When it comes to music, I am a fairly avid metalhead. I am a drummer and skilled air guitarist. I even rocked a mullet with pride through my teen years and well into college. As hard rock is in my blood I assumed, like other genetic traits, my headbanging passion would be passed on to my children. 

When my wife and I found out we were having our first baby, I was thrilled with the notion of educating my child, girl or boy, in the artistry of classic “dad rock” legends like Eric Clapton, Neil Peart, and Pete Townsend. One of the greatest gifts I received as a father-to-be, was a set of CDs that set classic rock songs to lullaby music. While I find something somewhat insidious about playing “Stairway to Heaven” set to the chimes of a lullaby for your sleepy infant, I was secure knowing it was the right thing to do. To complete this induction, after my first daughter was born, I went out and got the perfect complementary clothing: a Rush onesie. I think at one point we had a Black Sabbath outfit, too. All to pass on my love for this music to my daughter. 

Well, have you ever seen the movie This is 40? In one scene, the father (played by Paul Rudd) tries to “enhance” his daughters’ musical education. Dismissing the pop-style tween music that seems to dominate the music scene these days, he tries to introduce them to Alice in Chains. The early Alice in Chains. Steeped in brooding lyrics and heavy guitars. Specifically a song about a man trying to get home from the Vietnam War. That’s some hard-core dad rock. A tough sell for most people much less young girls. In his frustration, he comments crudely on how he wishes just one of them was a boy. 

I have two daughters now. I couldn’t have ever anticipated it, but there is something unbelievably sweet about having girls that I don’t find myself yearning for a boy as many dads do. A boy who would want to rock out would be fantastic, though. … (sigh)

A Rush to dad rock heaven

A good friend and fellow dad and I used to make an annual pilgrimage to see at least one Rush concert a year when they were touring. He has a son a few years older than my daughter and this kid loves Rush. He has his favorite songs, sings along, the whole deal. When we used to go to see Rush, we’d see many dads with their sons and daughters. It was a wholesome show of great music, lasers and video. Completely family-friendly. It has been a dream of mine to someday take my daughters, when they are old enough to enjoy it, to a concert of one of my favorite bands from my youth. Of course, I fear the advancing ages of those bands may prevent it, but my bigger fear is that they simply won’t want to go. 

When my eldest daughter was around 18 months, I would play many of my favorite songs for her and dance around the living room to try and get her excited by it. She would placate me for a few minutes before exclaiming, “Daddy, I don’t like this sound.  Turn it off.” Every time, deflated, I would capitulate. I would tell myself, ”Well, Rush (or whatever band it was) is an acquired taste. Progressive and grunge is a tough sell. I should start with Journey or The Eagles. You know, old-school dad rock.”

Two years later, I have not had much luck. Not for a lack of trying, though.

It’s got a backbeat you can’t lose it

I came home from work last week to find my eldest daughter, now almost 4, and my wife bouncing around the apartment, elated to be singing “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepson. My daughter had an enormous grin on her face, laughing so hard she could barely sing and dance. “Again mommy,” she screamed over and over again. 

She now sings the song herself on command for anyone who will listen. A tiny little piece of me cringes on the inside every time I hear it. Yes, it’s adorable and she is so full of life when she sings it and I love to hear her do it, but a part of me cringes. Every time. 

The other day, my youngest daughter (9 months old) was in a teething crying fit that I could not resolve. My wife and other daughter were out. I fired up some random tunes to try and soothe her. 

The raw heavy guitars of Blue Oyster Cult came on.

And, to my complete surprise, she just stopped dead in her tracks. She looked at me and smiled. 

I sang the song to her and she laughed. This went on for a good 20 minutes. Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll indeed. 

It never ceases to amaze me the personalities that our kids have from birth. My girls are still quite young and I won’t ever give up on their musical education. In the end they both have a deep love for music. Whether its Pink Floyd or Taylor Swift, I suppose it’s that deep love of music that I need for them. If they love their music as much as I love mine, I guess I did OK.

This article originally ran in 2013, and has been since updated. Dad rock photo by Alena Darmel via Pexels.

Editor’s Note: We’re digging into our ample archives to find some great articles you might have missed over the years. This one comes from 2013.

One thing my family loves about living in New York City is the diversity and the “melting pot” promise of the city. We want our kids to grow up in this sort of cultural and economic diversity. But even in this vibrant, libel city, my skin color still has the ability to raise an eyebrow. Almost on a daily basis. Like all the times people think I’m the kids’ manny.

