Remember back in your day if you disobeyed your parents you’d most likely get a smack on the posterior with a wooden spoon?  Heck, I remember clearly the principal of my elementary school proudly displaying “the strap” on his wall. I once nearly experienced the strap myself, it was my first taste of “one person’s word against another’s” when I stepped in to break up a fight...

Recently we were contacted by a reader named Kevin Griffin who pointed us to a song he recorded about his daughter Cici and wondered if it warranted a blog post on FunctionalFather.com. Well, we like to reward people who are outgoing and we really have no limitations on what we blog about, and getting to know how other Dads balance their lives is part of our mission. So without further background, here is an online...

If you’re a Dad like me, then you knew you had a key responsibility when your child was first born – sending an email announcement to your friends and family.  Now, unlike me, you may not have prepared for the delivery-day communication in advance with an predefined email template and recipient list. Here are some tips for completing this ever-important new-Dad task. Prepare an email group in advance - Include...

At the time of this posting my daughter just turned 2 years old and she is fully embracing the “terrible 2″ phase. It’s almost like she was reading a magazine article written by another toddler that inspired her to begin consistently using the word “No”, refusing to eat or drink things that she normally loves, disobeying every command and reprimand given by her parents, and fighting like...