Sometimes I think my 11 month old son Joey has a genetic make-up closer to that of a tank than his sister. Sure, they look similar as brothers and sisters tend to do and after an initial period of Miss 2 pounding the crap out of her newborn brother at every opportunity, they get on great. (If being friends with a piece of precision military equipment were possible.)

Earlier this year a teacher passed this story through to me. I believe it gives all of us an important message.

A little boy came upon a butterfly struggling to emerge from a chrysalis. He helped it to emerge by gently pulling the chrysalis apart. When the butterfly tried to fly, it fell to the ground and died. The strength it needed to develop to emerge from the chrysalis was the same strength it needed to fly. The boy trying to help had inadvertently made the butterfly helpless. Sometimes we need to struggle to build up our strength to grow and develop so we can cope with what life will throw at us.

This story has some parallels with raising children. It continues a theme I have talked about before—that is ‘learned helplessness’. In our desire to be good parents and/or teachers we can step in too much and prop up children. We have to allow our children to make mistakes because from these mistakes comes a learning opportunity. Recently well known author, Lloyd Jones spoke to our Year 8 boys and passed on a similar message. He said, “If you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough!”>

Every Saturday, Allan Johnson and Nathan meet up and do guy stuff: they build steps, drive go-karts, go fishing. And they talk.

Nathan, 10, is one of nearly 11,000 boys in female solo-parent homes in the Wellington region. Mr Johnson is Nathan's "big buddy".

The Big Buddy charity matches adult male volunteers with fatherless boys to provide role models, build supportive relationships, and just hang out once a week. Read More on www.stuff.co.nz

A great positive story on the great work from Big Buddy, keep it up!!!

Big Buddy and their Big Buddies are a real inspiration to us all.

- Eric