I finally landed my dream job as an airline pilot. After all the years of training, all the hours logged in the air as an assistant pilot, everything finally came to fruition. There would be a lot of benefits to my new job. A big pay raise is the obvious one. Free airlines tickets anywhere in the world, great heallth insurance … my family was very proud of me, and I was proud of myself as well!

There was one major downfall though – nights away from my wife and four year-old son. American Airlines started me out flying international routes to and from London, which meant overnight stays in England several days a week. I would be spending much more time away from my family as I had in the past, and it would take a lot of getting used to.

My son, Ryan, would take it especially hard, I was sure. Every night before he went to sleep, I would always read to him for 10 minutes. It was our time to bond before he drifted off to sleep. He would look forward to it every day (as would I), and Ryan had difficulty falling sleep if I wasn’t there reading to him.

After my first couple weeks on the job, my wife Linda told me that Ryan just couldn’t fall asleep on the nights that I wasn’t home. He needed his daddy to read to him before he could fall asleep, she said.

I had just started reading him the newest Harry Potter book before I started my London flights. I wondered what I could do to soothe Ryan into falling sleep while I wasn’t there to read to him. Linda tried reading to him a couple nights, but it just wasn’t the same. He wanted to hear my voice.

That’s when I came up with an idea … a crazy one, but one that just might work. I bought an audio cassette tape online of the same Harry Potter book that I was reading to Ryan. I previewed it for free before I bought it to make sure that it was read by a male voice. It arrived in the mail two days later.

I set the tape to where I left off on the book with Ryan the night before, and asked Linda to put the cassette in the radio in Ryan’s room that night and press ‘play’. Before I left for work that afternoon, I told Ryan that I would be gone that night, but that I could read to him that night through the radio. He seemed a little puzzled, but said “Okay daddy!”

The next morning, my wife called me in London and told me it worked like a charm … she pressed play, left the room, and returned 15 minutes later to Ryan fast asleep with a big smile on his face. My idea was a success!