Toting a plastic bucket of colorful children's puzzle pieces, Jesse Lipman is ready for a typical work day — settling down with new fathers and helping them play puzzles with their young children.

Sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of a tiny apartment in Halawa Housing, Lipman dumps the puzzle pieces out for a delighted 2-year-old and his dad, and the three of them play for almost an hour, fitting the red heart pieces together, then the oval, and so on. As the child succeeds with each puzzle, his father cheers.

"It's the right age to do this kind of thing," says Lipman. "You want areas where your child is challenged, but it's not frustrating. For children, a lot of it is the doing, and then getting good feedback from the parent. So much of a child's emotional sense of who they are is hard-wired into them in the first few years of life. Children given good play time and a lot of support and love get a real good start on life."

That's what Lipman and two other "father facilitators," Clay Ah Soon and Greg Farstrup, do on a daily basis. They visit homes where the dads welcome support for their new role and are anxious to learn how to do it better.

In some cases the dads are young and feeling their way. Sometimes, they're struggling to find jobs as well as cope with their new family. Other times they're wondering when to feed their child solid food, when their child should be expected to walk, when it's time to start tossing a football.

"There's a fatherhood movement, and it's becoming nationwide," says Ah Soon, who works with more than 20 fathers offering guidance with their young families.

"Men are starting to get a lot of support now. We've made moms the nurturers because they're the ones breast-feeding, and dads get left out."

SUPPORT SYSTEM GROWS

Hawai'i agencies are offering a growing support system for fathers. The Hawai'i Coalition for Dads provides a range of community awareness services to a "father facilitator" program funded by PACT — Parents and Children Together. And this year the State Legislature created the State Commission on Fatherhood to introduce more "father friendly" legislation.

"Dads are looking for someone to listen to them," says facilitator Lipman, who works with about 15 dads. "Men tend to hold in a little bit more of what they're feeling. But at the same time they'd like to get those things out and share them, but they're not real comfortable doing that. So we're someone you can do that with."

To a young father like Zachary Remigio, who is finishing his last year in high school, having someone like Ah Soon to turn to for advice and other support has been a blessing. With his son Rhyder just 10 months old, Remigio is looking forward to Ah Soon's assistance through the baby's third birthday.

The father facilitators work with families with children up to 3 years old, offering more intensive services in the beginning, and gradually easing away as the dads feel comfortable as parents. The program is available to families who need assistance through the social service agency PACT.

"He's like an extra person to talk to," says Remigio, who already has a basic comfort level with his baby, partly because he's grown up with young nieces and nephews. "And he's aware of stuff I wouldn't even know."

One of those things is infant massage, something the father facilitators say helps build a strong bond between father and child.

"It has the same effect as breast feeding," explains Ah Soon. "Those are the ways that we, as fathers, can bond with our children. It has nothing to do with therapeutic massage — it has everything to do with bonding and attachment."

Remigio says his son loves the massage, and it sends him to sleep as his father strokes his arms, legs and tummy.

"It makes them relaxed but also stimulates their minds," says Remigio.

A CONNECTIVE UMBRELLA

With a retinue of agencies helping to support fathers, the Hawai'i Coalition for Dads provides the connective umbrella that helps link dads with a range of assistance, including programs like PACT's Hana Like Hui Makuakane program, which funds the father facilitators.

Coordinator Farstrup says the Coalition for Dads has been a source of emotional support for the staff as well.

As a father facilitator himself, Farstrup visits 10 fathers on a regular basis, helping them understand a child's normal stages of development, and showing them how to build on their youngster's progress.

"If I go in and the dad says, 'He just doesn't seem to be talking much for his age,' I can do a milestone checkup," says Farstrup. "Then the child development specialist comes in to do an assessment if there's need."

The coalition launched a similar father facilitator program for incarcerated fathers, to help them prepare for the transition back into their families once they're released. And that program inspired the Good Beginnings Alliance to launch a partner play group for children of the imprisoned fathers, so the dads could maintain bonds with their youngsters.

"That's when the dads really got it," says Farstrup. "They understood the importance."

DAD-TO-DAD SUPPORT

For Don Juan Pasion, a single father for the last year and a half, meeting with a father facilitator has been key to understanding his young daughter, Chavez, who is just over 2 years old.

"He watches you when you interact with your children and sees how you're doing," says Pasion, 39. "And he has brochures on how children are developing and what they should be doing at each age. I had questions about getting her off the bottle for the longest time, but when she cried I just kind of gave in. ... It was one of those things I had to work on."

The father facilitators organize picnics for their dads so the men can also form their own support groups — to share problems and offer each other advice.

Pasion found other dads were wrestling with some of the same issues he had.

"At the men's group we pretty much bring up any topic and ask the other fathers if they have ideas," he says.

But Ah Soon's presence in his life has also been a source of grounding for Pasion as he faces divorce.

"Having that male bond really helps," says Pasion. "There are a lot of things I might not have told other people. It's nice to just get it off my chest.

"You can really be a better father if you can help yourself get into the right place and get yourself stable physically, mentally and emotionally," Pasion says. "That's how I can better benefit my children, even though I'm going through all these things myself."