Be a Great Husband and Father - Things you Should Do for Your Wife

1. Always open the door for your wife

2. This may sound funny to some, but notice the way a dog goes to his owner when the owner arrives home. There is so much obvious love, excitement, and joy. If we all greeted our wives the way a dog greets his owner, we would have happier wives (and lives).

3. Tell her you love her at least once a day. At night before you go to bed is always a good time. Before you leave each other in the morning, or at the end of a phone call. Send her a text message or email during the day telling her you're thinking about her and you love her.

4. Thank God for your wife and let her know you do so.

5. Notice what a great job she does (this can be with work, the kids, taking care of the home, etc), but take notice and tell her that you noticed and you appreciate it.

6. Thank her for the small things (making the coffee in the morning, getting the kids ready for bed, cleaning out the car, whatever it is...be thankful!)

7. Resist the temptation to degrade your wife in any way. This can happen with both men and women when they gather around to talk about their spouses (usually in the workplace).

8. Instead, take the lead and talk about how great your wife is. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all! BUT, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIND SOMETHING!

9. Take note of the small things your wife tells you. Maybe she thinks some work in the yard or around the house needs to be done. Then just do it when she least expects it.

10. Take the initiative to help with daily chores whenever possible. In my house, if one prepares dinner, we have an agreement that the other will do dishes. If dinner is take out, then we both help with clean up.

11. Anticipate the needs and wants of your wife. If the bathtub is getting grimey, then clean it before she asks you to do so. If the laundry is piling up, throw in a load. Anything you can do to make your wife's life easier will go a long way in making your famliy happier.

12. If you wake up without any covers, don't tug them away from your wife. Make sure she's tucked in and get another blanket for yourself.

Be A Great Husband and Father - The Challenges of Being a Great Husband and Father

Where do we start? Being a great husband and father is not easy. The challenges are plentiful and involve balancing all of life's demands and making the best of what life gives you.

Balancing our Careers and the Needs of our family
As I've mentioned before, as men we have a need to compete and succeed and provide a comfortable life for our families. Many of us are forced to spend most of our time away from our families in order to do that. The key is to make the best of the time we have available. As a father, figure out what your child's interests are and make an effort to spend time every month doing the things that they enjoy. If you have multiple children, try to give each one a special day every month on which they get to do something of their choice (go to a favorite park, eat a favorite meal, play a favorite game, etc). If your kids are involved in sports or other extracurricular activities, make sure you make it to at least one of their competitions every week. If they play pretty frequently, try to go more often. Make sure your children know that you understand what is important to them and that you want to be a part of their lives instead of making them feel like they have to somehow fit themselves into your busy work schedule.

Obviously your spouse needs some of your time also. Make sure you and your wife both understand what the expectations are for how much time you need together (just the two of you). All couples are different. If you agree that once per month is enough, make it something special like dinner together at a place that has some significance to both of you. Maybe the place you went on your first date, or somewhere you frequented before you had children. Also, small romantic gestures for your wife during the week, or when they're unexpected will go a long way to help allay the need to make large gestures when things aren't going so well. Some ideas include making her favorite breakfast for her on Sunday morning (or Tuesday morning), showing up with flowers for no reason, or making sure her car is filled with gas any time you drive it. This way she doesn't have to stop to fill up while she has the kids with her. True story...The Nurturing One dislikes stopping for gas with the baby in the car so much that she once ran out of gas. Luckily, she was about 100 feet from a gas station and right behind her was a football mom driving a large SUV full of varsity high school football players. The football mom swiftly sent those boys to push The Nurturing One, Miracle Boy, and their car into the gas station so she could fill up. The football players couldn't have been nicer about the whole thing (and refused any payment or reward). God was truly watching out for The Nurturing One and Miracle Boy that day. I now make sure her car always has at least a half a tank of gas in it and if it doesn't I run up to the gas station and fill it.



