Interactive dads

Encouraging good dads to be GREAT DADS!

Times are changing. Dads are being encouraged to me more involved in their children’s development. There have always been some dads that are naturally highly interactive with their children. They are intuitively wired to connect and engage with their kids.

Most of us dads need prompting to take on some of the responsibility of nurturing our children’s mental and emotional development. Play-fighting and wrestling come naturally to most of us. Teasing, cracking bad “dad” jokes and playing silly pranks on family members come naturally  to us as well.

Sitting down and helping our children with their reading or other homework usually have far less appeal. We’d rather leave that to their mother.

However new research has shown that whilst many dads these days do sit down and read bed time stories with their children, they are contributing to their children’s learning development through interactive games on tablets and PC’s.

There are many fantastic educational apps that make learning fun and dads find them engaging as well.

Another way that dads contribute to their children’s mental stimulation is by singing to them. More than half of the dads surveyed regularly sing to their children.

Traditional board games can give great, mental stimulation and educational development. Chess is the obvious leader in this area for developing strategic thinking, but Scrabble, Boggle, Uno and Monopoly all offer challenging opportunities to learn to spell count and strategize as well.

The main thing is that we as dads see the importance of our involvement in our children’s educational development through both fun and the more serious learning opportunities.

To see what some libraries are doing to encourage 10 minutes a day of dads reading and to see the one page article on the research results click on this link; http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/national/majority-of-south-australian-dads-share-in-traditional-bedtime-reading-with-their-children/story-fnii5yv8-1226726520852