We are a multicultural family. I am an Indian American. My parents emigrated from India almost 50 years ago, long before I was born. My wife is a home-grown American – for lack of a better phrase. Her lineage includes Irish, Native American, German and probably a few more.

We have two daughters: a 4- and a 10-month-old. Sadly for me, but fortunately for them, they look nothing like me. I don’t mean that they resemble my wife more than me on a sliding scale. I mean that they look nothing like me.

As an Indian American, my complexion is dark. I have brown eyes and dark hair, well, I did before going bald. Our oldest daughter, on the other hand, is a result of a chuckle that her genetic makeup decided to have on me. She is stunning. I am her dad and I am supposed to think that, I know. But she is. She has blonde hair, striking blue eyes and an extremely slight olive tint to her skin. She looks nothing like me. Our younger daughter does have dark hair but sports a bluish-green eye color to die for. She has a similar skin tone to her sister. I’m a lucky Dad with a lifetime of stress and worry ahead of me!

Family and friends throw me a bone every now and then and claim to see some physical feature that resembles me in the girls. It’s nice of them to try.

Neither manny nor adbuctor

Given the extreme disparity of my appearance with my older daughter, I would often (and still do) get looks of interest, confusion, and sometimes even concern. The looks often made me feel as if I needed to justify my relationship to my daughter in public. I’ve been asked directly if she was my daughter by perfect strangers. My daughter, being an extremely bright and observant girl, became conscious of this tension with no provocation. At 2 years old, in response to a quizzical look, she grabbed my leg in a crowded elevator and declared loudly, “This is my Daddy!” Admittedly, I quietly loved this. She got to the point that she would scream this declaration to every stranger that dared to look at us.

One time, close to her third birthday, I was bringing her home from a friend’s house a little too close to dinner time. On the walk to the subway, she began to melt down and cry for her mommy. The tantrum began to escalate and I picked her up to get on the subway quickly. A concerned passerby actually followed us for about four blocks out of concern for her. It wasn’t until my daughter finally spat out, “Daddy, I want to go home,” in her tantrum that the person actually turned around and left.

I suppose I should have felt a bit thankful that a perfect stranger was trying to ensure the safety of my daughter. I’d certainly want that should she actually be in a situation that required help. In reality, I was mildly offended at the assumption that she could not possibly be my child.

I don’t appear to get as many looks with my younger daughter, I think as a result of her dark hair. Regardless, as my girls get older, I find myself less and less conscious of the looks I receive with them. I do find myself occasionally fighting off the urge to yell at all the moms at that park, “No. I am not the manny! I’m their father thankyouverymuch!”

Thus, even in a city as diverse and incredible as New York, you really never know what sort of family you will run into. We certainly have all kinds. I think to some degree we all try to fit people into molds that are comfortable to us. I think it’s natural and I am sure I have done it myself. My own experience has taught me to take the extra conscious effort to make no assumptions and remind myself how amazingly different our families can be.

Photo: © zinkevych / Adobe Stock.

I like playing the random “Feeling Lucky” music mixes off my Google Cloud when I’m home alone with my 3-year-old. She loves pretending to sing and dances hard to the music.

A classic rock mix of CSN, Dire Straits, Supertramp and a little Fleetwood Mac come on today. I hadn’t listened to most of those song in years and it took me back. My daughter perked up as I sang to her, giggling and getting playful. I turned her upside down for a huge belly laugh and, as I was bringing her back up, I looked at her laughing, smiling face.

My breath caught in my throat. I saw my wife in her in a way I never had before.

My wife and I have talked about who our girls look like since the second they were born. We compare features like eyes, chins, skin tone, hands, feet etc. However, this was different.

In a flash, I saw my wife in her eyes — my wife as she was when we first met before kids and pre-school tuition and the all the trappings that parenthood brings. I realized then that our girls really are the embodiment of the love that I share with my wife. It’s a simple point, but it really does get lost in the bedlam that is parenting.

“Give a little bit of your love to me
I’ll give a little bit of my life for you
Now’s the time that we need to share
So find yourself, we’re on our way back home”

As the music played on, I remembered that before the diapers, baths, homework and structured discussions about our household budget, there was an “us.” I admittedly haven’t “seen” my wife in that light in some time. Not because of any problem with our marriage, but because it is easy to get caught up in life while forgetting to simply live.

