Joe McGonigal has been bugging me to help him post some articles from Tony Dungy’s All-Pro Dad site.  (This blog, after all, was his idea.)  Yet, his name is conspicuously missing from our list of contributing bloggers.  As the fathers of daughters–Joe and Denise have four, Nancy and I three–we share some attitudes and wishes for our girls.  This article is a nice compilation of some of my wishes and, undoubtedly, some of his.

(My strategy here is to post the articles that Joe and I talk about, beat him to the punch, and shame him into posting some of his own.  It doesn’t appear to be working.)

When our children were growing up, I told Nancy I had four goals for them while they lived under our roof.  I wanted them to go out into the world:

• with healthy self-esteem.  Not OVERLY healthy, just healthy.
• with great problem-solving skills.  Theirs are better than mine, thankfully.
• with straight teeth.  All that orthodontia was purchased for a reason.  And, finally,
• with the ability to operate a manual transmission.  This,alas, was our main failing, as only one of the three can reliably operate a clutch.  Of the four, however, this last one is silly.  But if they had been boys, it would have been at the top of the list.

Speaking of silly, I wish I had found this 20 years ago.

In closing, then, I offer this passage from Matthew 18:

At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”