Where did the summer go?  School is starting in a couple of weeks.

Art Therapist Elissa Bowes has some great tips at HigherArtNJ.com about how to help your child get ready for the big first day.

For example, if your summer schedule is more relaxed than the school year schedule, start early adjusting to the bed times and wake up times for school.  Since I take the kids to the bus stop, I guess I better start getting up earlier too.

HE DIDN’T HAVE TO BE
by
Brad Paisley

And then all of a sudden
Oh, it seemed so strange to me
How we went from something’s missing
To a family
Lookin’ back all I can say
About all the things he did for me
Is I hope I’m at least half the dad
That he didn’t have to be.

A comment on yesterday’s post sent me to a nicely designed blog called Women for Fathers Rights.  It is for a “wife, sister, mother, friend or any other woman looking to help a man in your life with his child custody and fathers’ rights issues.”

The blog plans to cover custody arrangements, tips and techniques to assist your man with his battle in the courtroom, and even common questions and answers that arise from being the woman in their lives battling for their rights to be a dad.

Here’s a quote from the blog: “A child with their father in their lives is the best possible outcome of any divorce.”

If you can’t obtain contact with your kids, I have suggested setting up a Facebook page and posting to it in hopes they will someday find it.

A father who goes by the name of Daddy Nmn sent me an email calling my attention to a website called “3 Sides to Every Story” where anyone, dads, moms, grandparents and others, can post letters to their missed loved ones.

The site is nicely done and categorized by state and type of letter writer.  The letters are heart-felt, honest and poignant.

“The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.” – Katharine Whitehorn

One of the reviews on a Battlestar Galactica CD at Amazon.com is from a woman who says it ruined her marriage.

Her husband became obsessed with the television show, then went onto websites, Twitter, Skype, listening to podcasts, texting and chatting about the show.  Finally he went to a Battlestar Galactica convention in Texas and now lives with a woman he met on the website.  She says he forgot all about his wife, children, family, home and job.

They are now involved in a bitter divorce.  This can’t be good for his custody and visitation case.

LeBron James said last night that he asked his mother, Gloria James, for advice while he was making up his mind to play basketball for the Miami Heat.

In the meantime, Leicester Bryce Stovell, 55, was filing suit in the U.S. District Court in D.C., claiming that he is LeBron’s father.  Stovell is a lawyer in private practice, formerly with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The 22 page, 95 paragraph complaint alleges Stovell met Gloria in a Washington bar in 1984 and goes through the history of their relationship.  Stovel is suing both LeBron and Gloria for $4 million for fraud, defamation, misrepresentation, breach of oral contract and tortious interference with contract.

Robin Rivers has posted an interview on OurBigEarth.com with Calvin Sandborn, lawyer and author of The Kind Father.

Sandborn says that we learn to talk to ourselves in our heads with the same voice that we learned from our father.  In trying to teach children to be successful and assert control or power over others, the traditional father addresses his son from a height and treats him harshly.  (“Show him you’re boss!” “Suck it up!” “Don’t be a wuss!”)

The son uses the same voice that his father did when talking to himself.  As a result, the son’s inner life becomes a harsh place.  He tortures himself with cruel self-talk, has contempt for himself and then transfers that contempt to those around him.

The answer, says Sandborn, is to begin to treat yourself compassionately.  Banish the Harsh Father in your self-talk.  Speak daily to yourself with kind and encouraging words.  If you can do this, then you can become your own Kind Father and have more compassionate relationships with your children and others around you.

Christopher Perry, at CNN.com writes about his painful conversation five years ago with his five and seven year old sons that he and mom were not going to live together any more.  The seven year old tells him “It’s going to be ok.”  The divorce, however, was less than cordial.

Perry tells of the tears, frustrations, laughter, joys, happiness and awe with his children as each Father’s Day ticks off the years.  At the third year, the youngest asks him when he is moving back.

Now after five years, he realizes that it really is going to be ok.

My most important client is not the diplomat who called from overseas for wire instructions so he could send me his retainer for a post divorce dispute.

My most important client is not the stock broker who made a million dollars last year and is looking at life time alimony and his soon to be ex-wife’s mounting legal fees that he may have to pay.

My most important client is not the wealthy businesswoman who brings her daughter to my office for a parenting plan and separation agreement.

Last night, my seven year old son looked up at me and said, “Dad, can you come to my school play tomorrow?”  I set all those urgent cases aside this morning and spent three otherwise billable hours waiting for my son to say his three lines.  Because he is my most important client.