It is not uncommon for people to lose touch with that old spark once they have kids. We consciously try to reignite it all the time. We make time for each other with date nights and other special moments in spite of our kids’ demands and schedules. That calculated need won’t change, but I want to try to remember that initial, spontaneous rush that led us to this time raising two precious girls.

Valentine’s Day would seem like the time to embrace and re-experience that feeling, but it has just never been our thing. However, this year, I may take the opportunity. I don’t mean the $200 Prix Fixe dinners, chocolates, cards and heart-shaped gifts.

Valentine’s Day can be any day on the calendar that pulls me out of the grind of life for a minute. It could be February 14 or it could be every Friday for the rest of the year. My wife knows I love her. I tell her so every day. I know she loves me just as much. What that fleeting glance of my daughter’s face taught me is that I am still in love with the woman I married. I still love her in the way when we were newlyweds, but I now also get to love her through our children.

If there is a commercially contrived day that reminds me of that once a year, then so be it. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s give a little bit photo: Photo by Jordan Rowland on Unsplash

As a father of three, it thrilled me to see 2015 Super Bowl commercials give dads so much attention. The surge in positive representation of fatherhood in advertising and media during the past few years has been amazing with the portrayal of fathers changing from mostly “doofus dads” to a greater focus on strong, nurturing fathers who raise their children competently and equally with their partners.

While most of these 2015 Super Bowl “fatherhood” commercials did a fantastic job of highlighting what great dads can look like, car maker Nissan’s “With Dad” spot appears to have completely missed the mark:

I have nothing against car racing and certainly parents need to do what is necessary to support their families. I am ecstatic Nissan wanted to run an ad that highlights fatherhood, however, studies show that being serially absent father can be devastating to a child’s future. What so many of today’s dads want to communicate to their bosses, their co-workers, their friends and the world is that we want to — we need to — be ever-present in our children’s lives. It is not only important to us as fathers, it is vital to our kids.

In contrast, Toyota ran an ad emphasizing that being a dad is more than earning big money to bring home a shiny new vehicle. It’s a choice to be there. This, to me, represents the essence of what dads are and can be today:

It is just a commercial, though, and I am likely making more of it than necessary. That said, I still think I’d buy a Toyota.

Getting your infant to sleep is one of the most, if not the most, important challenges for parents. Everything, from eating to a happy disposition, begins and ends with healthy sleep. This would appear to be a simple task: after all, the phrase “sleep like a baby” must come from somewhere, right? Wrong. My wife and I are on our third baby and we still find managing sleep a difficult task.

The Good Sleeper: The Essential Guide to Sleep for Your Baby — and You by Janet Krone Kennedy proved to be an extremely useful source for parents like us who are sleep training their children. It is not only a great instrument for you and your baby when you are already in deep with sleep trouble, but also a great guide to keep you from getting into the danger zone of an overtired baby.

My wife and I were strong proponents of sleep training and, with our first two children, became huge advocates of Dr. Marc Weissbluth’s book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. To say that it has been our bible for sleep training would be an understatement. With the opportunity to use Kennedy’s book for our newborn, we jumped at the chance to explore a new authority.

Most notably for us, Kennedy’s approach matched ours. We used the “cry it out” method with our older kids and Kennedy stresses that this technique, or as she refers to it — the Extinction Method, is the quickest and most efficient method for teaching your baby how to sleep and self-soothe. While she takes a pretty hard and fast line with that (especially disagreeing with co-sleeping), we found The Good Sleeper supports other techniques including the Ferber Method or “crying with checks.” This was pleasantly refreshing and reassuring because whether it’s your first baby or third, it is important to feel that your choices as a parent are respected.

Additionally, the structure of The Good Sleeper makes it very accessible. If there was ever a complaint we had about Weissbluth’s book, it is the structure and arrangement are not intuitive. Let’s be real: parents typically open these books when their child is already in sleep trouble, and so you are operating on a complete lack of sleep. At this point, your brain can barely process a simple conversation, let alone full chapters of sleep techniques. Kennedy seems to have rectified this. While she keeps a similar structure as Weissbluth, she writes in a clear and concise manner that makes it far easier to figure out how to get your child to sleep.