Everyone needs time for themselves too. The challenge is to balance the time we have available between work, family, and ourselves. One thing I find works well is that I try to do the things I want to do during my lunch break from work. This usually involves either going to the gym or eating at a place where I can also write in this blog. Because I work a good distance from where we live, going home to see the family is not really an option. I find getting in my "me time" during this hour works out well for everyone. I am not taking away from time with the family but I am getting to do some of the things I enjoy.



Miracle Boy just started going to a daycare two days a week. The daycare is located close enough to where I work that I can go and play with him during my lunch break. I've been able to do that both days he has been there, and plan to continue to do so. I consider being able to visit Miracle Boy during my lunch break to be "me time", because there's nothing I'd rather be doing. The daycare is a great option for us right now because I would not otherwise be able to see him during the day, and it allows my wife to work two days a week. One thing I find interesting is that the coordinator at the daycare mentioned to my wife how great she thinks it is that I go there during the day to see him. She said it's a really rare occasion that they see fathers doing this. If I could I would spend every waking hour with Miracle Boy. The last thing I would want is for there to be any doubt in my son's mind about how important he is to me and how much I love him. I may be going overboard with this sentiment, but it also sounds like a lot of fathers out there could step up their game in the fatherhood department.



As Miracle Boy gets older I look forward to including him in more of the things I like to do...instead of going to the gym or for a run on my own, we could go outside to a park and kick a soccer ball around or I could take him on the golf course with me and he can ride in the golf cart. We can take bike rides together. I may not get the same quality workout, but as he gets older he'll speed up and I'll slow down. The point is to do these things together and find a great balance of the things we love in life.

Helping with Bed-Time Routine
The most recent challenge I've been dealing with is the fact that I am having a hard time helping to put Miracle Boy to sleep. As he starts to get really sleepy, Miracle Boy realizes it and starts to fight it by being playful with whomever is trying to put him down. I was having a real hard time not responding in an equally playful manner. I feel like I don't get enough quality time with him, so any time he wants to play I want to play with him...(not hold him so tight that he cant squirm around in my arms and force him to eat his bottle and fall asleep). I was feeling like our time together was so precious that I did not want to make him unhappy in any way. The result was that my wife would ultimately have to put him down every night. Well...I took advantage of that for about a week, and then realized I wasn't being fair to my wife. I'm happy to announce that since I started writing this post I've worked through that issue, and with a little advice from my wife I have learned to just be stern enough to get him to stop trying to play, and I've gotten him to sleep on my own three times in a row now. Babies need their sleep, and he is much happier when he has good rest, so it is in the best interest of the whole family.

Getting Funny Looks from the Other Parents
The Nurturing One often works on Saturdays. We both hate that she has to do that, but it is what it is right now, and we make the best of it. She's off by 3pm, and we have the rest of the afternoon together. In any case, Miracle Boy and I get to spend the day together! I always feel like I get a lot of funny looks because I am a father alone with an infant. I'm not sure about the exact reason for the looks, but I think it has a lot to do with the moms wishing their husbands would be willing to spend the day alone with their baby, and the dads getting mad at me b/c they know their wives are going to say "If that guy can do it, why can't you?" Sorry if I'm getting anyone in trouble out there, but the fact is...you can do it, you just have to want to.

Forgetting about our Most Important Assets
Part of being a great husband and father is providing a safe and secure life for our families. I was talking to a REALLY rich guy I know recently. He was telling me how the recession was affecting him financially and how he was going to do whatever it took to protect his most valuable assets. While he was talking about this, I knew in the back of my mind that his relationship with his wife was not very strong. They had been fighting a lot, and there was talk about splitting up. What I didn't tell him, but will the next time I see him, is that his wife and children are his most vaulable assets. The sooner he starts treating them like it, and doing whatever it takes to protect his marriage, the sooner everything else in the rest of his life will either rectify itself, or he will realize that financial assets are not the most important assets we possess, and he and his wife will figure out together that they don't need to be millionaires to be rich.

