Helping Dads Help Moms

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Sometimes dads need help.

Ok, maybe it’s not such a secret after all.

Author and friend of the ministry Jay Payleitner has one solution for us – Moms.

In our recent Mother’s Day post, we mentioned Jay and his easy-to-make Chicken Soup recipe that any dad can follow. He has some great resources for parents, and now he’s written a new book, especially for moms, titled Moms Bringing Out the Best in Dads.

Jay has tons of great dad experience. He and his wife Rita are now cherishing the grandparenting phase after raising their five children and loving on ten foster children over the years. He even shares some of their experience fostering infants suffering from cocaine addiction in his chapter, “Teach Him How to Swaddle.”

So why write a book for moms?

He mentions his purpose in the book – to help mom join forces with her husband so he can be the father God has called him to be.

I’m all about dads being the best they can be… our best resource is moms!

He shares many of the tips he’s learned along the way about being a dad, and he wants to give moms the tools to help their kids’ dads learn those lessons too. In his short chapters, he covers a lot of ground. From dealing together with post-partum depression to managing household schedules and even to Kissin’ in the Kitchen, he offers insight that can help husbands and wives preemptively sort through some topics that couples may not have considered before.

Many of his ideas are just practical tips for everyday life. We are trying to raise Kingdom kids, but sometimes we just feel lucky to make it through the day-to-day spilled milk, missed naps, and crazy pre-teen attitudes and activities that keep us running.

A cool thing about this and many of Jay’s books is that they contain 52 chapters.

He has also written:

And that’s just to name a few!

These chapters could be used as great conversation starters between couples!

What if you chose something like this resource to go through one chapter a week together? Maybe you and your spouse can discuss his ideas and decide if you agree, disagree, or want to develop different ideas altogether.

The point here is not to give mom a to-do list to help dad but to give couples a tool to make them a stronger team. It’s all about teamwork and being “together-together” as a couple. That is a lifelong pursuit and a worthy goal for all of us moms and dads working together to raise up the next generation of Christ-followers.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Psalm 127:1