Finally, she does a terrific job of explaining the science of sleep in a way that helped us not only understand the methodology, but also helped us understand our own sleep patterns. We know as parents of infants that sleep begets sleep – though it really seems counterintuitive. Kennedy takes the time to explain these oddities, describing the adrenaline rush that ensues in the human body when it is overtired. She does this with non-technical language, making it simple to follow and easy to comprehend.

All in all, we found Kennedy’s book to be extremely useful and would highly recommend this to any new parent. She truly knows her science and makes it accessible in a way that fosters confidence and skill. We have gotten ahead of this game with our son, and are using Kennedy’s book as a guide in helping our son develop positive sleep habits from the start. We suggest you do the same.

Balancing work and family life can be an exercise in spinning plates for dads as well as moms. If you don’t believe me, just ask Jennifer Garner.

The actress and mother of three recently noted that while she and actor/husband Ben Affleck were out promoting new movies every single interviewer asked her how she balances work and family while none of her husband’s interviewers asked him that same question. Same careers, same family yet the focus of Affleck’s interviews was instead on his co-stars’ breasts.

The term “shared family” is appropriate for families like theirs and mine, where two working parents have an equal role in caring for their children. Like Garner and Affleck, my wife and I have similar careers (albeit much lower paying ones) and a young family (two kids with a third due any day now). My wife works full-time yet still does an absolutely amazing job of raising our kids and maintaining our household. Her work-life balance is quite hectic, but satisfying.

Here is the thing: I carry the same load. Equally. In addition to my full-time job, I am a father. I get our children dressed for school, make lunches, do laundry, give baths and more. I don’t do all of it all of the time. I do all of it half of the time. Or three-quarters of the time. It depends on the day and the particular need of my family. We do not keep tally, we do what needs to be done. Work-life balance is no less a challenge for me than it is for my wife. However, it is rare that anyone considers my challenges, as a father, in maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Partners like my wife, Jennifer Garner and a growing number of other really awesome moms are changing this conversation for the better. I know a great many dads who work extremely hard at their shared family, wanting to be full-time providers and caregivers. We want to be good husbands and fathers. We do not want to be afterthoughts relegated to a small set of “dad tasks.”

Yes, the tides have been changing, but it’s a slow turn. Partners who understand and support these challenges will help shape the conversation. This can hopefully lead to greater access to things like paternity leave and flexible work schedules for fathers along with better conditions for working mothers. too.

Perhaps the next time Ben Affleck, already known as a publicly active and involved dad, promotes a movie  at least one reporter will table the question on his co-stars’ boobs and ask about his family. It’ll make the rest of us dads out there feel like we are not alone, and help validate the hard work we put in day in and day out.

Our 4-year-old daughter recently found love at the Montessori snack table.

My wife and I found her crush on this young boy endearing and heartbreaking. Even for puppy love, our girl approached it with a great deal of thought, effort, and mostly all of her heart. Her innocent questions to us about why mommy and daddy got married (love and friendship) led her into a declaration of marital intent with this poor unsuspecting young boy.

The boy responded to her proposal by insisting that not only was he not interested in marriage at the tender age of 4 but also that they would not even live nearby one another as adults. This broke my daughter’s heart, as puppy love tends to always end up doing. She found herself unable to fully express her hurt even as she tried talking to my wife and me about this situation at length. Her sweetness and sensitivity are much of what I love most about her, but also what makes me fearful of her teenage years. My wife and I are somewhat hopeless romantics. This poor kid of ours did not stand a chance.

The one positive thing from this puppy love experience is that I found that my daughter is willing to talk with me, her father, about these feelings. I understand that she is just 4 and when she turns 14 things will likely be much different, however, these are the five lessons I have learned from this experience as a father:

1. Let her know it is OK and normal to have these feelings. It would certainly be easy to dismiss this whole thing as toddler angst; however, it was an opportunity for her to learn that she can share her feelings with daddy.

2. Don’t get emotional. Behind closed doors, I would vent to my wife how I wanted to throttle this little boy. I made a point of not expressing that frustration with her.

3. Ask a question and let her talk. It’s often very easy to help a child complete a thought. We all do it. In this situation, I let her express what she wanted, how she wanted, even when it wasn’t quite decipherable. The more she talked, well, the more she talked.

4. Be honest with her. My wife and I plainly expressed that she is, of course, much too young to be worrying about marrying boys and should make many friends. It sounds silly, but I think that we have an opportunity at a young age to frame her idea of marriage, love and relationships.

