KEY POINTS:
One of the first things Joe Waru teaches fathers in his parenting courses is how to have a conversation with their children.
Mr Waru, a Henderson social worker, has translated a programme called "Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents" (Skip) into a Tikanga Maori-based course which he has now delivered to more than 100 men.
He believes today's fathers usually treat their children the way their own fathers treated them, so he asks the men on his courses to tell him about the conversations they had with their own dads.
"I have actually yet to meet a guy who can tell me about a conversation that he had with his dad," he says. "They talk about one-way conversations where he said, 'Do this or that', but not conversations in the sense that we understand the term.
"They have conversations, but the conversations go something like: 'Have you cleaned your room? Did you do that thing I told you to do?' That is the extent of the conversation."
In a 20-year career mostly with Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS), Mr Waru sees that the key problem in most troubled families is an absent father - either physically separated or "present but absent" because he simply doesn't know how to connect with his children.
"It's particularly important to have a dialogue with your young children, because it's far too late when they are 15 or 16 and you want to learn how to talk about what's up," he says. "I've heard teenagers say to mum or dad: 'Why do you want to talk now? I've been waiting for 16 years for you to want to talk."'
He teaches men at Henderson's Man Alive and at the Helensville Men's Resource Centre how to communicate at the right level for their children.
"When the child is only able to say, 'Goo, goo, ga, ga,' that's the level of conversation, guys," he says.
"At a later stage, when the conversation becomes, 'Where do babies come from, Dad?' explain to them as best you can. Talk to them with credibility because you are not communicating just at a verbal level. You are creating a trust.
He advises dads to help their youngsters to join the local rugby club or chess club or whatever interests them, and to help them to stick at it when they get tired because "we have to finish what we start".
And if they do only get to his courses when their children are teenagers, he says it's not too late but they need to "eat humble pie".
"Accept that you may have done things wrong and really screwed up. Sit down with your boy or girl and explain to them that when you did those things you genuinely thought they were good things," he says.
"Say: 'I've been in that mode for 15 years and I'm really keen to change it.' And then you have to work with integrity from that point forwards."
Mr Waru, the father of four children aged 20, 18, 14 and 9, says tragedies such as the treatment of Rotorua 3-year-old Nia Glassie make him more determined to offer other Maori men the skills they need to be good parents.
