I talked to a dad a thousand miles from where I live as he was being attacked by a turkey. It’s amazing how clear and close a squawk from a bird can sound over the phone. But this is what I learned after I interviewed dad after dad: You can’t stop them from talking about being a father, even if they are fighting off a turkey.

Yes, I wrote a book of great parenting advice for stay-at-home dads but that’s not the purpose of my writing this. It’s to express my utter amazement for all the fathers I spoke to during my research and to give a real-life example of the state of fatherhood.

So many articles your read talk about fathers in stoic terms. Hell, in half of them you can almost imagine a sunset and a horse. The other half of the articles we read are about how dads are not parenting right. That we are clueless when it comes to our families, or we don’t pull our weight. I can safely tell you that the popular image given to the world is complete bullshit. Not only do dads parent with the best of them, they know exactly what they are doing.

Hacks not for moms or dads – for parents

Did you know you should carry two different types of adhesive bandages in your diaper bag? Giving the child a choice helps distract them from the hurt.

How about what kind of cast iron pan you should get and what can you make in it?

Need help dealing with your anxiety?

The dads I talked to had answers to all these questions and more.

What amazed me most, though, is that they were so willing to share. Conversations that might have been two minutes long would easily turn into hours as I spoke to each dad. They just wouldn’t stop, and I was grateful for it. These guys had the same passion as I do about fatherhood.

What really blew me away was that as they spoke, as they gave me the best bits of themselves, not one of them thought they were special. The advice that had taken so many of them years to learn was given freely and with the caveat of “Oh, that one? That’s no big deal.” I heard that from a guy who was currently remodeling a home with his pre-teen son.

We like to separate parents, and categorize the advice we give as “for moms” and “for dads.” I get asked a lot when it comes to parenting: “Well, what else worked for you as a dad?” It’s a way to separate and qualify any statement I make thereafter. As if the advice I’ve learned from so many is “just for dads” or “dad is being silly, but I suppose this works.” It bugs the ever-loving shit out of me.

When I talked to all these fathers, this is what often went through my head. Having a coffee grinder in your garage so you don’t wake up a napping child when you need an afternoon java fix isn’t just great dad advice, it’s great parenting advice! And show me a vacuum that can clean up a knocked-over box of cereal mixed with flour better than the wet/dry vac. Kids are messy so getting the gear that makes life easier shouldn’t be limited by gender.

As I talked to all these dads, I concluded that when you want a hard job done right, there is no better place to go for great parenting advice than to a father covered in experience.

It takes more than a village

We’ve all heard the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” So, in researching and writing my book I set out to not only to find that village but give a roadmap to the dads who come after me. I’ve been lost out in the world of fatherhood many times. I’ve had to stumble over rocky paths and hope what I was doing was the right thing. Along the way, I was lucky enough to find the guys in my life who made the journey easier, the one who could help carry my load and give me directions.

That’s what I wanted for the men who come after me. And I wanted to change the conversation around fatherhood. To change it from the bumbling idiot to the man who knows exactly what he is doing. Because those are the fathers I encounter on a day-to-day basis.

Each of the fathers I spoke to, from all over the country and in a few instances, all over the world, were the dads I always knew were out there. They go about their lives quietly, focused on their children. They struggle with everyday tasks and their mental health. But they also figure out how to deal with it. They are not constrained by what is expected of them by others, only by what they expect of themselves.

They are the problem-solvers of the parenting world. And after they solve a problem, they make a note of it for later reference then move on to the next problem. And there’s no way I can give them all the rewards and credit they deserve. But to put it clearly, I am in awe of them.

Yes, the saying is that it takes a village to raise a child. I have concluded that this statement is incorrect. That saying doesn’t go far enough. It does not recognize the truly amazing fathers I talked to month after month.

It takes a city to raise a child, and I count myself lucky to be among its residents.

Great parenting advice from dads photo: © Volodymyr  / 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

As an at-home-dad for more than a decade, I pride myself on the ability to read and understand ancient languages. I am the Rosetta Stone of baby talk. Toddler got a problem but has the vocabulary lower than the dog? I’m your guy. A teenager that has invented a new system of language based on memes and TikTok? I can write the dictionary and teach it at the next convention.

