Two leading fatherhood support networks will soon unite as a single organization dedicated to championing fathers and helping them succeed at being actively engaged parents.

City Dads Group and Fathering Together will operate as one, creating a stronger and more comprehensive platform to help provide vital resources and connections to fathers in and through local communities across the globe.

City Dads Group is a diverse community of fathers dedicated to being actively involved in their children’s lives. Founded in 2008, City Dads Group has chapters in 41 cities across the United States and Canada. The chapters focus on holding in-person gatherings of fathers, with or without their children present, where bonding, commiseration and support can take place.

Fathering Together is a nonprofit global network of more than 125,000 fathers and allies around the world dedicated to promoting active fatherhood and providing support, resources, advocacy and education for dads. Established in 2018, Fathering Together started years earlier as a Facebook group “Dads with Daughters” which quickly blossomed to include tens of thousands of fathers sharing stories, seeking advice and offering wisdom.

The new organization, to be headed by Fathering Together’s current leadership team, is a strategic partnership that will result in a broader online and in-person network, enhanced programming, and a more significant impact on the lives of fathers, families and communities.

“We are thrilled to join with Fathering Together to strengthen, sustain and expand our communities,” said Matt Schneider, co-founder of City Dads Group. “We have a real opportunity to positively impact the way we view and value fathers as a society.”

Lance Somerfeld, co-founder of City Dads Group, added, “Since the pandemic, we’ve been trying to figure out the best path forward for our communities of dads to evolve, grow and thrive. We felt that the most authentic, seamless, and strategic partner to fulfill that goal was joining forces with Fathering Together.”

Key benefits of the partnership include:

1. Expanded Reach: The new organization will reach over 150,000 dads across the globe with in-person groups in Canada, Kenya, Malawi, and the United States.

2. Innovative Programming: The entity will offer more robust programs including school-based “social emotional learning” for dads, online panels, and in-person meetups to empower dads to be advocates for change.

3. Inclusive Community: As members define fatherhood for themselves, regardless of background or identity, all will be welcome to share their story, and grow together in their journey.

Brian Anderson, co-founder and board president of Fathering Together, said, “We are honored that City Dads Group places their faith in us to continue advocating for fathers worldwide. We look forward to bringing the City Dads Group community into ours so we might empower dads to be emotionally courageous, connected, and committed to their families.”

Read the official press announcement.

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Editor’s Note: City Dads Group blog contributor Gidon Ben-Zvi, a resident of Jerusalem, asked us to reprint this piece he originally wrote for The Algemeiner. “I think your readership would benefit from gaining a glimpse into the lives of average Israeli parents coping with difficult questions as war descends upon them,” he wrote in his note. We agree.

Teaching Your Children About War: An Israeli Father Struggles to Get It Right

It’s 3:36 a.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. I’m tossing and turning right now. Our little country is in a fight for its life. Yes, we’ll prevail. But the cost will be terribly high, almost unbearable.

We keep hearing fighter planes as they jet south. The Lebanon-based Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, is saber rattling. They have launched a couple of dozen rockets into northern Israel. In a skirmish just inside the Israeli border with Lebanon, three Israeli Defense Forces soldiers were killed in a battle with Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.

The Israeli Air Force has started to hit terrorist targets in Lebanon and Syria, and is increasing its bombing runs over Gaza.

My wife and I continue to work, or at least go through the motions, at home. Our children are home as well since all schools have been closed since the Hamas invasion began.

To maintain some semblance of sanity, my wife and I continue to get in our morning jogs. In our neighborhood, folks continue to walk along the Louis Promenade, buses continue to run on Hanassi Boulevard, and street cleaners make their daily rounds. But people’s faces have gone pale, and no one seems to stay out for long.

For the sake of our children, we’re fighting not to be overcome with grief. To keep our children feeling safe, we’re trying our level best to explain what this war’s about. We tell them it’s OK to be nervous and scared. Yes, Hamas is out there. We remind them, however, that the fighter planes — and all those soldiers down south — will protect our little family and all of Israel’s families.

It’s a fine line, acknowledging to your kids the sheer evil that has been perpetrated while encouraging them to try and live through this longest, darkest of days with a sense of hope.