Be A Great Husband and Father - Role Models

Throughout my life I would point to a few people that have been incredible role models for me. The first is an uncle of mine that has never missed an opportunity to tell anyone within shouting distance how beautiful his wife is (It helps that she is beautiful, and is also usually within shouting distance too). He always expresses his deep love for her when he talks about almost anything. Anyone that encounters him would not be able to mistake his feelings. I believe this is a large part of the reason that they've enjoyed a long (I know it's been at least 30 years) and successful mariage filled with all the joys that marriage has to offer (re-newing their vows after 25 years, amazingly accomplished and successful children and grand-children, etc). I've never taken the opportunity to ask him how he is able to keep his love for my aunt so strong, but I get the sense it has something to do with a strong understanding of his faith, and his sense of responsibility to his children. He also possesses a charisma that comes from being grateful for the many gifts that have been bestowed upon him. I consider myself lucky to have had such a great role model in my life.

The second role model for whom I am extremely grateful is my father in law. My father in law is a Naval Academy graduate and spent 20 years commanding US battleships in the Navy. This was probably a great contributor to the discipline he displays in his everyday life. However, this alone did not mold him into the man he is. We all have a choice as to how we will respond to what life brings us. As a young father he was faced with the challenge of having a daughter (my wife, "The Nurturing One") that had major medical complications from a very early age. The Nurturing One was hospitalized and operated on several times throughout her youth. There were times when it was questionable whether she would make it through the challenges she faced. As a new father I cannot imagine the pain it causes to see your child in failing health and feel there is very little you can do to help. Statistically, most families that have a child in failing health end up facing divorce. Faced with this immense pressure, my father in law always made sure that he and my mother in law were on the same page, that their love and devotion to each other was going to be one of the best ways to help their daughter get through those tough times. No matter what it took, he was there to be by her side when The Nurturing One was in the hospital. During one very long hospital stay he had so much time sitting by her bed that he stitched a rug of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street for her. That rug now lies at the foot of our son's crib. To this day my father in law never fails to live up to the extremely high expectations he set for himself, and has set the bar very high for his sons in law (he has two daughters) to be anywhere close to the husband and father he is.

Another result of being a great husband and father is that his daughters sought the qualities they saw in their dad in the men they would eventually marry. I would not try to imply that I am half the man that my father in law is, but my wife knew that I wanted to try my best to be a great husband and father. For the men out there that have daughters, this is a great opportunity to do a self check and make sure you are being the kind of man you would want your daughter to marry.

My in-laws like to have friends and family at their home for meals and be able to visit, reminisce, and catch up. This always involves a lot of preparation and clean up on both their parts. The refreshing thing is that they always split the responsibilities evenly, and are happy to do so. I've never seen a man that seems so happy to do dishes. As soon as the meal ends he always jumps up to take care of the mess so that my mother in law can continue visiting and entertaining the rest of their guests. My point is that we do things for the people we love because it makes them happy, not necessarily for any other reason.

There was a scene in the movie, "The Break Up" in which the character played by Jennifer Aniston pleas with the character played by Vince Vaughn to "want to do dishes". His reply is to the effect that he would have to be crazy to want to do dishes. Jennifer finally gets fed up with Vince and the argument, along with other things evetually leads to their break up. Vince's character didn't get Jennifer's point at the time. At the end of the movie, after time away from each other and some insightful reflection on Vince's part, he finally seems to understand what she meant. Although the movie did not win any Academy awards, and I am biased because I'm a native Chicagoan and love any movie set there, the movie does have some hysterical scenes (the dinner table scene when the family breaks out in "Owner of a Lonely Heart"), and contains some valuable insight into the way the minds of men and women work, and how they differ. You can find the trailer on http://www.youtube.com/ that contains footage from both of the aforementioned scenes.

