On Wednesday at ADFEST, ADK’s Chris Gurney and Naohiro Togawa gave a captivating session about how becoming a dad can further your creative potential.

 
“We didn’t want to cover the same old corporate advertising topics. So Naohiro and I started talking about all the things we had in common when raising our kids, and we thought, perfect. This is what we’re going to talk about: how creative men change when they become dads. When men become fathers there’s actually a chemical change in the brain,” says Chris, Regional ECD at ADK Global Singapore.

 
Naohiro and Chris unravelled the relationship between family rearing and creative growth. Naohiro explained: “I’m responsible for everything around my kids and that responsibility goes outside of today or tomorrow. I have a mission for my kids, for their future.”

 
It’s through this mission that fathers overcome many obstacles, which affects the way they perceive and manage their work and relationships.

 
The two went on to showcase a number of innovative solutions, which fathers had implemented to help their kids as they grew up.

 
“My first daughter at one time had a cold and while I was watching her baby sister she would call to me, ‘Daddy, Daddy, runny nose!’ and then run up to me so I could wipe her nose – she didn’t know how to blow her nose at that time. So within a few minutes she would be calling for me again. It was through this that I came up with ‘Nose Rocket’,” says Naohiro.

 
His solution was to roll up a bit of tissue into a poorly formed rocket and then have her daughter stick it in her nose and blow it out like a rocket. It was through this creativity that her daughter learned to blow her nose.
 

What can we learn from Nose Rocket? That we have to find new creative solutions to deal with the problems our children face and it’s through this problem solving that we are able to grow as individuals, as fathers.

 
- Kyle Towb