A good father’s job is to be a role model, to establish a set of values for his children to live their lives by. What values am I imparting to my kids right now? What lessons am I trying to teach them to make some kind of sense out of the greatest national tragedy to befall the Jewish people since the Holocaust? How on earth can the murder of babies, entire families, young people, and the rape of women be turned into a teachable moment?

To the best of my ability, I’ve been trying to teach my kids that the big life comes at a big price.

I left a different kind of life in the United States. Had I stayed, I eventually would have started to earn well, saved up some money, padded my 401(k), and become a homeowner — no doubt moving to a well-manicured, secure suburb.

Maybe I should have stayed in Los Angeles.

On second thought, there’s no place else I’d rather be. In life, there are observers and participants. I chose to throw my lot in with the latter, come what may.

Why? Well, this is part of what I try to convey to my young children: you only get one shot at this thing called life. So why not live it gloriously? A life with a sense of mission, a sense of purpose, and — most importantly — joy.

We Jews have managed to create a free society that promotes human dignity and thriving out of malaria-infested swamps. In a part of the world widely mired in ignorance, intolerance, and persecution, Israel shines bright as a beacon of hope, an outpost of enlightenment, a country where all its citizens are limited only by their innate talent and ambition.

When my wife told our neighbor living in the new apartment next to ours that we have no built-in safe room since our building was constructed pre-1990s, she opened her home to our family.

“Come to our place whenever you need to. We’re all in the same boat.”

Our neighbor is an educated, successful, warm-hearted, Muslim woman.

The lesson I’m trying to teach our four little children is that what you believe in is worth fighting for. Israel is worth fighting for. All we can do in response to the savagery is fight the good fight, emboldened by the knowledge that — ultimately — right makes might.

Originally published Oct. 13, 2023, on The Algemeiner. Photo: © altanaka / Adobe Stock.

About the author

Gidon Ben-Zvi left behind Hollywood starlight for Jerusalem, where he and his wife are raising their four children to speak fluent English – with an Israeli accent. Ben-Zvi’s work has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Algemeiner, American Thinker and Jewish Journal.

Editor’s Note: June 12 marks the anniversary of the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people died and 53 were wounded when a lone gunman attacked patrons of the gay nightclub. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at the time (it’s since been eclipsed). This article originally ran just two days later.

I woke up Sunday morning blissfully unaware. It was a rare opportunity to sleep in, not having to get up and hustle into action. When I did roust myself, I leaned over, kissed my husband good morning, and shuffled into the kitchen to pour my morning cup of coffee. And, of course, I checked my phone.

The first thing I saw: a text from a good friend of mine.

“When I saw the news this morning, I immediately thought of you and Chris, and wanted to express my sadness and outrage that even in the most powerful country in the world, we are so flawed, so full of hatred and fear,” it said.

She went on to let me know that she loves me and my family, and was thinking of us.

I didn’t know what prompted her message.

A quick web search revealed facts about the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people gunned down on a Saturday night. During Gay Pride Month.

And, once again, I had to decide how to discuss evil with my daughter.

Nightclub shooting our latest tough conversation

It’s not the first time. She’s almost 15. Like so many other parents, I’ve been having conversations with her since she was a toddler, with horrifying regularity. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. San Bernardino.

When she was little, I consulted books about how to talk about death and violence with children. Do you avoid the topic, and shield them from it altogether? Should you mask real-life tragedies in analogies or fables? Or, should you stay honest, but use gentle language that minimizes the brutality?

Now that she’s a teenager, we talk about this stuff with more directness and clarity. Real-life violence has yet to touch her life directly, which is a blessing. So we did talk about the Pulse nightclub shooting, and I decided to go with accuracy and less emotion (which is always difficult for me, as someone whose emotions tend to be the boss in my head): Who the shooter was, what he did, what was known/not known about him at the time.

We had our talk, and it was briefer than conversations in the past. She hadn’t seen the news yet so I just filled her in on the latest Horrible Thing that had happened, and that was that.

Her reaction was difficult to read. Whether that’s because we were used to these talks by now, or because she’s at the stage where she’d rather process stuff on her own, it’s hard to say. I did realize, though, that this tragedy in Orlando felt different from other mass shootings for me, and possibly for her as well. Why?

Because the Orlando shooting was the deadliest in American history.