But the Post-it Notes my wife leaves around the house? Well, not all codes were meant to be broken.

The Post-it Notes are based on a language I can only assume take its inspiration from fairy dust and abstract art. I run across these colorful cryptic message many times throughout the day. Sometimes I can make progress, such as “Surely, that is a word that starts with an X!” Then I realize that it’s not an X, but a sign invented for deaf musical geniuses … and how can I not understand that?

Let’s take the above Post-it Note as a typical example. I found out many years later that this was meant to be a grocery list and not a communication from a new alien civilization asking me for help. Using my highly developed reading and writing skills, I determined that the first word on the note is “juice.” We are off to a good start.

The second word, now that is a P followed by butterfly wings. I consulted my Egyptian Hieroglyphics urban dictionary. I concluded that I was supposed to let the pee fly at the grocery store. Then I realized that if I squinted, it’s could be a B. Which would be PB, shorthand for “peanut butter and jelly,” two separate items that aren’t one product. I deduced that my wife wanted a sandwich and then she would pee in an airplane. This is going smoothly, no?

After I got the P and B, she wants “banditos.” An interesting request as I would have to travel all the way back to 1865 Mexico, but I could probably do that. I’ll get the alien civilization to help.

After that, “lunch meet” is up, which again, a bit weird. But I love meeting lunch, so I’ll do that after the banditos. We’ll catch up on the kids and family.

So far, I find that this is going well and much easier than one would expect given my wife’s inability to write on Post-it Notes in any way that a normal person could understand. Once she left me a note to “Make sure you flap the flog” which is not the sexual reference/kink talk I was expecting. Instead, it meant fix the toilet. She’s also terrible at sexting.

After lunch meet is where I get stuck. We need “dimes by Sunday.” Clear as day, that is what the Post-it Note says. I don’t know what is going on during Sunday, but apparently, this is very important to get at the grocery store.

Or — hold-up — what if I’m reading it wrong?

It might say “Dinos on Sunday.”  That’s a bit of an emergency because I’m not planning on making enough tacos Sunday night to feed a group of prehistoric creatures.  Maybe that’s why we need the dimes? That makes sense.

Then the list tells me to get the “Ranch at the Coffee,” but I think that is a harmless typo. What she means is to go to the ranch and get coffee. Like, the cowboy kind that’s served as dark as night and with a little trail dust on the rim. Everyone takes it differently and whatever she needs to make it through the day, I’m here for her. And I’ll be sure to pick up the “reamer” that is next on her list. I can only assume this is cowboy lingo for sugar.

I’m pretty sure that the next item on this Shakespearean manuscript is “mouse traps,” but I’m making the allowance that it could also be “moose traps.” You can never be too careful with moose as they eat all your cheese, the greedy bastards.

I’m having a problem with the next two. It’s either “Twit Fly stuff” or “Twit Fly Traps Stuff.? Writing in straight lines is sometimes a challenge for her.  And I’m not sure what a “Swahes” is either. Using my brain powers again I can make two conclusions.

Option 1: Twits are a type of space pirate flying around our galaxy, and we need to trap them before they swish their hips in an inappropriate manner. I believe Elvis was a Twit Pirate when he was starting out.

Option 2: I have a hell of an infestation in my house with the mouse, the moose, the twits, and the fruit flies, and if I’m not careful, they too will soon read my wife’s Post-it Notes and then wonder why they get yelled at when they return from the store with only Flying Pee and Dimes.

Photo: © OliverFoerstner / Adobe Stock.

My wife approves of my keeping one mistress. She happily walks in on me as I’m cozying up with an Abraham Lincoln biography, a Wall Street Journal op-ed page or the latest edition of Time magazine. If she’s out of town, I’m never alone long. I’ll quickly get intimate with Charles Krauthammer, Neil deGrasse Tyson or an elegantly stated case against the anti-fossil fuel argument. But only one at a time: I don’t have the stamina I used to.

These late-night visits to the native English language are my after-hours escape and salvation. You see, I’m an English-language copywriter living in Israel. I’ve worked with dozens of otherwise intelligent, high powered, high functioning Israeli high tech executives who nonetheless believe that the linguistic ocean that separates Hebrew and English can be crossed by copying and pasting words and phrases into Google Translate. The problem is that while English overflows with nuance and subtlety, Hebrew is the language of a people in a hurry: direct, unambiguous, aggressive. They’re about as similar as oil and water, as compatible as Cain and Abel.

