Every child does things that feel brand new to the parent who loves them most. The first time they struggle with homework. The first time they feel left out. The first time they try something hard and don’t get it right away. The first time they need encouragement more than answers. None of these moments come with a manual. And even if you’ve raised children before, each child brings a whole new journey. Family engagement matters because kids don’t just grow at school — they grow at home, in conversations at the dinner table, in car rides, in the quiet check-ins before bed. When families stay involved, children feel supported, seen, and safe to keep trying. Let’s keep showing up. Let’s keep asking questions. Let’s keep learning alongside them. Because what feels ordinary to the world can feel completely new to a parent — and those moments are where connection is built. 💛

You were openly praised when your shoulders spread. When your bones grew, when you moved from young men to adulthood, your shoulders spread; your back was stronger. You gained everything you needed to carry me— your wife, your woman— but I did the very same thing, except my spread happened in my hips. It wasn't a grown woman spread; it was letting myself go. My hips spread. I didn't gain weight. My body is physically bigger. My bones are denser; my pelvis bones are wider. My stance is different. My shoulders may have changed because of the way my hips are now shaped, but it wasn't because of a grown woman spread. It was because of neglect. I neglected my body, and I gained weight. This was after I bore a child. My body changed and transformed to prepare for new life. My hips widen, my organs move, my skin stretched past its limit, leaving permanent marks. All the while, I'm constantly instructed to eat less— not for nourishment, but for appearance. Make sure you— after you have the baby— you snap right back. My new body was ignored. My old body was remembered. You're a grown man. Your shoulders are wide. Your back is strong. You carry me and our child. The wonderful miracle blessing of a child enters the world. My body, left in shambles like a filleted fish laying on the table as everyone rushes to the miracle. My breasts are bigger, my hips are wider. My bones are stronger, but it's only because of neglect. I neglected my body. I let myself go. I'm instructed to immediately start lathering myself in every oil and cream available to erase the scars of trauma. No one needs to know how hard it was; if you suffered, do it in silence. My baby is born and I start to feel things— undocumented, unmeasured, untracked— language was never formed around it. My organs are moving back into place. My uterus is shrinking. My lungs have room to breathe now. My bladder is permanently damaged. Five years it'll take me to get back to who I was. But my bones won't change.

We never focused on sight words; it was always about the love of the story. In a world that is obsessed with metrics, levels, and early achievement, we took a different path. We treated reading not as a skill to be mastered, but as a fun experience to get lost in. Storytelling and reading were never about “reading”—they were about the magic of the story. When we read, I never turned it into a challenge. I never put her on the spot or said, “You can do it, keep going,” while she struggled with a word. I didn’t want the mechanics to interrupt the anticipation. She knew she was just reading a book with her mom, not doing a reading lesson. Instead, I just picked up where she got stuck and let her continue when she felt confident. I was there to keep the story moving, not to test her ability. Sometimes she just sat and listened to me read; sometimes I just sat and listened to her read. It wasn’t about the act of reading or who was doing the work; it was about the story. I remember laughing so hard at Fox in Socks—it was our favorite. Those words were repeated and read so many times with fun and laughter that I never had to worry about whether she was memorizing them. She could recite the book without even looking at the words. I simply instructed her to follow along with her finger to identify the words as she read. As she grew and started reading chapter books—Captain Underpants, Daughter of the Pirate King—that rhythm stayed the same. We would lie in bed together, and I would just listen to her read. If she got tired but still wanted to know what happened next, I would continue reading for her. There was no pressure to finish the page or prove endurance. The story always came first. It isn’t an ironic coincidence that she has always been two grades ahead; it was a precise strategy. This didn’t just happen. It was designed. I intentionally focused on the joy of learning over the mechanics of the task. I remember when she started writing papers in 7th grade and struggled to keep a thought moving. It would take her a long time to get anything down. So, we turned it into a game. We wrote sentences together, one word at a time. I’d say “Bob,” she’d say “went,” and we would go back and forth.

A father does not give birth. He does not carry the physical weight for nine months, nor does he feel the internal shifting of organs or the years of physical recovery. But as the child is born, a different kind of weight falls—a boulder dropped from a mountain peak, landing squarely on his shoulders. The weight of provision. If he has been grinding, if he has been preparing, he will feel the impact and he will brace to hold it. But if he has no idea of the gravity that fatherhood demands, that weight will crush him. It is in that pressure where a man decides to stay and stand, or to break and leave because he doesn't know how to support the sheer mass of it all. While the mother thrashes through the waves—the tides of emotion, the physical trauma, the raw pain of healing—the father begins to calculate. He calculates the safety of the car and the fit of the car seat. He calculates the security of the home and the rising cost of the groceries. He calculates insurance policies he never thought much about before, the distant reality of college funds, the necessity of retirement, the weight of the mortgage, and the emergency funds for the things that haven't even broken yet. He begins to think—not just about providing—but about what will remain if he ever cannot. He becomes a silent architect of safety. For nine months, he watched the woman he loves become less independent, growing and changing until the day she pushed her body to the brink. Now, she is different. Her mind has found a new depth from the experience of childbirth; she is a protector, expectant and hurting, fiercely strong and dangerously fragile all at once. His arms must become the parallel bars for her recovery. He is stepping into a role that demands perfection and complete support, even as he navigates his own metamorphosis. He is the stable mountain, holding the world steady as they both grow and evolve into a deeper, purposeful version of who they now know they were always meant to be.