I started reading dadblogs and writing dadblogs because, both before and after The Pumpkin’s birth, I was starving for information written by and specifically for fathers, for the experiences, opinions, and voices of other new dads like me.  I was looking for community online to supplement what I could find offline, wanting and needing other dads to talk to, to ask questions of, even just to point to and be able to say, well at least I’m not going through what that dude went through.  [Heh.  Always with the unspoken caveat “yet” tacked on the end of that one....]

Of course, I jumped at the chance to get a review copy of Armin “Mr. Dad” Brott’s “Toolbox for New Dads” DVD, which is a video companion to his book “The Expectant Father” (for all you visual learners out there who don’t want to read another whole parenting book, heh) when the Parent Bloggers Network offered it to me.  At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that it was basically a taping of one of his in-person workshops instead of something more multimedia-presentation-y.  At times, there was so much information presented, so fast, that it came off as too didactic.  And I wasn’t too wild about the supposed-to-be-funny juxtaposition of old black-and-white parenting-instructional-reel footage as transitions (as it was, I was already doing my usual “how many people of color are in this video” running tally, but at least there were a couple, however fleeting).

But by the time I got through the whole thing, including the extra features, I was totally won over.  And you know why?  Well, remember my reasons for delving into dadblogs in the first place?  Well, in the “history” selection in the extra features, Brott talks about how he started writing his books, for dads by a dad, because, when he went looking for resources for himself, there just wasn’t anything. 

And you know what I realized by the end of the DVD, especially after the question-and-answer session with workshop participants that’s included in the extra features (that alone is a good 20-or-so minutes, and it could’ve been longer)?  This DVD—Brott’s workshop for expectant dads, the information and the way he presents it, the questions, concerns, and fears expressed by the dads-to-be—this is the stuff we always say we wish someone had talked with us about beforehand, this is the “for-dads-by-dads” kind of information gleaned from hard experience we always say that nobody shared with us but that we make a point of sharing with any new dad we happen to know, because we’ve been there. 

Too often we hear ourselves saying things like, “Why didn’t anyone tell us it would be like this?”  We don’t talk to each other enough, dad to dad, sharing experiences, reassuring that everything’s normal, that others have felt what we’re feeling.  The books and videos crowding our shelves barely mention us at all; okay, to be fair, they do mention us, but it’s obvious that we’re a secondary audience.  Yes, there’s stuff that is egalitarian in its outreach to both parents, but frank dad-to-dad discussion, instruction, even stuff like the “how to diaper” and “how to swaddle” demos in the extra features that one might be embarrassed to ask about in mixed company?  It doesn’t happen enough.

There’s a lot of information given in a short amount of time [the sections include things like “What does a baby do? 1. Nothing”]—you see the guys in the class taking notes (when they’re not creepily cradling their try-out baby dolls), and I feel like, if I were a brand-new dad, I’d need a copy of the book with me to remember all the stuff Brott goes over.  But looking back at those days, weeks and months from a distance of almost three years now, and viewing this DVD at this point in my fatherhood journey, what comes across as most important are Brott’s underlying messages of involvement (don’t overthink it, just do it, and “it” can be anything), communication (with yourself, with your partner, and with your child), and the idea that fatherhood is both evolving and individual, and you, with your partner and child, get to create the fatherhood you want and become the father you want to be, and by simply buying into this idea as a given is both evolutionary and revolutionary.

These are the kind of conversations, the kind of experience-won information we always wanted to have and wanted to get, the kind of things we make sure we give to our friends when they are about to become dads—the gift of our experiences, of our anecdotes, of our reassurances of normality and our attempts to make sure that they never have to say, “How come noboby told me _____?”  As someone who ran to the internet looking for this kind of communication and community, I know that this DVD, and what it represents, is a valuable thing for new dads to have available.

For more information about this product and to purchase it directly from the Mr. Dad website, click here.  If you do get it for your favorite new dad, do go ahead and tell the

m you clicked thru/heard about it via daddy in a strange land.  Mr. Brott has generously decided that purchases via these PBN reviews will generate a remuneration to the reviwer of 25 percent of the purchase price, and if this review generates any money at all, I’m going to put it all toward the Rice Daddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge via Donors Choose.