A horrifying loss of human life.

Fueled, in part, by a hatred of gay people.

And, because, I am gay.

How can she not worry?

I have been out for five years, and this is the first time such a violent act has ripped into this community I proudly call my own.

My daughter tends to be a worrier. She’s gotten a handle on it over the years, but she has the double whammy of having a very active imagination and a short anxiety fuse. So when my husband and I go out at night and she stays home, she still gets a bit nervous if I don’t text her to check in at least once. (Total role reversal. In another year or so, I’ll be the one asking her to check in.)

It’s not my teenage daughter’s job to worry about me. It’s supposed to be the other way around. That’s the way the universe is supposed to work.

And while our evenings out are usually pretty benign, my girl knows that every once in a while, we do love to go out dancing. Dancing is deeply important to us. It’s how we find our feelings, connect with the world, and thank the universe for everything that we have. We plan to keep on going out and dancing until we’re in wheelchairs. And hopefully, by then, science will have developed the technology to make robot legs and neural Groove implants so we can not only keep dancing but look even cooler than the young whippersnappers around us.

My daughter, the worrier, sees the news from Orlando about the Pulse nightclub shooting as such: people in a gay club — people there because they love their community, love each other and love dancing — being heartlessly killed. The gears in my girl’s brain turn, and she makes the connection.

Someday her dad and stepdad could be in a club, dancing happily, and be killed by someone evil, simply for being.

I know her. That’s how her brain works.

Evil will not triumph on the dancefloor

It’s not my teenage daughter’s job to worry about me. It’s supposed to be the other way around. That’s the way the universe is supposed to work.

But can I tell my daughter her worry is unfounded?

No.

Because the scary truth of it is, it’s sheer luck that I was never in a club at the same time as a monster with an AK-47. This was the killing of my people, in my house. There is no way to pretend otherwise.

So how do I talk about that with my daughter?

In this strange new world where some members of our nation are zealously clinging to their right to own guns, where any attempt at greater gun safety and regulation is met with an outcry of “You can’t take my guns away from me!”, where someone on an FBI watch list can still own a gun and carry it into a place of safety and sanctuary and act out his dream of being a vengeful god, where being gay can still result in persecution, shame and outright fear …

I don’t know what to say to my daughter about that. She’s afraid for me, and I can’t tell her that fear is unfounded.

All I can tell her is this:

Yes, there is a lot of hatred in the world.

That hatred tends to come from fear and ignorance of those we don’t understand.

That hatred can sometimes result in evil, violent action.

But there are far more people who believe in the value of love, and human life, than not. Evil doesn’t rule. It just gets more press.

Oh, and one other thing:

There’s no way in hell that evil is going to keep me from dancing. Ever.

Pulse nightclub mass shooting photo: ©  Alex / Adobe Stock.

The City Dads Group blog has again been cited by peers in the parenting world for providing informative and entertaining information for moms and dads.

The City Dads blog is one of six nominated for “Group or News Blog of the Year” from the Iris Awards, a parenting and social media recognition program sponsored by the Mom 2.0 Summit parenting conference.

Several other City Dads members and blog contributors have also received nominations in other parenting award categories.

The Iris Awards program annually recognizes “individual achievements, collective creativity and impactful work to honor the art of modern parenthood,” according its website.

Attendees of recent Mom 2.0 or Dad 2.0 parenting conferences submit blogs, podcasts and social media influencers for the awards. A select committee then whittles down the submissions to a handful of nominees. Past attendees then vote for the winners.

The 2021 Iris Awards winners will be announced Oct. 14.

City Dads Group’s blog and its Modern Dads Podcast have been nominated multiple times for an Iris Award as best group/news blog and parenting podcast, respectively, since 2016. Neither has ever won.

However, several City Dads members and blog contributors have won for writing, photography, and philanthropic work over the years.

