Being Dad - The Movie

I just finished watching the film “Being Dad - Inspiration and Information for Dads to Be” and was blown away by this 80 minute documentary about becoming a dad. This is a must watch film for all moms and dads and especially for those soon-to-be-parents who are in the midst of their own journey beautifully unique to them.

As the father of 4 boys, including one with special needs, my experiences were as unique as those of the 40 dads interviewed for this documentary. The documentary summoned emotional memories that I had all but forgotten about. Having children is no doubt the most powerful experience I’ve been through and this documentary, Being Dad, is a powerful film that successfully restores these most precious of memories in an incredibly entertaining manner. I’m no film critic, but a “two-thumbs up” doesn’t do the film justice.

I recommend you and your wife set aside 80 minutes and enjoy the film online or order the DVD. Also, if you have a friend who is pregnant with a first child this would make for a meaningful gift as they navigate through their experience of becoming a mom or dad.

You can watch the 3 minute trailor here: Being Dad

The film is available on DVD for $25.99 (Being Dad DVD) or online for a special price of only $4.95 (regularly $9.95) here: Being Dad the Movie

For more information and details you can visit their Website at Being Dad USA.

Parents Clash over Kindergarten Thanksgiving Costumes

For many years, kindergartners at Claremont Elementary in Southern CA have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the kids meet for their turkey and songs, they won’t be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests due to political correctness run amok.

Michelle Raheja, a university professor and mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter’s teacher. “I’m sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation’s history.”

The absurd opinions expressed by Raheja, who like so many of us (myself include) has some indian blood in her DNA, have caused the timid school board to cave in to her demands to ban these costumes at the school.

Needless to say this nonsense has struck a chord with parents who are fed up with people pushing their political correctness agendas down the throats of others at the expense of children and long standing traditions in our country.

For more on the story: Thanksgiving Costumes at Claremont

Extraordinary Story of a Father and His Autistic Son

Source: AOL Time Warner

Boys Autism May Have Saved the Both of Them

Christopher was laughing as the father and son were pulled farther and farther from Ponce Inlet, Florida. As the pair lunged for buoys — and missed — Christopher couldn’t help but giggle. It was this spirit that helped ground Marino, the father said.

“It was a big entertainment roller coaster for him, that’s what got me through it — because he wasn’t freaking out,” said Marino, 46. But after four hours at sea without a life vest, and after it became obvious that rescue operations had ceased for the night, jellyfish began to sting the pair. That began to “freak Christopher out,” his father said.

While Christopher is almost nonverbal in his communication, he and his father use catch phases from Disney movies, which the boy loves, to communicate. After four hours, the currents picked up, and Christopher began to drift from his father’s reach. Because of the darkness, they couldn’t see each other. So Marino shouted out part of a phrase to his son. “To infinity,” Marino shouted, referencing one of Christopher’s favorite lines from the movie “Toy Story.” “And beyond,” Christopher shouted back, pumping his fist in the air like movie character Buzz Lightyear.

The call and response went on for a while, with Marino choosing different phrases and Christopher yelling back. But over the course of an hour, Christopher’s voice faded until his father couldn’t hear him anymore.

“That’s when I resigned myself to the fact that he was gone,” Marino told CNN, saying he believed his son had been pulled under the water.

At the time, Marino said, he thought about giving up, until he thought of his daughter Angela. She had just registered for ballroom dance classes, and he told himself over and over he would live to see her dance. “I just kept thinking about her and how I was not going to leave her without a brother and her father in the same day — not on my watch,” he told CNN. “It was the visual of her that kept me going.”

Marino used other tricks to keep his mind focused in the 81-degree water. He remembered going to the Ponce Inlet museum, which highlighted a lighthouse. He then set out to use the lighthouse as a guide for himself, so he would know how far he was from shore. He alternated doing the “doggie paddle” and floating on his back with his ears in the water, the way his son loved to. He would float on his back and watch the bright stars. He wished on four shooting stars that flew by and used constellations in the sky to know what direction to go if he drifted away.

Under the stars and in the dark Atlantic, he turned to his spirituality, realizing his life was in God’s hands. A religious medal rested on his chest.

As morning turned, Marino tried to stay alert for sounds that might mean help was near. Hearing a boat motor, he waved frantically. Soon, a group of fishermen pulled him aboard their boat. A flash of light from the medallion had caught the eye of one of the anglers, who shouted at his brother at the helm to stop the boat, one of Marino’s rescuers told him.

The first thing Marino asked was if the men had heard anything about his son, but they hadn’t.
Marino began to grieve. It had been nearly eight hours since he had last seen his son, and he believed he was gone for good. He wept.

When the U.S. Coast Guard arrived, Marino asked them, too, about Christopher, but they said they had not found him. The Coast Guard crew asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, but he decided to stay on the boat so the search for Christopher wouldn’t be disrupted. But Marino chose not to watch the water as the search went on. “I chose to be down below, because I didn’t want to see them pull up on Christopher being face-down in the water,” he said. So the Coast Guard vessel steamed on. After more than an hour, the boat went full throttle, jolting Marino backward in his space below deck.

Suddenly, the boat was idling, and Marino was asked to come topside. “That was my personal green mile,” Marino told CNN, a reference to what some people call the walk on death row from the cell to the execution chamber. “I took three steps up the green mile to the back of the deck, and they pointed to the helicopter and they said, ‘You see that helicopter? It has your son on it, and he is fine,’ ” Marino recalled a crew member saying. Marino was so excited he began “kissing all the Coast Guard guys.”

The father and son were reunited at the emergency room at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where they were treated for dehydration. “We were both very weak, tired and thirsty,” Marino said. “But I reached out and held his hand and could tell from the same sparkle in his eye that he was going to be fine.”