So I spend my working days swatting at flies. Countless remarks, memos, meetings and edits have turned my creative writing output into a mush of barely coherent copy. And while eating humble pie allows me to fulfill my financial obligations, there’s more to life than the sum total of our responsibilities.

I adore my wife and adore our kids. Full stop. Still, I can’t settle for being a glorified proofreader with a pension plan. A father who puts a roof over his children’s heads, food on the table and clothes on their backs is doing what a father is supposed to do. You never see anyone taking a bow for paying their taxes, obeying the law and not clipping wings off flies.

If we’re not careful, the pesky brush fires of our daily tasks can grow into an inferno that consumes our dreams.

Revere their dreams and yours

I don’t know where my dreams came from or why they persist. All I know is that they are my soul’s DNA, the magic stuff that puts a spring in my step, sparkle in my eye and smile on my face. My time to shine, as a published novelist, screenplay writer, political commentator or some combination thereof, will arrive. If not, the adventure, the quest, will have still made me the superhero of my own life’s movie.

But there’s much more at stake here than one middle-aged man’s desire to reach his fullest potential. I’m the father of four children — ages 7, 5 and twin 3-year-olds. Their little brown eyes are always watching their old man, learning. Confident, cocky and flush with the bloom of youth, my kids aren’t easily impressed by anyone or anything: as it should be. If me and my wife manage to teach our four headstrong pixie pirates anything, it’ll be to revere their dreams and listen to their hearts. By following their true north they may be delayed, but never lost.

We live in affluent times. It’s too easy to check our ambitions at that door leading into a white-collar office job in southern Tel Aviv. But the price of admission is steep: erase the vision we have of ourselves for a steady paycheck and risk-free existence.

I suppose I never quite grew up. So, I will continue to strive and continue to fail, the way my two little boys continue to try and climb up our living wall like Spider-Man. Thing is, while they’ll never be able to defy gravity, their legs get stronger each time they try and their balance improves each time they fall. Hard fought failures sharpen our instincts, clarify our thoughts, bring us one step closer to our goals and help us dig the person we see in the mirror every morning.

Standing still is not an option. It only attracts flies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gidon Ben-Zvi is an accomplished writer who 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.

Dreams photo: ©Ivan Karpov / Adobe Stock.

When our youngest son turned 13 a couple of weeks ago he was officially engulfed in teen spirit, embracing it wholly, eye rolls and all. Granted, the smell of it had moved in several months before, body spray in a hoodie, and the attitude arrived even earlier.

His birthday completed the set: two teenage boys sharing a bathroom and little else, save their love of pets and parents. They are, for the most part, free to choose their own adventures.

There was a time that I would chronicle all of it — the love and the loss, the raw and the perfectly flawed. I would put their stories to the wind and let the lessons fall where they may.

For over a decade I maintained a website, the critically acclaimed and financially non-existent Honea Express, upon which our lives were spread from putty to brushstroke and back again.

I published my last piece there nearly four years ago, just after our oldest son had turned 12. I no longer felt ownership of the tales I told, and perhaps I never did. The boys deserved their privacy and ample room to make mistakes. Pausing my pen seemed the thing to do. Life in real time has no need for a narrator.

Since then I have continued to share a bit here and there, but limiting looks into our world has made the words easy to curate. Milestones have given way to keywords, moments to topics and honesty to hashtags. That isn’t to say I haven’t retained my integrity or been authentic — I believe that much is obvious. I’ve never avoided the ugly and uncomfortable or spun in coats of sugar. However, there is a difference between characters and children, and my loyalty is to the latter.

All of which brings me to a crossroads. There is no shortage of parenting prose, no lack of ample advice, unsolicited or otherwise, but the overwhelming majority of it is centered on younger children. There is very little in the way of teen drama this side of The CW. Yet, the fact is that parents of teenagers probably need pings of reassurance more than anyone.

And while several publications and websites, including this one, do address parenting and teens, it still feels like a large hole in need of filling. Real stories of family life with teenagers tend to be purposely vague, broad and academic, dry bread with the crusts cut off.