My father is the third role model for whom I am extremely grateful. My parents were divorced, and my brother and I lived primarily in my dad's home. As a single father he showed incredible strength and even while he was battling cancer (which he beat), he still managed to go about his daily life... getting up every day and getting us boys (ages 9 and 11 at the time) off to school and taking the "El" train to work, even though many times he was physically sick from the chemotherapy and radiation. The dedication my father showed to us was un-matched and he taught me some lessons about being a great father that, although those were difficult times for us, I am so much better off for having learned those lessons.

We could all stand to think about the people in our lives that have successful marriages and families and look closely at the behaviors that have brought such success. So often they are behaviors that we could easily emulate and incorporate into our own lives to help build our own marriages and families. Even if we come from failed mariages, there is usually someone that has touched our lives from whom we can learn about being a great husband and father.

Be A Great Husband and Father - A Happy Family

Give your family the attention, love, and respect they deserve and want, and you will get the same back in return. As men, we are competitive by nature. We have a strong innate desire to be able to prove to others that we are the strongest, smartest, most capable, etc. It's in our DNA, and goes back to the fifties when men spent their days hunting for food and the items they required to keep their families safe:-) The modern day equivalent is the ability to buy the biggest house, car, best vacation, etc. This drives us to spend long hours at work to ensure we're not passed over for the next promotion or we put up the best numbers in the companies for which we work. Then the weekend comes, and we feel the need to compete on the golf course, triathlong circuit, etc. These things obviously get in the way of giving our family the attention, love, and respect they deserve and want.

Spending quality time with our families should not be something we dread or feel obligated to do. If it is, we should examine the reason for that. Is our spouse really not happy with us because we don't make it a priority to come home from work at a reasonable hour to help with the kids? Are there other issues on which we are not in agreement? Financial...discipline...extended family? That will certainly put a strain on the quality of the time we spend together when we do have the opportunity. It becomes a vicious cycle that, if we don't get out of, can eventually lead to a failed marriage.

Personally I crave time with my family. I sometimes feel that my time at work is just wasted time because I crave quality time with my family. My wife and I both understand that and it helps us make the most of the time we have together. But, I also make it a priority to get home at night in time to help put my son (whom we will call Miracle Boy) to bed, which is a very early 7:00 pm. On days when Miracle Boy wakes up earlier than usual, I don't complain or wish he would go back to sleep, I look at that as an opportunity to spend more time with him.

Let's all make an effort to get some perspective on what is the most important aspect of our lives. Oh...and a very happy birthday to my better half!

Why Be a Great Husband and Father?

Being a husband and father is the most important thing you will ever do...More important than the next company you're going to start, your next promotion at work, your next big stock trade, or the next triathlon you're going to conquer. You get the picture. The father of the family is the biggest contributing factor in creating a happy life for you and your family. Too many men do not understand this, and it is usually fairly simple to do. Treat your wife like the queen that she is and cherish every moment with your children. By doing this, we can avoid the biggest catastrophe in the lives of anyone that allows it to happen...DIVORCE. So many people let the struggles of their daily lives affect their home life. Problems at work, financial struggles, problems with the rest of your family (parents, siblings) etc can all be factors that lead to a ruined marriage. When these things lead to divorce it usually exacerbates the rest of the problems. Many couples face foreclosure, bankruptcy, job loss, etc as a result of failed marriages. In most cases it can be avoided. Very simply...a simple smile, hug, and "I love you" can work wonders in any difficult marital situation.

Why am I qualified to write about this? Well, I hate to brag, but I was voted 2008 Man of the Year by my wife's friends...(a small, but distinguished group of single women looking for Mr. Right). But seriously, does one need a PhD to be a great husband and father? I don't think so. The key element is the desire to succeed in this, the biggest and most important aspect of our lives. Today's society too often defines success by a corporate title or the size of our automobiles. The desire to create a strong marriage and happy family must come before these other things. I pray everyday that God will help me the best husband and father that I can be. I also think there needs to be a spiritual element to each and every one of our lives to help us understand that there is something bigger than we are, a power that helps us through the hard times and smiles down upon us during the good times.