Individual City Dads nominees this year include:

• Brent Almond, a blog contributor, for “Best Sponsored Content” for his “Parenting During A Pandemic” series for the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility on his blog, Designer Daddy
• Johnathon Briggs, a Chicago Dads Group member and blog contributor, for “Dad Blog of the Year” for Fatherhood@Forty
• Mike Julianelle, a NYC Dads Group member and blog contributor, for “Dad Blog of the Year” for Dad and Buried
• Aaron Gouveia, a Boston Dads Group member, for “Dad Blog of the Year” for The Daddy Files, and for “Author/Book of the Year” for “Men and Miscarriage: A Dad’s Guide to Grief, Relationship, and Healing After Loss,” a book co-written with his wife, MJ.
• Andrew Knott, a blog contributor, nominated for “Dad Blog of the Year” for Explorations of Ambiguity

I’m gonna break character here and tell y’all something. Normally, I try to remain positive and affirmative and gentle, bordering on Pollyannaish, but some days I feel different, discordant … broken.

The something I want to tell you seems obvious to me. These are dark fucking times. You may quote me.

The news, honestly, breaks me often. The pain and suffering. The jingoism and economic imbalance. Pleas for money so our kids can fucking eat. Campaigns that say nothing of weight or promise and only attack with a ferocity that shears my soul.

I go on Facebook — the only social network I use, and shouldn’t but do — to see puppies and kittens and kids growing up and affirmations from that Nordby guy and C.S. Lewis quotes from my neighbor and people falling down and old friends and guitars. Instead, I get only bitterness from disgruntled “friends” and ads for things I don’t even know what they are and posting after posting of the tragedies around us.

You know what’s absent though? Others. A shit-ton of friends who’ve just given up on the whole thing are absent. Small businesses no longer notify me of the “open mic” nights, artists and old mates and musicians aren’t making the videos or telling the stories or showing me pictures of their works in progress. I miss that.

Also absent in the media that bombards us:

Hope.

Remember back in ’08 when Obama ran on a platform of hope? All those yard signs and posters and bumper stickers with that “Hope” logo. Yeah, that was sweet. Now they’d look anachronistic and naïve, don’t you think? Imagine walking through your neighborhood and seeing one. You’d probably think, “What the fuck! Like, where is hope anymore, hell, what is hope anymore?” We seem a long way from those days.

But are we?

Darkness still brings out the light

Our local food bank recently moved from a church basement to a much larger and easier to manage former retail space. There they can work with more families and donating is much easier and, although there are more in need, more are donating. That sort of looks like hope to me.

Families, students and teachers from all across the globe are struggling and wrangling and blundering and, ultimately, succeeding in finding a way to educate and engage in this socially distanced era. All so a generation of kids can get an education. Wanting that for them sure seems like hope.

My own sons, 15-year-old twins, work incredibly hard at their schoolwork and their friendships. They chat and play games online at home and sit for hours masked and uncomfortable at school all day in hope of a better future.

Protesters want a more just and right future. This is hope.

People on both sides or in the middle (or wherever) truly want a better future, but for whom? Well, that’s to be determined but it’s important to see that almost everyone is looking forward to something. That’s hoping.

I see hope in the wave of an old friend, not seen for months, in the school parking lot. I see hope in the first soccer practice in months, in a high school orchestra spread all over a stage and auditorium so they can play together. I see it in free masks and smiling eyes at the grocery store, in the orange and rust mums planted on autumn porches. Whether we want to admit it, we do these things and so many more in hope of a better future.

I see a lot of folks, myself sometimes included, mired in fear because we see so much to be afraid of. A long litany would probably be effective here, but I’ll pass. Don’t even do it yourself. That’s what I’m trying to get at here: fear is darkness, light, hope.

Dark fucking times, right? Maybe not so much.

I truly wanted this piece to be edgy, rough and cutting, but I couldn’t do it. I fall back on hope, every damn time. I turn on the light of it, and the brighter hope shines, the darkness of fear cannot get a foothold, the shadows are too lit.

The Avett Brothers have a new song out called “Back Into the Light,” the chorus of which goes:

It’d make some sense, if some was made to me
Sometimes I don’t see love in anything
And just when I surrender to my shadow
I snap out of it, and step into the light
I step back into the light

It is easy these days to surrender to our shadows. Fearmongering, it seems, is a national pastime. So watch a parent with a baby and see that light. Watch a teacher in their classroom, virtual or not, and see that light. Look for candidates of compassion, leaders with values, and see the light surrounding them. Look into the eyes of your own children and there, just behind that glaze of confusion and fear, you will see the fiery spark of hope. I promise.

I am a Pollyanna after all, albeit one with resting bitch face.

