OT dads, allow me to get a bit sappy. Sing to your kids. Sing them lullabies.

They truly have more of an impact than we realize.

I count one of the luckiest privileges in my life being that my kids still ask me to sing them their lullabies before they go to bed. I relish every bit of the ritual.

I can hear it...”daddy I need my lullaby.” And I Always will have time for that. The boy, he still wants it, and he gets his, but it’s more...well he just plops in his bunk and he’s out. My little stinker.

But my baby girl...it’s adorable. She has to have her bed a certain way. Her stuffy, her pillow, her blankie. Her little nightlight. And then she makes a place for me and says “okay daddy.”

And I sing her her lullabies. Always the one. “Hush-a-bye”. Sometimes an old James Taylor song my mom sang to me. And then “the parting glass.”
The Parting Glass

It’s an old Irish ballad. And don’t ask me why, but I’ve sang it to her ever since she was a babe in the crib. It’s just a beautiful sweet song.

But those babies grow up. And they remember things like this. I Remember my mother singing to me when I was young. And so I passed it on. And it’s probably the sweetest thing in my life. And it hit me tonight...there’s gonna come a day where she doesn’t ask for her lullaby anymore.
It’s the impermanence of something that makes it sweeter somehow. The knowing we only get so many, and then they are gone. So savor them. Savor the sweet years. The “I love you daddy’s”.

Sing to your kids. Fill their lives with song. Because you blink and they’re grown. It’s the nature of it all I suppose.


To the good years, and the bad years that make us yearn for the good years, and the good years that come after.