To learn more about what it’s like to be a great father, we reached out to dad and blogger Casey Palmer, aka Canadian Dad, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. “What I love most about being a dad almost a decade into the journey is seeing the people that my children are becoming after years of trying to instill as many values, abilities and traits as I could in them along the way,” Casey shared. 

“At nine, my eldest can scramble eggs and is starting to catch up to me in video games, and the seven-year-old is ever-inquisitive, learning everything he needs to know to carry him through his days,” the Canadian Dad continued. “Nothing's perfect, but I love figuring it all out with them!”

When it comes to what the most challenging parts of being a dad are, Casey says, “What I didn't fully appreciate about being a dad before I became one is how much of myself I'd need to give up in order to do so. Before kids, I enjoyed a life spent gallivanting around town hanging out with friends, stuffing my face, and enjoying everything my city had to offer.” 

“But after fatherhood, it was like all of that went away in the blink of an eye, and I needed to find new things to fit in my life that took new routines and responsibilities into consideration,” the father explained. “It took some years, but I feel like I'm at a place where I'm finding my way again, and the kids are old enough that they're joining in right alongside me.”

When asked if having a sense of humor is a requirement for being a great dad, Casey responded with a question for me: “Is water wet?”

“Having a good sense of humor will help you get through so many of the challenging situations that life will throw your way,” the Canadian Dad noted. “Kids complaining about being hungry? Tell them: ‘Hi, hungry, I'm dad!’ Foul moods at the dinner table? Tell your worst dad jokes to cut the tension and bring everyone together with a collective groan! Fatherhood needs you to not only learn to laugh at situations, but also learn to laugh at yourself, because no dad is perfect, and the sooner you can embrace that, the smoother your parenting journey will be!”

Casey also had some wise words for any soon-to-be dads out there. “Becoming a father isn't the end of the world - it's just the start of a new chapter!”

“When my wife told me we were expecting in 2013, I suddenly found myself trying to accomplish everything on my bucket list that I could, because a baby meant that I'd have no time to do any of the things I wanted to do,” the father noted. “But I couldn't have been more wrong - children don't subtract from your life; they add to it!"

“Where I just acted without thinking before, suddenly every decision I made had a potential consequence that could impact someone else's life forever,” Casey explained. “[Being a father,] you get a different appreciation for time, becoming hyper-aware of what you need to give up to do the things you want. But it will profoundly affect you in ways you can't imagine, and it makes you better for it!”

If you’d like to learn more about the Canadian Dad or hear more words of wisdom from him, be sure to check out Casey’s website right here!

Having a great father figure in your life, even if he is not technically your dad, can make a huge impact on you. A loving father makes their family feel safe and secure, teaches their children valuable life lessons, and provides a role model for what it means to be an excellent partner and parent. Sadly, we don’t all have the opportunity to grow up in a home where Dad is present, but according to research, growing up with a father reduces a child's chances of engaging in risky, delinquent behavior and committing crimes.

While moms and dads are both wonderful, Vanessa LoBue, PhD explains for Psychology Today that they do tend to interact with their children in slightly different ways. So kids benefit from the unique ways that their fathers play with them just as much as they benefit from Mom’s style of play. Apparently, fathers tend to play more physically with their little ones, jumping on trampolines and playing sports and games such as tossing their baby in the air and catching them. While these activities aren’t every parent’s cup of tea, paternal physical play is associated with positive outcomes for children, LoBue notes.     

Dr. LoBue goes on to note that dads have been known to encourage their children to take greater risks than mothers typically do. “For example, dads might encourage kids to try riding a bike on their own, or to jump off the high dive at the pool,” she writes. “Importantly, dads don’t encourage risky behavior in a reckless way; they tend to provide a safe and secure environment with supervision while encouraging kids not to be afraid of new things. It’s not that moms don’t encourage their kids to try new things that might be potentially scary, it’s just that dads tend to do it more.”

When it comes to what makes dads so great, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the beloved dad jokes. Of course, you don’t need to actually be a father to enjoy this corny style of humor, but we must admit that dads are artists when it comes to making silly puns and jokes that will cause audiences to roll their eyes. But according to the British Psychology Society, we shouldn’t be quick to dismiss dad jokes as bad humor, or accuse our fathers of being unfunny. 

“That would be a mistake,” Marc Hye-Knudsen writes. “When considered properly, dad jokes are an intricately multi-layered and fascinating phenomenon that reveals a lot not just about how humor and joke-telling work but also about fathers’ psychology and their relationships with their children.”

Hye-Knudsen explains that “dad jokes work on at least three levels: as puns, as anti-humor, and as a kind of weaponized anti-humor when dads use them to teasingly annoy and/or embarrass their children.” When it comes to puns, however, Hye-Knudsen says they don't all qualify as dad jokes because they must not only “deliberately say at least two different things at once,” they must also be “terminally inoffensive.” They can’t be sexual in nature or inappropriately crude. They have to be wholesome and family friendly, which makes them prone to receiving eye rolls or being deemed lame, but being stupid can sometimes actually make dad jokes even funnier.    

“Telling a joke that is so lame or unfunny that it doesn’t deserve to be told out loud is itself a violation of the norms of joke-telling, and this can in turn make the dad joke funny,” Hye-Knudsen explains. He goes on to say that we often start setting up our jokes by shifting our tones or making it clear that we’re leading up to saying something funny. However, “dad jokes flagrantly violate this norm by following up this shift with a thoroughly tame pun. A dad joke can thus be so stupid, so lame, so unfunny that this paradoxically makes it funny.” Therefore, if we view dad jokes as a form of ‘anti-humor,’ we just might be able to appreciate them.

We hope you’re having a wonderful Father’s Day, pandas, whether you’re a dad of your own or not. We know this day can be tricky if you’ve had a complicated relationship with your own father, but we hope there’s someone in your life you can celebrate today. (Even if it’s your mom! She can have two days!) Keep upvoting the pics that melt your heart, and feel free to share what you love most about your own dad in the comments below. Then, if you’re interested in checking out another Bored Panda article that celebrates the world’s best dads, look no further than right here!