Parent Consultant: Fatherhood

Being a father is about responsibility and relationship – not control.

I work with men who want to be better fathers — often because something in them tells them it matters.

Men who want a closer relationship with their children.
With their partner.
With the mother of their children.

Most of the fathers I work with already know they want to do better. What they are missing is not effort, but support. Language. Someone to talk to. Someone who has walked this road before.

There is no doubt that our own fathers did their best.
Still, many of us grew up with fathers who did not talk about feelings, and who could not guide us in the role we now find ourselves in as fathers.

As a young father, I missed experience. I missed words for what was happening inside me. I missed an understanding of attachment — and of how it is possible to be a father in a different way, grounded in love rather than control.

I have been there myself - made all the mistakes

As a father, I wanted to do the right thing — but for a long time I lacked language, deeper understanding, and someone to talk to. I applied pressure where patience was needed. I used my voice as power, when what my child needed was closeness, understanding, someone who stayed — a deeper relationship.

Not because I didn’t love my children, but because I didn’t know better.

It took me far too long to understand how my actions affected the relationship — and how responsibility as a father is not about getting children to comply or do as they’re told, but about taking responsibility for the conditions children grow up in. That understanding didn’t come from theory alone. It came from mistakes, reflection, and the willingness to take responsibility again and again.

My child – my responsibility

Responsibility is about relationship, not control

My responsibility as a father is not to control my children.
Not to shape their behaviour.
Not to make them act a certain way or ensure that they “fit in”.

My responsibility is to strengthen the relationship — to be the adult, to love my child unconditionally, and to be someone my child can lean into and find rest with.
It is to create the conditions that allow maturation to unfold naturally. When the relationship is strong, the child can let go of having to hold themselves together — and is free to grow.

Control creates compliance.
Relationship creates maturation.

When we try to control children, we often end up fighting symptoms of immaturity instead of taking responsibility for what is missing. As fathers, the task is to lead with responsibility, not power — and to be someone our children can orient toward, even when things are difficult.

My professional lens on fatherhood

The Neufeld Approach

Together with my wife, Cecilie Conrad, I host the podcast Self Directed. It is an ongoing, guest-based podcast with more than 150 episodes, where we speak with authors, thinkers, and practitioners about parenting, relationships, learning, and family life. One of our guests was Gordon Neufeld.

After that conversation, I reached out to Gordon with a wish to support the sharing of his attachment-based developmental approach.

Our talk became the beginning of a long collaboration. Today, I work closely with Gordon as Marketing Director at The Neufeld Institute, while continuing to deepen my understanding of his work through the Institute’s courses, including his Foundational Studies.

Gordon Neufeld’s attachment-based developmental approach starts from a simple idea: development is not something we make happen. It is Nature doing its work when the conditions are conducive.

When I read 'Hold On to Your Kids', and later dived deeper into the Neufeld Approach, it didn’t feel like learning something new. It felt more like coming home. It felt natural — like finally getting words for something that had been just out of reach. Something I had sensed, but could now see more clearly because I had language for it.

It shifted how I looked at development. Less as something adults are supposed to make happen, and more as something that takes place when the conditions are right.

From there, fatherhood stopped being about shaping or correcting children. It became more about the relationship. About noticing what might be missing, and taking responsibility for that — rather than trying to fix the child.

When I look at the struggles many families live with, I don’t tend to see something broken. I see people — children and adults — who are stuck. Often, because the connections around them are too thin, or because too much is being carried by too few.

When the conditions are there, Nature does its work.

This is how I understand fatherhood.

And this is where I work from when I meet other fathers.

A lived fatherhood

I am the father of four children, and I have been a dad in many different forms.

Life with Cecilie has taught me a lot. About relationships. About parenting. One of the pieces of advice I often give men is this: listen to your wife. She has usually thought a whole lot more about this parenting thing than you have and read a lot more. I know that living with Cecilie has shaped much of how I understand my role as a father.

Cecilie is a trained psychologist and works as a parent consultant for women. And sharing our live together, I have gotten to see the world through her lens, see how she thinks, how she listens, how she cuts through to what is actually going on. Over time, that shapes you. Not as a theory thing. More as… You live together, and you learn.

She was also the one who really pushed for us to travel full-time. To stop thinking of “family” as something that happens inside a house, and instead see it as something you live in relationships and in community. That shift has meant a lot for us. For me.