About the author

Bill Peebles left a 30-year career in the restaurant business to become a stay-at-home dad to twin boys. He writes a blog, I Hope I Win a Toaster, that makes little sense. He coaches sometimes, volunteers at the schools, plays guitar, and is a damn good homemaker. He believes in hope, dreams, and love … but not computers.

Light through door photo: © peterschreiber.media / Adobe Stock.

George Floyd died at the hands of police officers just over two month ago. Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in March. Justice in each case moves slowly, if at all.

Significant racial progress, I say out loud during a recent newscast, is taking a long, long time.

My son, who is Black, sits next to me as I lament. He sighs and looks up from his phone, “Yeah, actually I had forgotten about the Black Lives Matter stuff until I saw the NBA and MLB players kneeling on Opening Day.”

His gaze retreats back to his phone.

I do not reply. I just sit, quietly frustrated.

His comment made me think of the dogged, lengthy efforts of past Civil Rights titans, like The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, making the mission of racial equality their life’s work. I then thought of the protest my son attended with my wife after Floyd’s death, and the way that day make him stop and think about the need for systematic change.

A few months later, though, he’d lost that feeling of urgency.

I suddenly find myself wondering, “Does this generation of children have the same grit to carry this movement onward?”

With protesters continuing to take to the streets in several American streets, there is no question the Black Live Matter movement has feverish support from adults. These rallies, though, have gotten fringier, less kid-friendly and downright nasty in places like Portland or Seattle where government-affiliated troops routinely use force and tear gas to disperse crowds.

I am selfishly thankful my son is not subject to that sort of chaos. But is familiarity with such unrest, though, necessary to garner the type of passion that success in this struggle will require? As parents, our mission is to protect our kids. My children’s relative lack of bumps in the road to this point could be construed as modest progress.

I tend to harp on to my son about him having no limits, that the only barriers to his success will be those constraints he places on himself. I have drilled that mantra into him from his earliest ages and, I think, he believes it. But I wonder if because he has been taught that nothing is out of reach regardless of his skin color is part of the reason why the urgency of Black Lives Matter has waned in him.

Complicating this issue with young people and persistence is that many children like mine do not have to wait for anything – not for food, not for a text back, not for Instagram likes, not for commercial breaks. Kids, if made to wait these days, tend to stop, quit, complain or just move on.

The grit required to rid the world of racism will be immense. While no one wants to hear phrases like, “it will take time” or “justice will come” or “progress is slow” about today’s racial climate, they have all been proven to be real. In the world of apps and instant gratification our children have been raised in, have we parents adequately allowed them to grind through a hard task for long periods of time for a coveted outcome that made the dogged effort worth it?

I dread that these realities are inciting passionate adults at the fringe and turning off children like my son who are maybe not equipped for the long tussle required for monumental change. Parents may be well-meaning in shielding their children from the racism’s ugly stain, but in protecting our children I can’t help but think we have not done a good job of explaining that other families are not so fortunate. My son’s indifference to the continued fight for Black Lives to Matter, I think, is proof.

So now, months removed from the awful imaginary of George Floyd’s death, the Black Lives Matter movement may open our eyes to other ignorances like our children’s lack of access to plight, to fortitude, to communities that look starkly different than our own, and to the concept of persevering for a cause that will take great perseverance to achieve.

My son may lack grit. I need to do a better job of displaying its importance to him because grit is required for Black lives, like my son’s, to matter.

Photo: © DisobeyArt / Adobe Stock.

I’m finding it difficult deciding what to write about, my friends. It’s not that I don’t have ideas; it’s just that I don’t know what might be best or how to make sense of what I do know.

I have written here about baseball a few times. I guess I could again, even without games being played, big or little league. Baseball memories linger long, as you know. In fact, I just came across an image from a Little League game some years back. It was taken from behind the backstop showing one of my twin sons crouching in too-big catcher’s gear and the other twin on the mound, his left arm just coming down after the pitch, a slider it looks like. Between the two, the ball hangs, fuzzy in its movement, like a ghost in flight between one memory and another. It was the first time for a “Peebles battery” and the picture brought the moment right back to me.

However, without a season currently, the memories seem to hurt more than console.

