My father worked a swing shift at a factory for most of my childhood and there were weeks when I would only see him a few hours a day and possibly even less. A swing shift means that each week he rotated a work shift, so one week he would be gone in the morning, the next week in the afternoon and the third week would be working at night. 
As you can guess, this schedule isn’t great for creating that father-son time. When I was at school, he was home awake and doing things. When I was home, either he was at work or sleeping. He never went to see basketball and baseball games or school functions. I don’t blame him because he was only doing what he had to do, but it still hurt and I feel I missed out on a big part of my childhood because of it.
As an adult, I wanted to make sure my children never felt that way about me. When I worked as a reporter, my hours were crazy. I worked weekends, evenings, mornings and then whenever any disaster struck, I was there.
I gave up that life so I could focus on my family and took a 9-5 job, but I found that when I got home and my kids wanted to play, I always said I was too tired or had too many things to do. It took a while for all that to hit me. Here I was telling my children I can’t play with them because I was too tired or that other things were more important. I was a jerk.
Dads let me level with you. As much as you think sitting down with the bills or working a little from home is important, your children are more important. If you had a long day at work and are tired, suck it up. You spent the first two-years of their life without any sleep to take care of them, so taking 30 minutes to play hide-and-seek or read a book or two won’t kill you.
Why is this important? Why does one afternoon matter when their whole lives are ahead of them? One afternoon becomes two, two becomes four and four becomes an entire childhood. You don’t want your children to be great parents because of what you didn’t do for them as a child. Your kids aren’t asking you to take two hours a day for a rousing game of catch, they want 15 minutes or 30 minutes to spend with their dad. Why? Because they love you, dumbbell.
Image Source: flickr.com/photos/mamchenkov/448445182
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