A Love Song from a Father to his Daughter

EDDIE VEDDER OFFERS GORGEOUS NEW SONG

‘SKIPPING’ FOR COMPILATION

http://antiquiet.com/music/2012/04/eddie-vedder-offers-gorgeous-skipping-on-new-compilation/

by Johnny Firecloud

9:21 AM Sunday, April 29th 2012

EDDIE VEDDER, MUSIC

We have a beautiful new song from Eddie Vedder this morning, called Skipping. The track is featured on the new compilation Every Mother Counts, the namesake of a foundation dedicated to addressing the issue of maternal mortality during pregnancy.

The love letter from a parent to a child is a delicate, complexly personal yet gorgeous composition, a conveyance of unquenchable adoration between souls that may be entirely lost on those without children of their own – or at least a true depth of love with which they can relate.

Framed by the sounds of his own daughter playing and gentle acoustic guitar tones, the Pearl Jam frontman delivers a heartfelt performance full of gorgeous self-harmonizing that does a fine job of encapsulating the tenderness, fragility, pride, joy and immersive love of a bond between a father and child, wrapped in the metaphor of skipping along with her. He knows that the moment and innocent joy can’t possibly last forever, and the song is a conveyance of cherishing that fleeting purity of a childhood connection with a parent.

Listen to Skipping here, or below:

Eddie Vedder - Skipping

It’s a deeply personal track, once which doesn’t fit the single cycle or the hype headline machine. So it’s with a warm feeling that I’m able to post this on a quiet Sunday morning.

Lyrics

I didn't have to ask you, just took my hand

Off we went skipping throughout the land
The sky was blue and the blood filled my head
Me and you skipping throughout the land
All of my life from beginning to end
What I remember is holding your hand
And all that I'll cherish is that time that we've spent
Me and you skipping throughout the land.

All the loves lost and the one that I found
You lifted my gaze up off of the ground
Forever we'll talk and forever we'll drown
In each other skipping around.

Gravity pulls so many men down
The atmosphere breathes but not in this town
You took me away and you held me so proud
Skipping, skipping, skipping around.

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not keep me from holding your hand
When all that I wanted was something to protect
And all that I needed was your voice in my head
And all I remember from this life that I lived
Is me and you skipping throughout the land.

- Eddie Vedder

Read more: Eddie Vedder - Skipping Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Wikipedia Bio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Vedder

Do Father's Matter? by Paul Raeburn

Photo: Shutterstock

Do Fathers Matter? A connection that's deeper than we realize

http://nypost.com/2014/05/31/do-fathers-matter-a-connection-thats-deeper-than-we-realize/

by Paul Raeburn

May 31, 2014

When Jay Sullivan was 5 years old, his father had a “bipolar breakdown” and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. What Sullivan remembers from the days and years that followed are violent outbursts, putting his father to bed drunk, late-night calls when his father had nowhere to stay and bailing him out of jail.

“When he died in 1992, I put his ashes in my closet and put him behind me,” Sullivan wrote on his website.

But it wasn’t that simple. Three years ago, Sullivan, a professional photographer in Red Bank, NJ, began producing a series of images he calls “Glove” to try to reconnect with his father.

Sullivan photographed articles that had linked or divided the two of them — a baseball glove, his father’s shaver and black wingtip shoes and a prescription bottle containing lithium.

As Sullivan continued the project, the dark images of his father’s illness were gradually replaced by more positive ones — of his father’s successful business career, of the two of them going fishing together, and of trips to Yankee Stadium.

“Three years into this process and 20 years after his death, I have found the father I always wanted and in many ways always had,” Sullivan wrote.

---

Paul Raeburn is the author of “Do Fathers Matter? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked.”

Many of us understand the deep emotional connection Sullivan has with his father, even decades after his father’s death. But now a new body of research is explaining why we have that connection. Fathers, it turns out, contribute far more to their children than many of us realize.

Those contributions begin during pregnancy, before fathers and their children have even met. Studies show that the death rate of infants whose fathers were not around during pregnancy is nearly four times that of those with engaged dads. And depression in fathers during their partners’ pregnancies — which is more common than most people realize — can increase the child’s lifelong risk of depression.