I’ve written on faith for you in the past, sometimes unpopularly, I should add. I could, I suppose, go there again. I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude: the sheer simplicity of it, the inherent humility in it, the wonder at witnessing it in others, especially my now teenage sons. I know how it helps my faith, which, if I were honest, needs all the help it can get right now. I guess I could ponder that, as well. Stumbling and getting my knees scraped up as I careen and crash down my faith journey could make a good story.

But I haven’t been to church in months. I’m not sure my heart would be in it. Also, I can only hear my cries for gratitude landing on so many who have so little to be thankful for right now, which feels a bit insensitive, I guess.

Beginnings, endings make more sense than present

You have indulged my baffling fascination with what I’ve called “beginnings” and “endings.” Thanks for that. I think a lot about timelines and where we are on them, in whose time … it’s difficult to explain.

Anyway, I currently live a life that seems to simply be the present. I’m sure many others feel that way. Asking ourselves to consider what is ahead or closely examine what was just behind us is, if you’ll forgive me, untimely. Literally, now, this now, is not the time.

I could fall back on my folksy, narrative style and tell a story. Like this one: I was standing in my kitchen with my hand in a deli bag of sliced salami — as one does — when one of the boys walked in and said, “I don’t know what to do.” I guess he was bored but the question seemed more weighted than that alone. I immediately handed him a slice of salami and said, “You do now.” He took the slice, thanked me, and wandered off. Maybe I could vamp on that a bit, rhapsodizing on the notion of how, sometimes, all you can do is the next right thing, but I’m not sure it would be very genuine and, honestly, I’m not sure I know what the next right thing is anymore.

I guess that is the root of the problem here, isn’t it? The things I used to feel were so right, don’t seem to make as much sense anymore.

Should I write of a pandemic that is killing so many, wrecking the economy, and ruining the daily lives of families everywhere? I could but, I’d probably have to leave out a lot. Like that this time has definitely brought our family together just as it was beginning to fracture into the busyness of high school life. There would not be so many games of Scrabble or euchre or hearts, far fewer movies and dinners together and cooking sessions. I would not have the opportunity to watch our sons face the stress and adversity that remote learning and social distancing has placed on them. They’re 15, and, well, would most certainly rather be among their peers, especially girl peers.

Honestly, I’d probably be tempted to brag about them, tell you how proud I am of the grace and pleasantness they’ve exhibited through all of this. I am not sure that that sort of message would make sense when I know parents everywhere are having a very hard time with their teenagers — children in general, I’m sure.

Showing my age, privilege

Should I write about protests and racial injustice? I am an old white Boomer and fear I am as much the problem as solution, and I am sure my thoughts are less than relevant.

I could tell you about my feeble attempts at explaining all this to my sons, my years of explaining our privilege as whites in an uncomfortably “undiverse” community and school district — a subject they are better equipped to advise me on than I them.

If I did try to write on this subject, I’d have to admit that I am not a protest kind of guy. The energetic and emotionally charged crowds truly frighten me. I want my sons to know they are free to protest, march and voice their disdain, but I’d be afraid for myself and afraid to look the fool to them, honestly.

What of the lack of leadership I see at the highest levels in our country? I could justifiably rant for thousands of words on this alone. My guess is, I don’t need to. Integrity, decency, honesty, humility are all not hard to spot — and the lack of them is even easier to discern. Also, the final one-word answer to that is simply this: VOTE!

There is one thing, though, that I truly don’t want to write about: my anguish.

Sometimes the suffering and pain I see overwhelm me. I sit in my cozy home, surrounded by a loving family where I watch the world burn with a literal and figurative fever that rages in a way I have never seen before.

On the news, I see images of courageous healthcare workers behind masks and gowns, and see only the burden and sadness in their eyes.

I watch videos of these huge marches and see only the individuals behind the posters and raised fists, and I feel the bitter, justified anger in each face. But I also see the hope in the same faces and choke back a sob at the two emotions so painfully entwined.

I look for leadership, direction, encouragement, and comfort from those in power. Instead, I get nothing but rhetoric and mixed messages and my anger turns inward metastasizing into deep resentment and, honestly, debilitating rage.

I would like to apologize for my lack of courage. Other writers here have found theirs and have written on these very subjects with great eloquence and strength.