While Christopher can’t truly communicate what he felt during those hours alone at sea, his father hopes that one day, he will be able to tell him what he felt alone in the Atlantic. The one thing Marino knows is that his son still loves the water and that the experience hasn’t taken away that special comfort from him.

“It may be a while before we go back to a beach,” Marino said. “But he still loves the water. He’s already gotten back in a pool.”

Keeping Bad Dads In Line

Thank goodness times have changed and dough roller pins are not a staple in every kitchen like they once were!

Dads House by David Mott

David Mott is a divorced single father who offers stories, tips, and expert advice on single parenting, two-home families, and relationships formed in an age of online dating, text messaging, friends with benefits, hookups, and booty calls.

His straight forward approach to issues on the minds of single parents is refreshing and certainly very popular with his loyal following of single parents and probably not-so-single parents alike.

Some of his blog posts that stood out include:
When a Married Man is a Wingman
A Dream Man for Single Moms

To read more visit: Dads House Blog

Home and Away - A Man Must be a Man

Most of us husbands do our best to be good husbands, but sometimes our man instincts get in the way.

Daddy’s Home - Before and After

We send our kids off to school looking so prim and proper, but when they return home they’re barely recognizable.

Introducing Dad News

Using the “digg” formula of allowing users to add their own favorite newly discovered stories found surfing the net Dad News is taking on the monumental task of being the daily source of Dad News.

What is Dad News?

Dad News includes news, blog posts, informative articles, and Website reviews only if they are of particular interest to a father and worth sharing. Clearly there are a lot of dads in this world so it can be said that almost everything relates to dads. This is true, and we do get hundreds of submissions and requests that we turn away because they’re just not dad-centric enough. You see, we are hell-bent on building a highly useful resource for dads, and not just dads that are online today, but for our boys that are the dads of the future, as well!

Since 2006 we’ve been marching forward on this mission and we’re putting it into another gear now with Dad News.

We scour the internet daily for content worthy of adding to our Dad News section and we hope you’ll show your support for dads by adding some gems you come across as well. It’s free, easy, and very helpful to the dads coming through in the future.

Dad News

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Kennifer

Kennifer: Each of us has memories of 9-11 that are unique and personal. My memory is a painful one that I’ve shared with a few friends and I hope you don’t mind me sharing it with you. It’s a story about that day and my cousin Kenny and his wife Jennifer.

September 11th 2001: I was at home with my wife when my mom called to tell us about the first tower in New York being hit by a plane. We switched on the TV and watched numbly in disbelief along with millions of other Americans. Like everyone else here in America we were horrified as we watched the towers fall to the ground as people fled the scene in a state of panic.

Later that afternoon my mom called again and said that her sister Joanna had called and was worried that she hadn’t heard from her son Kenny that day, which was highly unusual. Kenny and his wife, Jennifer, were flight attendants for American Airlines and they were both working a flight headed from Dulles Airport to Los Angeles. My mom reassured her that they were fine and that the phone lines were jammed up and that they’d call soon enough.

Emotionally unable to call American Airlines herself my mom asked me to call and ask if they had any information about the two of them. I called and after a long wait to get through nervously asked about Kenny and Jennifer. The couple of minutes I waited for an answer were as long as any I’ve ever lived through. The answer I got made be jubilant. “There names aren’t on any of our lists”. I gleefully tried to get through to my mom and aunt by cell phone but without any luck.

Finally about an hour later I was able to get through to my mom to give her the fantastic news that they weren’t on the lists of the passengers on the flights that were hijacked that day. To my surprise my mom wasn’t excited to hear the news. She seemed skeptical for some reason and asked me to call the airline back to be sure they knew that they were both flight attendants.

I did call American Airlines again and fearfully asked if they would keep the names of flight attendants on a separate list. The woman answered in the affirmative. Trying to remain positive and hopeful even as my joy vanished I confidently gave the woman Kenny’s and Jennifer’s names. Within a few seconds she simply said “I’m very sorry”… changing our lives forever.

I called my mom to give her the news as I fought back the extreme sadness that I find myself fighting even as I write this. I offered to call my Aunt Joanna, but my mom said it would be better if she gave her the horrible news about her son and only child and his new bride Jennifer.

As the days passed and we learned more about the events of the day and about the beautiful couple Kenny and Jennifer had become the loss became even more magnified and unfortunately real.

They had met while working as flight attendants for American and had married a short time earlier. Although American had a policy of not allowing related flight attendants to work on the same flight they were allowed to because they were headed to California together to get started on a vacation they had planned for some time. The thought of them perishing together in this most unbelievable way is as comforting as it is horrifying. But I knew Kenny well and I’m certain he did everything in his power to keep Jennifer and the passengers as calm as possible even as their fate grew more apparent. Like my mom, my aunt, and the rest of the extended family in Farmville Kenny was quite religious and was no doubt gracious each minute of that flight to everyone on board including the terrorists.

Obviously I’ll never forget my cousin and his bride “Kennifer”. Nor will I ever forget the other victims and their families deeply affected by the events of that day. Finally, I want the men and women in our military to know how much their bravery and courage mean to me and our entire family. Their sacrifice and their families sacrifice has earned our undieing respect, as well as, taught the world a valuable lesson… an attack on any American is an attack on all Americans and we will stand up for our brothers and sisters.

Never forget.

Daddy’s Home - To Do List

When I was a kid one of the motivational lines my mom used was, “Why put off until tomorrow, what you can get done today?”. I’ve allowed this to morph into a line that matches up better with my case of procrastinationitis, “Why do today, what you can put off until tomorrow?”.

She’s got everything under control… including them!

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