After birth, children whose fathers play with them, read to them, take them on outings, and care for them have fewer behavioral problems during their early school years. And they have a lower risk of delinquency or criminal behavior as adolescents.

Some of fathers’ contributions are surprising. One might guess, for example, that mothers have more influence than fathers on their children’s language development. Despite the growing number of women in the workforce, mothers still spend more time with children in many families than fathers do.

But that turns out not to be the case. Lynne Vernon-Feagans of the University of North Carolina, who studies language development, has found that when it comes to vocabulary, fathers matter more than mothers.

In middle-class families, she found that parents’ overall level of education — and the quality of child care — were both related to children’s language development. But fathers made unique contributions to children’s language development that went beyond the contributions of education and child care.

When fathers used more words with their children during play, children had more advanced language skills a year later. And that is likely also linked with later success in school.

And when Vernon-Feagans looked at poor families, she found much the same thing. She visited families when a child was 6 months old, 15 months old and 3 years old. She found that fathers’ education and their use of vocabulary when reading picture books to their children at 6 months of age were significantly related to the children’s expressiveness at 15 months and use of advanced language at age 3.

This held true no matter what the mother’s educational level was or how she spoke to the children.

“I do think our children see it as very special when they do book reading with their fathers,” Vernon-Feagans says. “They may listen more and acquire language in a special way.”

---

Several studies suggest that fathers also have a powerful influence on their daughters’ sexual behavior during adolescence.

This became clear in 2011 when Frayser High School in Memphis, Tenn., attracted national attention for its high pregnancy rate: About one in five of its female students was either pregnant or had recently given birth.

One local official blamed the high pregnancy rate on television shows such as MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom.” The official worried that these shows were encouraging Frayser’s female students to have unprotected sex earlier and more often.

That explanation seemed to make sense. But when psychologist Sarah E. Hill of Texas Christian University examined the situation, she noticed another striking fact: One in four households was headed by a single mother. Studies have revealed “a robust association between father absence — both physical and psychological — and accelerated reproductive development and sexual risk-taking in daughters,” she wrote.

The fathers’ absence in so many families was likely more important than what their daughters watched on television.

These are just a few of the many, many studies in recent years that have demonstrated a powerful link between fathers and their children.

They underscore what many of us experience — that our fathers are important in our lives, as photographer Sullivan discovered after his father’s death. And it underscores the hope that many fathers have — that they, in turn, will be important in their children’s lives.

Paul Raeburn is the author of “Do Fathers Matter? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked” (Scientific American), out this week.

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Amazon link

Product Details

Hardcover: 288 pages

Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 3, 2014)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0374141045

ISBN-13: 978-0374141042

Amazon Book Review

For too long, we’ve thought of fathers as little more than sources of authority and economic stability in the lives of their children. Yet cutting-edge studies drawing unexpected links between fathers and children are forcing us to reconsider our assumptions and ask new questions:

• What changes occur in men when they are “expecting”?
• Do fathers affect their children’s language development?
• What are the risks and rewards of being an older-than-average father at the time the child is born?
• What happens to a father’s hormone levels at every stage of his child’s development?
• Can a child influence the father’s health?
• Just how much do fathers matter?

In Do Fathers Matter? the award-winning journalist and father of five Paul Raeburn overturns the many myths and stereotypes of fatherhood as he examines the latest scientific findings on the parent we’ve often overlooked. Drawing on research from neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, geneticists, and developmental psychologists, among others, Raeburn takes us through the various stages of fatherhood, revealing the profound physiological connections between children and fathers, from conception through adolescence and into adulthood—and the importance of the relationship between mothers and fathers. In the process, he challenges the legacy of Freud and mainstream views of parental attachment, and also explains how we can become better parents ourselves.

Ultimately, Raeburn shows how the role of the father is distinctly different from that of the mother, and that embracing fathers’ significance in the lives of young people is something we can all benefit from. An engrossing, eye-opening, and deeply personal book that makes a case for a new perspective on the importance of fathers in our lives no matter what our family structure, Do Fathers Matter? will change the way we view fatherhood today.

