Details will be announced shortly but if you are interested or know anyone who might be send us an email to auckland@fatherandchild.org.nz, phone us on 09 525 1690 or send us a letter to Father & Child Trust, PO Box 11931 Ellerslie, Auckland.

Daniel Brown TV3 13th July 2010

Brendon Smith on TV3 13th July 2010

“It’s not easy to get dads to ask for help, or even admit that they need any help,” says support worker Brendon Smith. “We’ve produced magazines before, there’s some great books for DIY fathers on how to be a dad. You might say that the DVD, music & the interviews, it fills that gap.”

“In Your Hands” video from TV3:

Dan Brown is also featured in the NZ Herald where he talks about the DVD and Dave Owens talks about his motivation for creating it.

However, only half said that they’d had face-to-face contact with a Well Child Health provider, such as Plunket. Home-based Well Child Health services are available to all babies and their parents.

More than three quarters of dads felt Waitakere supported early parenting and families well, but only 57% thought new dads were well supported. Even fewer thought the city did well for separated or solo dads.

Fathers with an only child under one felt especially frustrated with a lack of inclusion, and rated support for families much higher than support for dads. They were clearly appreciative of what is being done to keep baby healthy and put families on track, but about half of these dads appeared to have been effectively kept out of the loop by the agencies involved.

It seems that although family service providers may be more aware of fathers and their important contribution to child development, they still do not make enough effort to meet with them and engage them.

There were some signs that this had improved over recent years. A father with a child under one was almost twice as likely to report having had face-to-face contact with a Well Child Health provider than a father with a child aged three or over.

The survey highlighted the importance of that face-to-face contact. Fathers who had such contact with some of the leading agencies generally felt much better supported than their peers who had not, and seem to have generally better access to information.

Dads who engaged with Playcentres stood out as being significantly happier with their support as a dad, and 73% of them said they feel encouraged to participate in their child’s early education.

Perhaps surprisingly, separated fathers felt better supported than those living with the mother of the child. Only 30% thought they were not supported as new dads, 10% felt families are not supported, 11% thought there are not enough fun events for dads and kids and only 9% thought there is not enough information about early parenting – the lowest rates for any group analysed.

Of the partnered fathers, 44% felt unsupported as new dads, 21% felt families are not supported, 33% would like more fun events and 26% could do with more early parenting information.

Survey conducted by Father and Child Trust at Violence Free Waitakere’s Toddler Day Out, in collaboration with Geoff Bridgeman and with support from Glen Jones.

Full report here (pdf)

Looking for support from other fathers?

Looking to lend your support to other fathers?

Just want somewhere where you can grow in confidence in your role as a father?

Maybe you are looking for a male only environment where you can talk with other fathers?

Then our Mauri Ora Father’s Circle may be just what you are looking for.

Meeting every Wednesday evening from 7:00 – 9:00 pm in the Community Office 3 at the Onehunga Community Centre , 83 Church Street, (next to the library) the Fathers’ Mauri Ora Circle, embodying the principles of emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing, is a safe place where together we can discuss any fathering issues and collectively strengthen our fathering abilities.

Wednesday evenings – 7-9pm downstairs in Community Office 3 at the Onehunga Community Centre.

Facilitated by our Support Worker, Brendon Smith, what is discussed is determined by those who are there. Recently we’ve talked about topics like

• the need to inform children as soon as possible in the event of a separation
• deciding on the best school for your child
• the role our dads play in modelling how we father our children
• what happens when your ex partner wants to move to another town with your child
• children and sport

to name just a few.

Children are welcome, though we do usually leave them in front of a TV with a tin of biscuits!

You are welcome to “just turn up” any Wednesday or if you would like more information feel free to call Brendon on 525 1690 or 022 697 7026 or email him at auckland@fatherandchild.org.nz

The funding support of the Maungakiekie and Tamaki Community Boards (Auckland City Council) is gratefully acknowledged.

Recent discussion topics

by Harald Breiding-Buss

Compared to all other mammals, human babies are exceptionally underdeveloped and helpless—so much so that it seems amazing that the human species has survived at all, what with our low reproduction rate and the kind of effort required to raise a child to maturity. There must be a pretty strong biological advantage that outweighs those drawbacks.

That advantage is the human propensity to learn, which is strongest in babies and toddlers. It is our underdeveloped brain at birth that gives us the ability to grow into the most diverse natural and social environments; no other mammal species managed to spread around the whole world on its own volition, being able to manage to survive in almost every ecosystem.