I suspect, much like my own experience, that it isn’t a lack of material, but rather a healthy respect for privacy that keeps parents, even those who once ran rampant with personal anecdotes, from divulging too much. After all, our obligations to the internet are inflated and self-imposed, but we owe our offspring everything.

The truth is, raising a teen is hard. Each next thing is the most important one ever. Arguments appear from anywhere and emotions are a blur of hugs and door slams. There is an emoji for everything.

The other truth is, raising a teen is wonderful. Teenagers are becoming clearer versions of themselves, defining their humor and heart, trying on interests and exploring opportunities. It is a dance of trust and worry.

Ours is now a home with two teenagers in it, and their stories are everywhere. The telling of which is always tempting and sometimes possible, but even more importantly, perhaps now is a time best spent listening.

Photo of teen angst at the breakfast table: Whit Honea

City Dads Group will be recognized by its online parenting peers tonight with nominations for two awards for its social media work.

The City Dads Group blog has been nominated for Group or News Blog of the Year and The Modern Dads Podcast for Best Parenting Podcast at the third annual Iris Awards.

The Iris Awards honors “the art of parenthood,” according to its organizers. The awards recognize “the finest expressions in art, commentary, commerce, philanthropy, ideas and connections, all the while celebrating the emerging industry created by its pioneers and leaders,” according the Iris Awards website.

Nominations and award winners are determined by votes received from past attendees of the Mom 2.0 Summit and Dad 2.0 Summit parenting conferences. The awards are scheduled to be bestowed tonight in Dana Point, Calif., at the 2016 Mom 2.0 conference.

The competition in both categories is strong. In the blog category, for example, City Dads Group faces much bigger, more popular and better-financed entities such as Buzzfeed Parents and The New York Times “Motherlode” (recently renamed “Well Family”).

Three City Dads Group blog contributors have also been nominated for Iris Awards. The Modern Dads Podcast will go against the Poppin Bottles Dad-Cast by Philadelphia Dads Group members Benjamin Mullen and Nick Browne. Jeff Bogle, another Philly Dad, is nominated for Best Photography.

Chicago Dads Group member Jim Higley also received a nomination for Philanthropic Work of the Year for his work with Camp Kesem, an organization that supports the children of parents with cancer.

In Greek Mythology, Iris is the messenger of the gods who linked all humanity with the heavens. She travels with the speed of wind from one end of the world to the other, and into the depths of the sea and the underworld. She is a parent and is associated with communication, messages, and new endeavors.

I recently had a misunderstanding with a member of my family over blogging, something I wrote about my son and posted online in particular. I tried to convince this relative that it was pure satire, tongue-in-cheek, like “A Modest Proposal” but with Star Wars references peppered throughout. Needless to say, the conversation turned ugly and things were said that we both regret. But, in retrospect, he had a point.

This relative was furious that I would post anything negative about my son or that I would make it appear I resented my own child or would seek to harm him in any way. I meant no harm to my 4-year-old, but at least one person out there thought different. What if others made the same mistake?

What if one of them was my son?

If something tragic happened to me today and, years down the line, my son found online some of the stories I had written about him, would he also misunderstand my references without me around to explain or defend what I wrote? What would my son think of me? How would he remember me from that point on?

In the grand scheme of things, what I wrote was not that terrible but I have read other bloggers and parents on Facebook who often employ foul language and satirical humor in “complaints” directed at their children or spouses. Some of it is not very pretty. Sometimes I ask myself: Why would anyone tell such potentially embarrassing stories or make such comments about the people they love?

As an American, I deplore most kinds of censorship. I believe creative thought should never be squelched. However, I would hate for my wife or son to read my posts and interpret them as anything but humorous or tongue-in-cheek. I came to wonder if telling the whole blogging world everything that goes on in my child’s life might come to embarrass him some day. Maybe he wouldn’t want all of those stories to be spread outside of our home.

So what do I do? While I wouldn’t want others to censor my writing, in this case it’s my family and I have to think about their feelings. While some of my potential writings about my family would make for great stories, I feel I have to be more selective in choosing what I write. I have to stop and think how it may be interpreted by others before writing it, let alone before hitting the “publish” button­ because I don’t want my son to think I resent him. I love him.

So this time, I went back to that post and hit “delete.”