It’s The IFOD’s birthday and today’s IFOD is about why I started writing The IFOD. But first, Happy Groundhog Day! I love Groundhog’s Day. Not because I actually believe that Punxsutawney Phil can predict winter’s duration but because I receive merriment from the notion that a large rodent has weather-predicting abilities. It is so ridiculous that I cherish Groundhog Day. 

The IFOD Blog’s Seventh Birthday

I launched this website/blog seven years ago today with a post about the Interesting Number Paradox. Researching and writing about the various topics in this blog scratches an itch for me, and I appreciate that anyone at all reads it. The IFOD has had over 1.2 million page views since its inception, and monthly page views typically run between 15,000 and 30,000. Most page views come from Google searches, not from subscribers opening the daily email. The number of email subscribers has gradually grown over the last seven years — from about 200 to 3,000 currently.

The IFOD’s Origin Story and How It Helped Me Be A Better Parent

But the current iteration of The IFOD isn’t the original formulation. The original IFOD, which ran from 2007 to 2012, was a daily email blast that grew from just a handful of recipients to a few hundred people before I stopped writing it. Here’s why I started writing The IFOD.

In 2007, I went on a horseback ride with my father that changed the course of my relationship with my daughters who were then 5 and 8 years old (they are now 21 and 24!).

Father: “John, I think you are a pretty good father.”

Me: “Thanks, Dad.”

Father: “But I visited your brother last week, and he’s an excellent father. The difference is that he spends more quality time with his kids – he focuses more on them. Maybe you should up your parenting game.”

Me: “Oof.”

That conversation shook me, and afterward, I resolved to be more focused on my kids. One thing I decided to do was to tell them both a story and an interesting fact at bedtime. It’s not the only thing I did to focus more, but it was a tangible example of me fostering quality time with my kids.

I wanted my father to know that I took his advice to heart and to think I was an improved father, so I started emailing him and some other family members the interesting fact that I told my daughters the night before. And it turns out that they also liked hearing interesting facts! They forwarded my IFOD emails to other people who asked to be on the list, and then those people forwarded it to other people, and so on. Over the next five years, my IFOD email distribution list grew to about 200 people.

I realized that, to my daughters, the most important thing wasn’t the facts or the stories — what was important to them was the time I spent laying next to them in bed each night, paying attention to them and interacting without distraction. As they entered their teenage years, they understandably were no longer interested in nightly facts and stories, so I stopped the IFOD. And while I know that they now only sporadically read The IFOD, I do think about whether each post will be interesting to them.

I know that I’m far from a perfect parent, but I do think that horseback ride changed my relationship with my daughters for the better, and I look back at those years of bedtime facts and stories fondly.

Nine O’Clock Daddy

The wake-up call from my father to spend more focused time with my kids is reminiscent of a story I heard years later about “Nine O’Clock Daddy.” Here’s that story:

A successful corporate executive made it a point to be home at 6 pm every day because he thought spending time with his two young boys was important. And he stuck to his commitment and made it home every day around 6 pm. But at home, like most of us, he was usually distracted by watching TV, working on his laptop, or scrolling through social media.

Then he hits a busy time at work and doesn’t make it home until his boys are asleep for three days in a row. On the fourth day of coming home late, he asks his wife to keep the boys up until 9 pm so he can see them before they go to bed. When he walks in at 9 pm he runs upstairs and starts playing with his boys. He wrestles with them, chases them, reads them a book, and tucks them into bed. Then, when he’s turning off the light and walking out, his youngest son says, “Daddy, can you come home at 9 O’Clock every night?”