How to be a good dad

How do you write a website about how to be a good dad?  I can't sit here and tell someone else how to raise their kid and be a good dad.  Who am I, who is anyone to say they can write about being a good parent.  Everyone raises their kids different, and honestly nothing anyone says will change the way you do things.  You have to change it inside yourself, and not many things will change the way someone raises their children.  Not until something happens that changes the way you look at every moment you are with them.

I'm a weekend dad, sometimes a weekday dad but that rarely happens.  I had fun with my 10 year old daughter on weekends, and we still do.  We would hang out, and play games,  we would cook her dinner and eat some sweets, and we still do.  But unlike last year during the weekends when she came over to the house every weekend she only comes there when on the weekends she is out of the hospital.  Which is around every month to month and a half.  We still go down to the hospital every weekend and stay over on Saturdays, but it's really not the same.  Nurses and doctors coming in to check on her every hour or so, and having to be hooked up to "Polio" (The name we gave her IV pole) every day.

This past January, January 14th she was diagnosed with AML Leukemia.  I didn't know what to do, noone in her family knew what to do.  I can't explain feeling you get when you hear that your child has something that you know is bad, but don't know anything about.  You learn alot about yourself and even more about your daughter when something like that happens.  You have alot of flash backs of the times that you yelled at her for no reason, or the times you snapped at her because you were tired.  Every little thing that she has long forgotten goes through your mind.  I try to charish every moment I have with her because sometime down the road I started taking her for granted, knowing that she will always be there with me and everything.  She still will because she is doing great, but it still is crazy to think that out of nowhere this can happen to us.  It can happen to you, so don't ever think that it can't.

Up until the day she was diagnosed she was full throttle, doing everything she could.  She played soccer every spring and softball every summer.  She will again to I have no doubt in her mind.  Nothing will ever stop her from doing the things that makes her happy.  She is the greatest daughter I have ever known and anyone could ever have, so resilient, so strong.  You would never know she has Leukemia if you didn't know her, and you couldn't see her shiny new bald head, with the sideburns, and poof of hair on her forehead.

So yeah I can never tell anyone how to be a good dad, I can just tell the dad's to charish every moment you have with your son/daughter.  Cause god forbid, but something could happen and you will never be able to.  And it will tear you apart, thank god she is at the greatest childrens hopsital in my eyes in the country at the Childrens Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.

So next time you see your child, Am I doing everything that I could to make his/her life as fulfilling as possible?  Answer that to yourself and that will show you how to be a good dad.