5. Be the man that she will want someday. No one will ever be good enough for our little girl, but I can certainly set the bar for those young men that will undoubtedly darken my doorstep. They say that a girl’s first love is her father – we should take that seriously.

Puppy love photo by Jordan Rowland on Unsplash

I remember the exact moment nearly six years ago when my wife informed me that she was pregnant with our first child. It was decidedly not like those moments you see in a movie.

I felt like I was hit by a car in slow motion.

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids and very much wanted kids, but we had just had the “let’s wait one more year” conversation a few days earlier. I was excited yet I felt like the weight of the world had hit me like an Acme anvil crushing Wile E. Coyote.

My mouth ran dry, and I wondered what type of father I would be.

Most fathers I know feel that bond with their child from the moment they are born. Some even feel it while their child is in utero. Not me. However, with no frame of reference, I really didn’t know that at first.

When our daughter was born, I performed all of the new fatherly duties. Diapers, feeding, playing. I made every effort to be involved and available to my daughter and my wife. Yet, through all of this, I felt something was missing between me and my daughter. I felt I was on the outside looking in at her.

I never shared this with my wife, or anyone for that matter. I would make me look like a bad father, a fraud.

One day when my daughter was around 3 months old, I decided to assemble her ExerSaucer. Admittedly, such handy-type work is not my thing, but it felt like a “fatherly” thing to do. Once I got it assembled, my excitement blurred my judgment. I placed her in the ExerSaucer while I finishing on strapping its Velcro play pieces.

The loudest, most memorable wail of pain that came from my daughter next changed everything.

I had caught my daughter’s finger between the Velcro toy and the tray of the ExerSaucer while laying underneath pulling the Velcro strap as tight as I can. Her cry immediately threw me into rescue and recovery mode.

I sat with her, quietly comforting her, until her tears went away. While I sat traumatized, she resumed her regularly scheduled giggling, drooling, and goo-goo ga-gaing. I, too, felt better. Together, we helped each other through the pain.

Clarity came a few hours later after my wife fully convinced me her finger would not be permanently damaged. I realized that being her sole source of comfort in her time of need was not only something I was more than capable of doing, but was something she was more than capable of accepting. We had unknowingly bonded through crisis. The need to relieve her pain cut all the chains holding my love and acceptance, of her and my ability to love her, back. It was a moment of pure joy that I have never looked back from.

However, please, do not try this at home on your own child. Love will break through, no matter how much Velcro tries to hold it back.

Our 4-year-old daughter recently found love at the Montessori snack table.

My wife and I found her crush on this young boy endearing and heartbreaking. Even for puppy love, our girl approached it with a great deal of thought, effort, and mostly all of her heart. Her innocent questions to us about why mommy and daddy got married (love and friendship) led her into a declaration of marital intent with this poor unsuspecting young boy.

The boy responded to her proposal by insisting that not only was he not interested in marriage at the tender age of 4 but also that they would not even live nearby one another as adults. This broke my daughter’s heart. She found herself unable to fully express her hurt even as she tried talking to my wife and me about this situation at length. Her sweetness and sensitivity are much of what I love most about her, but also what makes me fearful of her teenage years. My wife and I are somewhat hopeless romantics. This poor kid of ours did not stand a chance.

The one positive thing from this experience is that I found that my daughter is willing to talk with me, her father, about these feelings. I understand that she is just 4 and when she turns 14 things will likely be much different, however, these are the five lessons I have learned from this experience as a father:

1. Let her know it is OK and normal to have these feelings. It would certainly be easy to dismiss this whole thing as toddler angst; however, it was an opportunity for her to learn that she can share her feelings with daddy.

2. Don’t get emotional. Behind closed doors I would vent to my wife how I wanted to throttle this little boy. I made a point of not expressing that frustration with her.

3. Ask a question and let her talk. It’s often very easy to help a child complete a thought. We all do it. In this situation, I let her express what she wanted, how she wanted, even when it wasn’t quite decipherable. The more she talked, well, the more she talked.

4. Be honest with her. My wife and I plainly expressed that she is, of course, much too young to be worrying about marrying boys and should make many friends. It sounds silly, but I think that we have an opportunity at a young age to frame her idea of marriage, love and relationships.

5. Be the man that she will want someday. No one will ever be good enough for our little girl, but I can certainly set the bar for those young men that will undoubtedly darken my doorstep. They say that a girl’s first love is her father – we should take that seriously.