posted with permission

My daughter sat in her creaky, wooden high chair last week, blissfully happy in her chubby 2-year-old frame, and I worried.

I worried because in a few years this toddler will stand at the edge of the nation's body-image vortex, swirling with size 00 jeans, underfed celebrities glorified in gossip magazines, the latest "America's Next Top Model" and an unrelenting marketing drumbeat that skinnier is better.

How do I keep her from falling in?

My New Year's resolution is to help my daughter prepare for the mind-numbingly complex, sometimes fictitious image of the female body. Unfortunately, I am out of my element.

Today, involved dads are entering unfamiliar territory, such as body-image anxiety. They want to help, but don't always know how, says Harvard Medical University researcher Dr. Nancy Etcoff. When Etcoff gives a speech these days, dads ask a lot of the questions.

I have a memory. I couldn't have been more than three or four years old. For two weeks every summer, my father would rent a cabin on a lake that was at once inviting and frightening because, though beautiful, it was inhabited by crayfish. The only person who could convince me to go into the water was my father-and even then, only riding on his shoulders. I thought him all the braver because my mother was terrified. Not of the crayfish, but because my father didn't know how to swim. He would always take me across to an island that was perhaps 100 or 150 steps off shore-"out to sea," as my mother would say. In some places, the water would come up to just below his nose. My mother would yell, "Are you crazy, Lucien?" Thus, my father's silent affection for me went right up to his nose: if he opened his mouth, he was dead-and so was I! Under the circumstances, I was lucky my father didn't talk much.

Fathers parent differently from mothers and that difference matters greatly for children.
Fatherhood is just as essential to healthy child development as motherhood. In some measures, father-love is more important. The professional journal, Review of General Psychology, finds “evidence suggests that the influence of father love on offspring’s development is as great as and occasionally greater than the influence of mother love.” Fathering expert Dr. Kyle Pruett explains in Fatherneed: Why Father Care is as essential as Mother Care for Your Child, "fathers do not mother." Psychology Today explains, "fatherhood turns out to be a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children." Erik Erikson, a pioneer in the world of child psychology, explained that father love and mother love are qualitatively different kinds of love. Fathers "love more dangerously" because their love is more "expectant, more instrumental" than a mother’s love.4 A father, as a male biological parent, brings unique contributions to the job of parenting a child that no one else can replicate.

Following are some of the most compelling ways father involvement makes a positive difference in a child’s life. The first benefit is the difference itself.

Why is being active from an early age so important?
Being active is important for healthy brain development. It also discourages health problems like diabetes and obesity.

Being active is not only beneficial physically it also helps children to develop intellectually, emotionally and socially so they are healthy, happy and confident.

How does being active contribute to brain development?
Early experiences fine-tune brain structures – they directly affect how we are hardwired.

Does this development come naturally?
Yes and no. Technology (such as television and computers) plays a big part in our lives so we tend to move less and generally we’re less active than our parents and grandparents were.