Gordon Flett

And I came up with this through Fluke that our daughter Allison, who's now the psychologist, whenever she would go to bed, she'd have trouble going to sleep.

So I invented something called Boy Stories, where I would start telling her sometimes truthful, sometimes fabricated stories about me growing up, starting with the time my friend and I went to

local golf course to get golf balls in the water in the deep dark night.

And we built this bond because even when she got older and she'd be past the age of wanting to have this, she said, tell me a boy's story.

I said, well, you've heard all of them.

Make up a new one.

And one of the things I did with both of our daughters, because I never felt that I got enough time with them in the summer and not teaching a summer course in August, is at the end of the summer, we would have park day.

Where I said, we're going to start as early as we can get out of the house.

And we're going to go to every single park we can go to until you tell me you haven't had, you've had enough.

And that was something we always look forward to because they knew that it was going to just be me and them having fun.

Occasional treats and undivided attention was as a reminder that I'm going to be there.

And, you know, that built a bond.

And I just want to say for parents who think that the older kids don't need this well.

Well, they do.

I'll just briefly tell a story that when our first daughter, who's been dealing with juvenile diabetes since the age of eight, was going off to university, she was going to Ottawa, to Carleton, whereas we live in Mississauga in the greater Toronto area.

And on the way there, I said to Haley, as we're driving her there, and it's very hard, as parents know, when you're leaving the child's university for the first time, starting to get that empty nest.

I said to her in two weeks, I said, I studied homesickness too.

In a couple of weeks, if you need to come home, I will come and get you.

And I said, because you need to know your home is still here and we're still here for you as a secure base.

And she said, oh, I won't need it.