So, that’s where I am at right now, any advice would be welcome.

As always, peace to you,

Bill

P.S. I forgot to mention, I’ve got a pretty good piece about teaching the boys to mow the lawn:  rules, and advice, stories, that sort of thing. That’d probably be best, don’t you think?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Peebles left a 30-year career in the restaurant business to become a stay-at-home dad to twin boys. He writes a blog, I Hope I Win a Toaster, that makes little sense. He coaches sometimes, volunteers at the schools, plays guitar, and is a damn good homemaker. Bill believes in hope, dreams, and love … but not computers.

Make sense of world in crisis photo: © funstarts33 / Adobe Stock.

There’s a road sign in the low mountains of western Massachusetts that used to strike fear in me: “Runaway Truck Ramp.” As I drove by the uphill side lane with its soft, gravel bed, scenes of crashing 18-wheelers with no brakes would careen through my mind.

I passed the sign again last month on my way to retrieve my daughter from her college that, like so many others, closed early due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. The empty interstate made me feel like I was driving through the zombie apocalypse, and it didn’t help when Ohio’s “limit your travel” signs gave way to New York’s more brash “stay home.”

As we all continue to stay home, the uncertainty, worry and grief about most everything grows. We all seem in danger of becoming runaway trucks in need of emergency off-ramps. Flatten the curve? Yes. But also slow the truck. Social distancing is important, but so is mental distancing, at least some of the time.

Here are three coping strategies to limit your mind’s travel to unproductive places:

1. Remember we’re in this together

Acknowledge that everyone is affected by this crisis, some much more than others. If your family is healthy and your jobs intact, be thankful and try to help others who are not as fortunate. If your children are older (like my two teens), appreciate that parents of young children are especially struggling. In some ways, we’re all stay-at-home working parents now, each in our “little house on the prairie” before the rise of public education. And that life was far from easy.

2. Take control of your clutter

Clean the basement/closets/attic. If you haven’t already, such an exercise in controlling what you still can lead to a re-appreciation of home. It can also unearth treasures from your family’s better times. In our case, we’ve been laughing over old journals. Here’s a sample from my younger daughter in second grade: “Today we did not go to school because today is Sunday and today is basketball but I did not go because I might have head lice.” Ah, the simpler times of head lice (said no one until now).

3. Be good to yourself

Practice self-care, which can look different to each self. This may be especially tricky given all the challenges, but remember that few pleasures are guilty during this time. To my surprise, my daughters, ages 17 and 19, and I started watching dark movies like Contagion and 28 Weeks Later to relieve stress. In between, I read dystopian novels like Lord of the Flies (which I rediscovered while cleaning the basement) and The Handmaid’s Tale. To top it all off, we played Cards Against Humanity as a family for the first time, which is a long way from Uno. But I insisted we remove cards with sexual innuendos — some things still have to wait.

Your coping strategies may vary

Granted, other families might gravitate to lighter mental off-ramps, and all strategies should be age-appropriate. But my family’s unexpected stress-relievers reminded me of “turning into a skid,” the advice I received as a teen driver back in snowy Buffalo, N.Y. While it may seem counterintuitive to turn your car in the same direction that you are skidding, that is the way to straighten the car most effectively.

Whatever coping strategies and runaway truck ramps help your family recalibrate and survive this period in history, model how to use them. Despite it all, try to keep perspective. Don’t let chaos overwhelm order. Don’t let the present overcome the past (and the future). In addition to re-appreciating the history in your basement, help your family reflect on the history of pandemics that have been survived before. Whatever it takes to slow the truck.

Stressed man in need of coping strategies photo: © Prostock-studio / Adobe Stock. Runaway truck ramp photo: © LeiLani / Adobe Stock.

The City Dads Group website has been nominated for a new award that recognizes excellence in and commitment to creating parenting content.

The Richard and Linda Eyre Family Is Awards were established last year to recognize social media influencers whose online content best celebrates commitment, popularizes parenting, bolsters balance and validates values. The Family Is awards are scheduled to be presented in early February at the I Am Mom Summit, an online conference on parenting.

