A lot of new dads will be facing Father's Day for the first time Sunday. What they might find more helpful than a tie or new power tool is to be gifted a little wisdom from some old hands at the job.

Don't kid yourself, advised the Rev. Jim Slingluff, 92, a retired Lutheran minister and social worker from Zelienople. This isn't going to be a cakewalk.

“It's a great joy, but it's harder than it looks on the surface,” he said. “There are so many different directions you want to help with.”

Michael Balog, of Renfrew, says it helps family traditions if your home is the gathering spot for a far-flung group of children and grandchildren, said.

The retired Oberg manufacturing project manager and his wife, Marjorie, have opened their house to extended visits from their grandchildren every Christmas.

He said the children are spread out to Illinois and North Carolina and the holiday homecoming had become a family tradition.

“We had eight grandchildren in five years, two sets of twins,” Balog said. “Every Christmas, the grandchildren come to spend a week with us. They all love to come here. They all love Grandma's cooking.”

He added that when his three children come home for the holidays too, they all sit up playing games talking and laughing.

However, he doesn't know how long that tradition will continue since four of his grandchildren are slated to graduate from college and the family may become even more spread out, depending on the job market.

What advice would older parents give to new fathers?

Give love, Slingluff said. “That's the most important guidance you can give is the knowledge of how to love and being loved because it takes both sides for it to be effective,” he said.

Balog advised that new fathers be faithful, patient and understanding. “Listen to your children,” he said.

He added to be a good father, it's also important to be a good husband as well as to be a good son to your own parents.

Sometimes it's a matter of geography that helps to ensure children grow up right, said retired state Trooper William Shaffer who, with his wife, Janet, moved to Cranberry Township when it was nothing but farms and a Howard Johnson at the state turnpike exit.

It made it easy for the Shaffers to keep an eye on their children and their children's friends.

“It was quite an experience raising two girls and one boy,” he said. “But we made sure they had fun with their friends at our house. There was nowhere to go and no car to get them there.”

Keep an eye on the clock advised Jim Mickey, a retired AK Steel worker with two daughters and four grandchildren.

“With me working at the mill, there were times when they had something going on and I was either at work or going in to work,” he said.

“You have to enjoy them while they are young,” Mickey said. “Try to get some time to spend with them. “

When you're younger, he warned, you might put work or career first or might not want to spend time with your children. That would be a mistake.

It's a mistake that Rick Cetti said he and his wife, Deanna, didn't make.

“We went to all the children's activities. Our son was in baseball, so we went to his baseball games,” he said. “Our girls were in dance, so we'd go to that.”

Cetti said they put a lot of miles on the family's vehicles, and it's not over yet.

“Our granddaughters are into dance and our grandson is into dek hockey, so we go to all of their activities, Cetti said.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, semi-retired Baptist minister Richard Marshall of West Sunbury said religion plays an important part in raising children.

“You have to raise them up right. We raised ours up in the church,” he said. “We made sure they went to church and they did right.”

He added his two daughters and one son were all college graduates and respected their parents.

Cetti takes a more philosophical look at child-rearing.

“Listen to your children, give them good advice and nurture them along,” he said. “Know they are going to make mistakes and hope that they learn from them.”