Last year I was talking with a good friend of mine about being a father and parenting and we reflected on our own experiences. He told me about a conversation he had with his Dad a few years before his father died. He was driving somewhere and his dad noticed something wrong and quite brusquely told his son, “If I’ve taught you anything in life it is 1) to not leave the toilet seat up and 2) keep your hands on the steering wheel at 10 and 2.”

My friend reflected that a) his dad never mentioned the first one and b) of all the things a father should aspire to teach his son, these were an odd set of priorities. 

We can sometimes make a really big fuss about things that don’t really matter AND at the same time not say anything about the things that really do matter. 

I honestly struggle to think what my own father taught me. That’s not to say he wasn’t a good example in many ways that I can learn from but what did he actually teach me? Not reading, not riding a bike, not writing, yes to some driving, yes to playing Shove Ha’penny and yes to learning the order of the books of the Bible. The point is, there were a lot of gaps that as a teenager and young man I filled in without reference or help from my Dad.

Then a few years ago I came across Jon Tyson’s Primal Path and then his book The Intentional Father. They blew my mind. It suddenly hit me like a punch in the face, how few years left I had to help my son transition well into adulthood. And I really wanted to both help him and for him to do it well. I desperately wanted him to avoid the many, many mistakes I made and to not experience the same lack of guidance that I experienced from my late father, Lord bless him.

Jon’s material is both very intense and very good; doing some of the exercises were tough but precious. I guess many of us parent in ways that are both a reaction (‘I’m not going to do what they did’) and an appreciation (‘Of course we’re going to do that’) of the way we ourselves were parented. I realised and was sure that I need to be more intentional in the way I was going about being a dad to my kids.

I couldn’t quite afford to sign up to use The Primal Path stuff, or maybe I could, but it felt like a lot so I didn’t. Instead I decided to take the inspiration and the example from Jon and do something myself. It turns out that was both biting off more than I could chew but it also proved to be incredibly worthwhile.

So I made him a book.