This year, I had the pleasure of attending the Dad 2.0 conference in Houston. The event is a gathering fathers and father-bloggers at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown, and when I told people where I was going, most of them could not believe that something like that existed. Historically, men haven’t been known for their abilities to reflect on their roles as fathers; we’ve been better known for brewing beer and starting wars, but here, at the summit, hundreds of brilliant guys came together to talk about how we could be better mentors to our children.
Many of the speakers at the event addressed the concept of being a three-headed father. That means, as modern and effective dads, we should each develop the ability to have three fully functioning, separate heads. Creepy, right? I remember when I was a kid I saw a three-headed snake at the zoo, and I could tell that only one of the three heads was calling the shots. The other two heads looked around, blinking numbly, while the dominant head was telling the body where to go and what to do. I felt bad for those weaker heads. Life’s already rough enough when you can’t control the world around you, but when you have to schedule a conference call to get something done on your own torso, you’ve drawn a bad lot.
As fathers, I learned that we also have three heads—not literally in most cases, but in practice. We have our professional self, which is the head we show to the world when we’re working. We have our identity as a father, which of course is the head we present to our children as we’re raising them. Finally, we have our own personal self, which is the head that does things like sing badly in the car or write brilliant blog posts on sites like Life of Dad. To be truly successful fathers, we need to understand that all three of these heads are just as important as the others. Unlike that snake at the zoo, one of the heads can’t be dominant while the other two bump along dumbly for the ride. All three of these roles are as important as the others, and they each need to be respected if we are to be truly great men for our families and children.
Dad 2.0 speaker, Jim Lin, addressed this concept of being a three-headed dad, and he made the distinction hilariously clear by putting on a different baseball cap when each side of his personality would speak. I could relate. When I’m at work, I feel like a different person than when I’m playing with my kids, and those sides of my personality are different from when I’m doing something fun like talking to a friend or writing an on-line post. In a recent video segment of “My Life of Dad,” NBA star, Caron Butler, talked about getting into daddy mode when he comes home from a game. To be a great father, he has to drop the emotions of the workday, and like Jim Lin, put on a new hat before he walks through the door to his family.
I don’t think the men of my father’s or grandfather’s generation would have thought about this. Men of those days were strictly expected to work and pay the bills. That role was the dominant snake head deciding where the body needed to go, with everything else as an afterthought. But enforcing each of these three sides of our personalities doesn’t take anything away from the others. In fact, they each strengthen and support each other. By being better fathers, we become better professionals, which makes us more expressive, which makes us better fathers and so on. I think my father and grandfather would have loved to attend a conference like Dad 2.0 and to be part of a community like Life of Dad. I’m sure they would have enjoyed greater freedom to express all three snake heads of their personalities. We, as modern dads, do—and for that we should feel grateful.
I would like to thank Farm Rich snack foods for sponsoring the conference trip to Houston for my three-headed Life of Dad pals and me. Farm Rich makes incredible frozen snacks and appetizers, and they’re a company that fully supports us modern men in our journey through fatherhood. For more information about Farm Rich, go to www.farmrich.com or check them out at your local supermarket.