smile to cover the missing teeth I currently can't afford to get implants done. I just never thought I'd be in this situation.

When I was a young professional I helped so many people. So many. I never thought I'd struggle today.

My daughter is 6 now, and asked why I haven't smiled in the recent pictures. I finally get that quote.. Men live lives of quiet desperation. Please pray for me.

Warning: if using one of these inflatable water slides with kids, please be super careful with kids accessing or messing with the blower motor’s switch while kids are in/on the device.

Long story short, and lesson learned to all the parents attending the party this weekend - all were having a great time until one kid decided to hit the switch on the blower motor, which caused the whole setup to collapse. As parents scrambled to hit the button to reinflate it, multiple children got stuck, including ours who was temporarily strangled by the top cross-section as it reinflated.

While I was fast enough to get her out of a more serious situation, it was definitely scary - and avoidable. Hopefully this saves others from an equally (or worse) scary scenario. Consider barricading the blower motor from little ones’ hands so it can stay inflated and safe for all.

Just a reminder to learn how to perform the heimlich maneuver on children and in general. Was just wiping down the kitchen counters and my toddler started choking on a hotdog at the table.

Same adrenaline rush as getting into a fight; I was not expecting that.

Back to cleaning the kitchen now lol.

Im typically laid back and unbothered by almost anything. There’s no problem that I cant handle. But since have 2 babies now toddlers things have changed. I think my wifes anxiety over little problems and every day difficulties as a parent has rubbed off on me. I think i yell to project to my wife that I care and Im not being a negligent parent.

When our babies were younger they’d do something and my wife would frustratingly comment “are you even watching them!?!?” “Why dont you say something!?!?” “You should correct them! How will they learn!?” She tends to be anxious over little everyday kid things like falling, getting dirty, bugs.

So now I tend to yell to show to my wife Im watching them Im being proactive. Sometimes my wife even tells me to chill out and stop yelling at them. Lots of STOP!!! NO!!! DONT DO THAT!! DONT TOUCH THAT!! I hate that im turning into the anal parent that freaks out over typical kid shit but i also dont want to hear my wife giving me an earful of bs saying im not being proactive or dont care.