Babies are wired to learn about the environment they are being born into, and it is the parents who are doing the teaching, most of it without realising it.

The key to early learning is movement. Movement triggers those all-important brain connections, and it has a lot of more obvious effects as well: a baby that can move around can explore their environment much better than one that can’t, learning in the process. And it is the fine motor skills in baby’s hands that let them explore and manipulate objects.

But babies are born with neither the ability to move around or to hold an object in their hands, so the exposure to opportunities to move around, and things to explore, has a lot to do with how ‘natural’ you are with those physical skills for the rest of your life, and what your problem-solving abilities are going to look like.

A whole small industry has sprung up around baby movement. I remember taking my children to ‘kindy gym’ for 2-4 year olds, where they basically set up a little obstacle course with tunnels to crawl through and low benches to jump off from (remember the ‘motorbike landing’?). One theory holds that crawling is essential to make connections between the two hemispheres of the brain, and they advocate that babies crawl for at least 3,000 hours in total before moving on to walking.

All that creates quite a bit of performance pressure: A colleague once broke out into tears at a baby movement seminar after confessing that her kids had been ‘bum-shufflers’. Therefore, the Early Childhood Development experts with the Ministry of Education warn against ‘forced development’, ie pushing your baby beyond what they are ready for. At least one of them is highly skeptical even of the now widely promoted ‘tummy time’, believing this is not a natural position for babies to be in.
One thing is certain, however: whatever you do or don’t do has a very big impact on that ballooning brain of your baby. Getting conflicting advice in this area simply makes decision-making all the more nerve-racking.

For an average middle-class family there is very little danger of physically over-extending your baby. The opposite is generally the problem: babies are surrounded by toys within arms reach, providing little motivation to reach out further. There are baby rockers and other devices that will keep baby comfortable in a largely stationery position. Much of that has to do with attempting to keep the baby safe—it’s that very drive to learn and explore that causes a lot of accidents. So parents are told that unless you can give junior your full and undivided attention, baby needs to be put somewhere safe—and constricted.

Babies and toddlers are also often not given a suitable range of things to explore: toys for littlies tend to be made of plastic because of baby’s propensity to suck on everything they can get their hands on, but plastic is the material you are using least often to build or manipulate things with later in life. Plastic is hygienic—but otherwise pretty useless.

One of the advantages in helping babies and toddlers to build their physical skills is that it is so much fun for everyone involved. You’ll get lots of laughs and giggles when you play-fight, jump, roll on the floor or walk backwards together. It’s quality time at its best and can make for an excellent distraction tool as well for those times of the day when junior seems a bit grumpier.

In a lot of more working class families babies are stimulated far more and, generally, have more rapidly initial development. There is a lot more coming and going in those households, more men as well as women interacting with baby, fewer toys and gadgets and also usually less focus on safety. That exposes the youngsters to more risks, but also vastly increases their range of experiences.

One of the drawbacks of growing up in a busier environment like this is a much shorter attention span, which in our world is the biggest stumbling block to a decent career and gets you into all sorts of trouble. The key here is one-on-one time, with no radio or TV, where baby has the parents’ full attention for at least 15 minutes (more when older) at a time, and preferably several times a day.

So what about those ‘music and movement’, ’baby yoga’ and other classes. Do they deliver what they promise?

Probably not unless they complement what you are doing at home anyway. It is exceptionally difficult to try and bring out skills in your child that are not otherwise a part of your life, unless you consciously work on it several times every day. You are most likely to succeed if you do something that you yourself enjoy very much, because then it will become part of your daily life.

Next: Taking on Government Departments

Father and Child Auckland Coordinator Brendon Smith and Wellington-based Board member and GP Mark Stephenson featured in a 20-minute segment on the topic, in which both the personal and the clinical aspects of the illness were discussed.

Show host Kathryn Ryan also challenged a Ministry of Health representative for better recognition of the condition, which affects about one father for every two mothers.

Listen here:

Full segment on Radio New Zealand’s web site here.

Initial facilitators for the course trial include stay-home dad Scott Lancaster, who manages the DIYFather web site www.diyfather.com.

‘Partners’ and family are mentioned once as being important in the decision to breastfeed, but no strategic goals are set to improve access to breastfeeding information for people other than mothers.

Father & Child believes the strategy possibly breaches the Guardianship and the Care of Children Acts, both of which require parents and/or guardians of children to make decisions jointly in the best interest of the child.