Dads in the Limelight – Kenneth Kully

I’m a married man, and father to four children (ages ranging between 1 and 9 years, currently). I daylight as a cyber security analyst for a major automation and controls vendor. In my spare time I manage two sections within Scouts Canada (Beaver Scouts, for youth aged 5-7 years, and Cub Scouts, for youth aged 8-10 years), run two podcasts (one about video games, one about Scouting), and get involved with other community-level activities as they come along. As to how I’m in the limelight, I think much of that has to do with Scouting (and the Scouting podcast I run); I’ve accrued a fair bit of recognition as a Scouter and as a voice for Scouting in Canada…almost entirely by accident!

As noted above, my family consists of myself, my wife, and our four children (three girls, and the youngest is a boy). My wife and I have been married for eleven years, and our eldest was born just shy of ten years ago.

My biggest struggle has been coming to grips with the loss – or diminishment – of aspects of my life that I had previously counted as strong indicators of my individuality. Mainly, this means the various hobbies and interests, skills I really used to define myself by, that I’ve had to sideline or let go of entirely as the demands of family and schedule have increased and taken more and more precedence over the years. Secondarily, I do work in a career that requires some travel, and this has been a point of struggle as well for my wife and some of my children; they don’t like when I’m away.

Develop an interior life which includes time for, at least, reflection…not about oneself, necessarily, but about what it genuinely means to be a father, what the role of a father should be in the lives of his children, what goals must be set to be that person for one’s children, and what pitfalls to avoid in guiding one’s children toward those goals. If there’s room in this interior life for actual prayer and a robust faith, more’s the better…but at the very least, make sure there is always time for reflection.

This has certainly been a point of struggle in the past, and I haven’t yet perfected it. The best I can say is: plan to be present in the moment, and then be present in that moment. Make the conscious decision to put work (or extracurricular activities and their attendant concerns) aside and be with your kids; turn off your phone if need be. Equally, when you’re working, work; eliminate distractions. If you work from home, even occasionally, make sure it’s understood that when Daddy is working, he’s working; play time will have to wait. (And then, when play time comes around, just play.)

Really, see above. If other fathers in your circle aren’t encouraging you to have a robust interior life and to establish clear boundaries between work and play, where your focus is not distracted, then you need to be the father in that circle encouraging the others to develop these things.

Don’t fall into the trap of expecting that every plan, or any plan, will work out the way you hope. Your kids are, from the moment they’re conceived, their own people (just ask me about my eldest when she first started moving around in the womb), with their own personalities. You can shape them to a point, but they will also develop in their own ways, and those ways will surprise and even shock you.

There are far, far too many to list off, and they’ve been different with each of my children. And they happen with such regularity that the moment I zero in on one as being particularly memorable, another fascinating moment has taken place.