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Thursday, August 14, 2025

Stay-at-home dad Warren Thomas:

Fatherhood is my ministry

by

Fayola k J Fraser
424 days ago
20240616

Fay­ola k J Fras­er

“If the fa­ther’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are many, his re­wards are al­so great—the love, ap­pre­ci­a­tion, and re­spect of chil­dren.” Up­on the es­tab­lish­ment of Fa­ther’s Day in the Unit­ed States in 1966, then US pres­i­dent Lyn­don B John­son pro­claimed these words as an ode to fa­thers, in­sist­ing that al­though fa­ther­hood can be both chal­leng­ing and de­mand­ing, it is one of the most grat­i­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ences a man can have.

Ex­pec­ta­tions of fa­ther­hood have shift­ed over the past cen­tu­ry. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the fa­ther or hus­band’s role in the fam­i­ly was as the sole bread­win­ner, with him typ­i­cal­ly less in­volved in child-rear­ing.

How­ev­er, in the past decades, it has be­come clear that men are choos­ing to equal­ly share the load of par­ent­hood, some even more stead­fast and ded­i­cat­ed than oth­ers. 

War­ren Thomas is a stand­out fa­ther who em­bod­ies the in­volve­ment and ded­i­ca­tion that char­ac­terise ex­cep­tion­al, de­vot­ed dads. Orig­i­nal­ly from Mor­vant, Thomas and his fam­i­ly even­tu­al­ly set­tled on Dun­don­ald Hill in St James when he was a young boy.

Two ma­jor con­stants in his life from a young age shaped his present abil­i­ty to ex­cel in fa­ther­hood. Since his in­volve­ment in the church, specif­i­cal­ly at Grace Chapel, from child­hood, his val­ues and ethos have been large­ly in­flu­enced by the re­li­gious tenets of Chris­tian­i­ty.

His sec­ond in­flu­ence? His “ex­cel­lent dad.” Thomas re­called his fa­ther pro­vid­ing a mod­el for him dur­ing his child­hood, as he was al­ways present. “He didn’t have an eight to four as an in­sur­ance agent, so he was able to at­tend our par­ent-teacher meet­ings, and sports events, and all the com­mu­ni­ty chil­dren would come to our house for my dad to play card games and Mo­nop­oly with us all.”

Even re­mem­ber­ing his dad’s “big ole Benz,” his child­hood was filled with ex­cit­ing out­ings as his fa­ther would pack all his bi­o­log­i­cal and non-bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren in­to the car and head off to Mara­cas and the cin­e­ma dur­ing va­ca­tions. With this sol­id ground­ing in fam­i­ly val­ues and an ex­am­ple of in­volved fa­ther­hood, when Thomas mar­ried his wife, Tra­cy Thomas, whom he met in the Youth Group at Grace Chapel, they both knew that they want­ed chil­dren.

Com­ing from fam­i­lies of three chil­dren each, they en­vi­sioned them­selves with three. “Af­ter hav­ing one, we re­con­sid­ered three,” he laughed. Their daugh­ter, Lily Thomas, was born in 2014, af­ter a dif­fi­cult labour where his wife lost five pints of blood.

Thomas re­count­ed pac­ing the hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dors, wait­ing anx­ious­ly to get the call that let him know of the suc­cess­ful and safe birth, and fi­nal­ly go­ing to meet his daugh­ter. De­scrib­ing meet­ing her as a defin­ing mo­ment in his life, he says, “When I held Lily for the first time, I un­der­stood how mag­i­cal life is and how pre­cious chil­dren are. I in­stant­ly felt dif­fer­ent.”

As a new fa­ther, he went through a tran­si­tionary pe­ri­od where he felt he had to learn to be­come a dad. “It was a huge ad­just­ment,” he says. “I had to learn the sac­ri­fices in­volved in rais­ing a child.” He ac­knowl­edged that he did not share the load with his wife as much as he should have at the time, let­ting oth­er im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at work and the church com­pete for his at­ten­tion. 

Thomas holds an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in Chem­istry and an MSc in En­vi­ron­men­tal Bi­ol­o­gy, and dur­ing the years be­fore and im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter his daugh­ter’s birth, he was em­ployed at a com­pa­ny per­form­ing sales for lab equip­ment. In 2016, he left his job and start­ed spend­ing most of his time at home tak­ing

care of his daugh­ter, “giv­ing me a re­al ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the amount of work my wife was do­ing.”

In 2017, he piv­ot­ed in­to re­al es­tate, a ca­reer he did not orig­i­nal­ly see him­self in­volved in, but with his sales back­ground, it be­came more of a nat­ur­al fit than he ex­pect­ed. “God di­rect­ed me to re­al es­tate,” he says. “Be­cause if I didn’t have the flex­i­bil­i­ty and au­ton­o­my that this ca­reer of­fers, we wouldn’t have been able to han­dle tak­ing care of our son.”