City Dads Group’s website was chosen as a finalist from among hundreds that were nominated and screened by an expert panel of judges. Two awards — a judge’s selection and a “people choice” selection will be given in the following catagories: Blogs, Websites, Podcasts, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

“The Family Is Awards were created to recognize those who are promoting strong families.  Parenting may be the most important thing we do to affect society yet there is little public recognition.  We want to change this and celebrate people like you for your family-centric content,” said Jamie and Mike Taylor, chairpersons and founders of I am Mom summit in the letter announcing City Dads Group’s nomination. “The whole point of the Family Is Awards is that recognition can spawn more quality content online that will help an ever-growing number of marriages, families, and parents to build strong and lasting relationships.”

Richard and Linda Eyre, authors of 50 books and honorary chairpersons for the wards bearing their names, have been at the forefront of a movement to strengthen families amidst cultures and societal norms that are moving in opposite directions, according to a press release accompanying the nomination announcement.

City Dads Group, along with its predecessor NYC Dads Group, has received several honors over the years for it chapters’ work, website/blog and podcast.

Men in New York took advantage of the state’s recently added paid family leave law in record numbers, according to a state agency overseeing worker compensation issues.

In 2018, the first year of the four-year-long phase-in for the law, more than 26,000 fathers in the Empire State took leave within the first 12 months of their child’s birth, adoption or foster placement. Compared to the first year of similar laws that have gone into effect in other states, New York had the highest overall participation rate and the highest percentage of men who used the benefit to bond with their children, according to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board.

In its first year, the state paid family leave law covered more than 8.5 million working New Yorkers, and more than 128,000 people used the benefit.

“NY paid family leave has not only alleviated my financial fears and hardships but has allowed me to give my daughter the full care she deserves when she needs me the most,” said Brian W. of Williamstown, in a quote provided by the workers’ comp board. “I cannot say thank you enough for this life-changing program.”

In 2019, the law allows working New Yorkers to take off up to 10 weeks, without fear of losing their job, while receiving 55 percent of their average weekly wage, up to 55 percent of the Statewide Average Weekly Wage. Starting this January, the benefits increase to 60 percent of their average weekly wage with a maximum weekly benefit of $840.70. The phase-in ends in 2021 when employees will be eligible to take up to 12 weeks off at 67 percent of their average weekly wage, up to a cap of 67 percent of the Statewide Average Weekly Wage.

When New York’s paid family leave law first went into effect in 2018, only three other U.S. states had similar programs. The number has grown:

• New York, New Jersey, California, Rhode Island, and Washington have laws in effect
• Washington, D.C., has laws taking effect in 2020
• Connecticut starts in 2021
• Oregon begins in 2023

At least 21 states have considered paid family leave laws in the past two years, according to the Society for Human Resources Management, and the movement for federal legislation has been growing. Dove Men+Care, a longtime partner of City Dads Group, has been focused on the issue for the past year,  calling for people to sign a pledge for paid paternity leave and offering grants to fathers who don’t have paid paternity leave as an available option.

“Paid family leave shouldn’t be a luxury given to precious few! I am grateful to live in NY state,” said Tyler M. of Queens in a quote provided by the NY workers’ comp board.

Caring for and bonding with a new child isn’t the only life-changing event New York’s paid family leave law covers. It also provides paid time off and job protection for workers when a spouse, domestic partner, child or parent is called to active military service abroad or a family member needs care because of a serious health condition. Employees taking the time off are ensured they will have the same job (or a comparable one) when they return to work and also get to keep their health insurance while on leave, on the same terms as if they continued working.

Most employees who work in New York State for private employers are eligible to take paid family leave. Public employees may be covered if their employers opt-in to provide the benefit. Covered employees who work a regular schedule of 20 hours or more per week are eligible after 26 consecutive weeks of work with the same employer. Employees who work a regular schedule of fewer than 20 hours per week are eligible after working for their employer for 175 days, which do not have to be consecutive. Citizenship and immigration status are never factors in eligibility.

New York Paid Family Leave is insurance that is fully funded by employees through payroll deductions. The contribution rate is set each year by the state’s Department of Financial Services to match the cost of coverage. In 2020, the contribution will be 0.270% of an employee’s gross wages each pay period. The maximum annual contribution is $196.72.

More information on New York Paid Family Leave is available at https://paidfamilyleave.ny.gov/.

Photo: © anoushkatoronto / Adobe Stock.