“My entire life was about nothing but me for twenty-five years, but then your mother came along, and you came along, and now I wake up in the middle of the night, several times a week, and have to check you’re still breathing before I can get back to sleep. Can you grasp that? If I had acted this way before I became someone’s dad, they would have locked me up in a padded cell with an iPod full of dolphin sounds. I am not afraid of saying ‘I love you,’ it’s just the rest of it that scares the living crap out of me.” -Fredrik Backman, Things My Son Needs to Know about the World

This one hits close to home.

The beauty of Fredrik Backman’s humorous “memoir” to his son, “Things My Son Needs to Know about the World,” is his hilarious and honest view of parenthood.

Once you have a child, there is a part of you living and breathing in someone else’s body that you have little control over and lots of apprehension about. This is further intensified after a divorce.

Those amazing, beautiful children are free to make their own decisions and choices with rewards and risks. There is always a fine balance between offering advice from your perspective and helping a child along.

These types of beautiful, open, and hilarious quotes pepper Backman’s book about his life, fatherhood, and his hopes and dreams for his son.

– Jason