Me and my oldest (now adult) daughter Liv Ea

And then there’s Liv Ea. When I met Cecilie, she was a single mother, and Liv Ea was five. I became a father from one day to the next. Liv Ea chose me as her father, and I am forever grateful that I got to adopt her. We have four children in total, and each time I became a dad anew, fatherhood changed shape. You don’t get to “figure it out once.” It keeps moving.

In 2010, Cecilie got leukaemia. She went through hardcore chemotherapy. Six months in the hospital. A time of fear, while I was alone at home with three children, not knowing if my wife would survive.

Cecilie survived, and we chose that she would stay at home with our children. 

The illness changed our lives. We chose life, family, and being together as what mattered most.

In 2012, we received a life-giving surprise when our youngest, Fjord, was born. I took full parental leave and stayed home with a baby for twelve months. A real gift.

Later, we made a conscious decision to let family come before fixed structures.

The bus we bought, which ended up becoming our tiny home, parked beside an animal sanctuary near Barcelona.

In 2018, we bought a bus and set out into the world. Since then, we have lived as a full-time traveling family—first with the bus as our base, and later through a mix of road-tripping in our converted Mercedes Sprinter, renting homes in cities around the world, and living close to other families through co-living and shared communities.

Living this way makes relationships visible.
What works becomes stronger.
What does not work shows it's ugly head.

Living closely with others becomes a mirror—you see yourself, sometimes if is not fun to look in the miirror. But you learn, and grow.

Today, I am the provider, stay-at-home dad, deeply present dad, but I have also been the stressed-out career dad who came home late. The tired dad. The dad carrying guilt. I have made many mistakes along the way, shouted, been stubborn, and I have had to learn, adjust, and take responsibility again and again.

It is from this lived fatherhood that I meet other fathers.

Parenthood shouldn't be faced alone

Cecilie and me together with our three youngest (who are all grown now).

I don’t believe parents were meant to carry the task of parenting on their own.

In Gordon Neufeld’s work, he speaks about what he calls the attachment village — the simple idea that children, and parents, develop best inside a network of close relationships. When the conditions are right, attachment roots can take hold and unfold.

But this is no longer how most families live.

For many, the attachment village is gone. The nuclear family has become an isolated unit, where two adults — often far from extended family — are expected to carry everything themselves.

One father.

One mother.

One home.

All the responsibility.

That isn’t natural.

And it isn’t sustainable.

It’s a theme we’ve met again and again through Self Directed — in conversations with voices like Darcia Narvaez, Peter Gray, Michaeleen Doucleff, Deborah MacNamara, and Sandra Dodd.

Different voices. Same pattern: the culture families live inside today often doesn’t support the conditions children — or parents — need to develop well.

Fatherhood today happens in a different context. And unless you’re ready to buy a big old red veteran bus and become a co-living, full-time travelling weirdo like me, you have to learn how to be a father in a world where the attachment village is no longer there.

Small households and isolated nuclear families have changed the landscape. We can’t easily change society — but we can change how we move inside it.

For most of the men I work with, this isn’t about changing the world. It’s about doing a little better. Being more present. Understanding what actually helps — and what quietly gets in the way.

Ideally, advisors wouldn’t be needed at all. It would be your father, your brother, your uncle — someone you grew up watching and learning from — who you could talk to openly. Knowledge about fatherhood would be passed on through relationship, not through books or consultations.

The same goes for mothers. A father shouldn’t be the only support for his partner. There should be sisters, friends, aunts, and family close by — people who are part of everyday life in the attachment village.

For most families, that support is missing.

That’s the culture I want to help shift.

That’s why I work with fathers. Why I create dad-circles for men. Why I started Better Dad Institute. Because too many fathers carry this quietly — without language, without support, and without anyone to talk to who has been there before. And then you make mistakes, many mistakes.

I want to help create spaces where fathers can speak honestly. Think together. Learn together.

I don’t work with fathers because I have answers.

I work with fathers because I’ve asked many of the same questions — often too late, often without language, and often alone.

I want to change the way we are fathers.

I want to help create a world where dads pass on what they have learned. I know I missed it. I want to change this.

If you want to support your fatherhood journey, reach out.

I offer a free intro call to see if I am the right fit to help you.

You can send a WhatsApp or book a time here.