Af­ter two dev­as­tat­ing mis­car­riages, the cou­ple’s son, Joshua Jor­dan Thomas, was born in No­vem­ber 2022. Re­mem­ber­ing that he picked out his son’s name years be­fore he was born, Jor­dan be­came an im­por­tant part of his name, a sig­nal of the Jor­dan Riv­er Joshua would have to cross. Ahead of the ba­by’s de­liv­ery, they vis­it­ed many spe­cial­ists to en­sure the ba­by was de­vel­op­ing nice­ly in the womb, and every­thing seemed rou­tine.

As Thomas once again paced the cor­ri­dors of the hos­pi­tal, his wife called him, say­ing, “War­ren, come up­stairs, I need to talk to you,” and he knew im­me­di­ate­ly that some­thing wasn’t quite right. Joshua was born with tri­somy 21, more com­mon­ly known as Down syn­drome. The doc­tors were able to guess this up­on birth by the ap­pear­ance of the tell­tale signs: small ears, a flap at the back of the neck, san­dal feet, and an ab­sent nose bridge. When Thomas laid eyes on his son in the cor­ri­dor of the hos­pi­tal, he knew that he was not an or­di­nary ba­by, “and I im­me­di­ate­ly fell in love with him.”

Root­ed in his faith in God, Thomas does not con­sid­er hav­ing a child with spe­cial needs a mis­take or a bur­den. “God placed Joshua in our care be­cause he knew that we could love, care for, and nur­ture him like he need­ed. This was by de­sign.”

De­scrib­ing his son as a smi­ley bun­dle of joy, he looks for­ward to the great amount of qual­i­ty time he can spend with him as a stay-at-home dad. Al­though the de­vel­op­men­tal de­lay re­quires the ut­most pa­tience and ded­i­ca­tion to ther­a­py, Thomas has de­vel­oped a rou­tine for him­self and Joshua, do­ing his phys­io­ther­a­py with him dai­ly to help his de­vel­op­ment, putting him down for naps, play­ing with him, blend­ing up Joshua’s favourite straw­ber­ry and ba­nana com­bi­na­tion, and en­joy­ing each oth­er’s com­pa­ny.  

The tran­si­tion from one child to two, he ac­knowl­edged, is a chal­lenge. Thomas and his wife have done a great deal of re­search, not sole­ly about tri­somy 21, but about the im­pact that a child with spe­cial needs can have on the oth­er child in the fam­i­ly.

De­ter­mined to en­sure that his daugh­ter does not be­come a vic­tim of “In­vis­i­ble Child Syn­drome,” he carves out spe­cial time to fo­cus on her, blos­som their re­la­tion­ship, and en­sure she feels just as loved and adored by him. When asked if he feels any in­se­cu­ri­ty about be­ing a stay-at-home dad, he says, “Every fam­i­ly has to de­cide what works for them. Yes, there are chal­lenges to stay­ing at home while still en­sur­ing my busi­ness re­mains run­ning, and I have to sched­ule my time around my chil­dren. But this is my as­sign­ment in life. My min­istry is my chil­dren.”

The pow­er team that he and his wife have cre­at­ed is im­pen­e­tra­ble, as they share the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of par­ent­hood and lean on each oth­er as need­ed.

Dad ad­vice

When mus­ing on ad­vice he could share with oth­er fa­thers, Thomas re­flect­ed on his child­hood.

He in­sist­ed that watch­ing, pro­tect­ing, and car­ing for chil­dren are not enough. “Play is their love lan­guage. I’ve learnt how im­por­tant it is to ded­i­cate time to play with them.”

He al­so ad­vis­es that the pa­tience re­quired for deal­ing with chil­dren is not some­thing that one can plan for. “You just roll with the punch­es,” he laughs. “Take the good with the bad; let them make a mess, and just clean it up af­ter.”

A use­ful tool that he shares with dads is to block time in their cal­en­dar for their chil­dren, mak­ing them feel like a pri­or­i­ty. Al­though some dads don’t have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to stay home, he sug­gest­ed that when you get home, spend de­vot­ed and undis­tract­ed time de­vel­op­ing your re­la­tion­ship with them and fos­ter­ing open com­mu­ni­ca­tion.Re­mem­ber­ing his dad dur­ing his child­hood, he says, “I know my dad loved me, my dad was al­ways around, al­ways there for me. He was my hero.”

Un­de­ni­ably now a hero him­self, War­ren Thomas is a beau­ti­ful ex­am­ple of what fa­ther­hood is all about: shar­ing love un­con­di­tion­al­ly, sup­port­ing his wife and chil­dren, and be­ing the un­fail­ing pro­tec­tor of their lit­tle fam­i­ly unit.


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