"Hey, What's It Like Being a Dad?"

What is it Like Being a Dad?

Published on Jun 16, 2013

"How much time do you have?"

St. Mark Lutheran Church, De Pere, WI

Facebook: StMarkDePere

Twitter: @StMarkDePere 

Web: http://www.stmarkpartners.org

"You matter and you are loved."

Of Dads and Daughters, of Parenting and Love: "Wakefulness in a Night of Fireworks"

Inspiration is as much about theology as reading long words and even longer explanations behind complex and complicated ideas. But tonight, let's step back a moment and simply reflect on the wonders of God's creation in this special moment recorded between a dad and his daughter when she couldn't sleep thinking she was hearing fireworks outside her home.

 

R.E. Slater

September 28, 2013

 

 

Tonight You Belong to Me (Cover) - Me and my 4 y.o.

 

 

Published on Sep 17, 2013

She thought she kept hearing fireworks and couldn't sleep,

so we sang to keep her mind preoccupied. In the end,

nothing competes with fireworks.

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A Daughter Poem

http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/dads-love

 

A daughter thanks her dad for his love. 

 

A Dad's Love

by Samantha R. Almodova

 

On sunny days and dark nights,
in troubled times and pointless fights,
you've been right there through it all,
you've stood your ground when you could have taken the fall.
Many times my mouth has slipped free,
but you were always there to put it back where it was supposed to be.
You've taught me a lot, and a lot I have learned.
You've given me the tables and many I have turned.
You deserve the world, but only a poem I could give,
but another gift I have given is to learn,

that the life of a father is an awesome life to live.
Thank you dad for your love.

 

 

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The cutest video ever? Quite possibly.

Duet between a father and his daughter

http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/the-cutest-video-ever-quite-possibly.-watch-this-duet-between-a-father-and

 
by John Jalsevac
Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:08 EST
 

Being a parent has its challenges. But as a young dad with three kids (Four, really. But the fourth is keeping a low profile for the time being.), I know that there are joys associated with parenthood that surpass just about anything else I've ever experienced.

 

It's quite simply impossible to put into words that feeling you experience as you watch your children quietly playing with their toys, or reading a book, or tearing through the house chasing one another amidst peals of laughter, or sleeping peacefully after a long, hard day of play.

 

Non-parent outsiders often see nothing but the diapers, the tantrums in the grocery stores, the insistent demands for food at inopportune moments, and the squabbles, and conclude that parenting is simply hard. Well, it's true, parenthood is hard. But that's not the whole story. What they can't fully understand is the sheer awesomeness of these little people, who give back 1000 times over in love and hilarity whatever they demand from us in energy and patience.

 

Anyway, all that is simply a prelude to this video that is making the rounds on Youtube which, by focusing on one of those awesome moments experienced by one dad as he tried to soothe his unutterably cute daughter back to sleep, has made me feel even more lucky to be a dad, and to be able share such moments with the miracles that are my own kids.

 

 

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Another Daughter Poem

http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/as-i-watch-you-grow

 

A mother writes to her daughter letting her know how much she loves her.

 
As I Watch You Grow
by Kay Theese
 
Do you know how much you mean to me?
As you grow into what you will be.
You came from within, from just beneath my heart
it's there you'll always be though your own life will now start.
You're growing so fast it sends me awhirl,
With misty eyes I ask, Where's my little girl?
I know sometimes to you I seem harsh and so unfair,
But one day you will see, I taught you well because I care.
The next few years will so quickly fly,
With laughter and joy, mixed with a few tears to cry.
As you begin your growth to womanhood, this fact you must know,
You'll always be my source of pride, no matter where you go.
You must stand up tall and proud, within you feel no fear,
For all you dreams and goals, sit before you very near.
With god's love in your heart and the world by its tail,
You'll always be my winner, and victory will prevail.
For you this poem was written, with help from above,
To tell you in a rhythm of your Mother's heartfelt Love!

 

*Written and dedicated to my precious daughter - Tammy in 1990