I Don’t Want to Survive Fatherhood

I’m a husband and a dad raising two young boys, and most days I feel like I’m navigating a world I was never really prepared for.

Fatherhood has changed.

The version of fatherhood many of us grew up watching doesn’t always look like the version we’re living today. That doesn’t mean our dads did it wrong. There are lessons from our fathers—and their fathers—that I want to carry forward and eventually pass on to my sons.

But I’m also trying to figure out what being a dad looks like now. And I’m learning as I go.

I Thought the Goal Was to Survive

Young kids have a way of exposing every weakness you didn’t know you had.

There are tantrums, fighting, bedtime, school drop-offs, practices, cleaning, cooking and work. There’s trying to spend time with your wife while also trying to find a little time for yourself. And somehow you’re supposed to raise decent human beings in the middle of all of it.

There are days when getting everyone to bedtime feels like an accomplishment.

For a while, I thought maybe that was the goal: survive these years. Get through the tantrums, the sleepless nights and the fighting. Eventually they’ll get older and things will get easier.

But I don’t want to survive fatherhood.

I want to experience it.

Because while I’m waiting for the difficult parts to pass, something else is happening.

My boys are growing up.

What Do I Want Them to Remember?

Someday my boys are going to talk about what their childhood was like. I think about that more now than I used to.

I want them to remember that Dad was fun. I want them to remember adventures, games, fishing, hiking, being ridiculous together, and trying things that didn’t work and laughing about them afterward.

I want them to remember a dad who was involved in their lives. But more than any of that, I want them to remember that they could rely on me.

That’s the dad I’m trying to become.

Not someday. Now.

Being a Dad Looks Different Now

A lot has changed about fatherhood.

Many of us are trying to be more involved in the everyday parts of raising our kids while still navigating work, marriage, the house and everything else life throws at us.

We’re doing school drop-offs. We’re going to practices and appointments. We’re making dinner, cleaning bathrooms and doing laundry. We’re reading bedtime stories and trying to figure out what to do when two kids who were happily playing thirty seconds ago are suddenly screaming at each other.

We’re not the first generation of fathers to do those things. But expectations around fatherhood have changed, and a lot of dads are trying to figure out what their version of it should look like.

I’m one of them.

And we’re trying to figure it out with something else constantly competing for our attention: a screen.

I Don’t Want to Watch Their Childhood Through My Phone

My phone can give me something to do every second of the day. There’s always another article, another video, another notification or another thing to scroll through.

And sometimes that’s much easier than being present.

That’s what bothers me. I don’t want to look up someday and realize that my kids were asking me to play while I was staring at a screen.

I’m not going to pretend I never do it. I do. That’s exactly why I’m thinking about it.

Being present isn’t something I’ve mastered. It’s something I’m working on.

That’s Why Dad’s! Let’s Go Exists

This isn’t a website from a dad who figured out fatherhood.

It’s a website from a dad who is trying to.

Everything here starts with something real. Something happened with my boys. Something didn’t work. I lost my patience. We found a game we loved. We tried an experiment. We went somewhere. I realized I needed to change something.

Then I try to figure out what to do with it.

Those experiences become the stories, Dad Games, challenges, ideas and tools you’ll find here. Some things work. Some things don’t. And some things that I think work today might get changed six months from now because I learned something better.

I’m okay with that. Actually, that’s the point.

I’m Not a Parenting Expert

I’m not here to tell you the correct way to raise your kids. I don’t know it. I’m trying to figure out my own kids.

What I can give you is the truth about what I’m trying. If something works for us, I’ll tell you. If something completely falls apart, I’ll tell you that too. And if I realize I was wrong, I’ll change it.

Because this isn’t about proving that I’m a good dad.

It’s about becoming a better one.

Not a Perfect Dad. Just a Dad Who’s Trying.

That’s what this whole site comes down to.

I want to take the lessons worth keeping from the dads who came before us and bring them into the kind of fatherhood I want to practice today.

I want to put the phone down more often, get on the floor, go outside, take the trip and play the ridiculous game. I want to apologize when I screw up, try again when something doesn’t work, and be there.

Not perfectly. Just consistently enough that someday my boys remember that Dad showed up.

If you’re trying to figure this out too, come along. Take the ideas that work for your family. Ignore the ones that don’t. Learn from some of my successes and probably quite a few of my failures.

We don’t have to have fatherhood figured out.

But our kids only get one childhood.

I want to be there for it.

Dads, let’s go.