Great Gift Ideas: Give Your Kids Your Guts

Alright, I’m not speaking literally about your actual guts. Or am I?

Your kids may not agree with you, but it’s not about the toys you buy.

It’s not about what you do with the kids, how much money you spend or where you go. It’s about the quality of the time you spend together — being present and embracing the gift of each moment — even when it might seem mundane on the surface.

It’s about giving them your love, your attention and your respect.

But it’s more than that — it goes beyond words or individual pieces of yourself. It’s giving them your “guts.” And it takes guts to be open enough to give your guts. To lay it all on the table, so to speak.

Your legacy as a dad, the positive impact you make on your children’s lives, has little to do with things like presents, fancy vacations, the size of your TV and other possessions or “outward” things. These are trivial, they’re just things.

What’s important is who you are as a dad, and the improvements you make within your self along the way — how you “upgrade.”

When all is said and done, when your kids are your age, they might vaguely remember the X-Box 360-Version2-Millennium-Titanium-Edition, and how cool the games were. But if we do it right, they’ll look back and clearly remember that we took more than good care of them. They’ll remember that we empowered them. They’ll realize that some of those times we denied them something (like a toy — NEVER deny hugs or love), or held them responsible for their actions, we actually gave them something far greater in return.

And if we do our job really, really right — they’ll be better (and happier) human beings for it.

And remember, you are not alone…