roamingglass: April 2013

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Daddy Matters: Why It Matters

I did an earlier post introducing Daddy Matters and what the community is about. Today I want to blog about why it matters to have this community.

Life is full of ups and downs. This goes for life of a Daddy too. A positive mindset is essential to positive parenting. But with the stress of our day job plus night job (as an active daddy), being positive all the time is impossible (for me at least). There are times when the little ones do unexpected things that tug my heart strings but there are also times when I feel like I turn into an Incredible Hulk filled with rage and anger, or the grumpy old man from the movie Up.

This is when a positive community can help, by offering a listening ear, providing alternate views and basically letting you know that you are not alone. Not too long ago, I had a bad case of negative thoughts. It clouded my mind that I literally stop blogging totally. It went on for awhile.

Then Winston call me out for a kopi session and I told him everything. He said he totally understand why I felt this way. It was a good session and helped to unwind some of those negative thoughts. Soon after, I saw Daddy M's post about daddy bloggers and it cleared my mind why I blogged in the first place. Which is why a positive community of active daddies is very important as we would positively influence each other, knowingly and unknowingly.

Then there is the part on knowledge sharing. Sure there are heaps of information online about parenting, but not all are suitable for our local context. Having a local community would mean more localised information and methods that might be more suitable.

One of the advice I remember giving Winston during one of our kopi session is, no two kids (even if they are twins) are the same. The sooner you let this sink into your head, the easier it is to handle two and more children. I made the mistake thinking I had experience with Xavier and hence handling Lucas would be a breeze. Well I got hit by a typhoon instead, as Lucas behave very different from Xavier. What I learned from handling Xavier do not work on Lucas. So there is a lot of trial and error to see what works and what does not. But with a community, you could gain better hit rates as everyone shares knowledge and workable solutions.

I wished we had this community earlier when Xavier was born and when I was a greenhorn to fatherhood. But nonetheless I'm glad it happened now, as fatherhood is a journey of lifetime learning. See you around at Daddy Matters.

Thursday, 11 April 2013

Daddy Matters

Today marks the day Daddy Matters goes live! I strongly urge all active daddies, all active daddies wanna-be join us our online community. Of course if you are a mummy looking to see what's on the mind of your other half, or you are still single but believes active fatherhood is important, you are more than welcome to join us too.

Website: www.daddymatters.sg
Facebook: Daddy Matters

When you are a parent, you know very well that things often do not happen as planned. This applies even to April Fool jokes. Winston knows this all too well. He had initially posted a prank online about forming a group of daddy bloggers call Singapore Man Bloggers, I think partly because it had the same acronym as Singapore Mom Bloggers, just to create some confusion.

A number of daddy bloggers took it for real and were game for it. So what was started as an innocent joke snowballed into 2 days of serious discussion and at the end of it, Daddy Matters was a go-ahead.

Daddy Matters is a community formed by eleven active daddies who are not experts ourselves, but believes in sharing and learning from each other in the community about active fatherhood and how to be a better daddy. We hope you can join us in this never ending quest, because Daddy Matters, says one father to another.

Below are the daddies: