It’s simple. Just do the opposite.
Simple, but not easy!
Different dads have different ideas of what it means to provide and be a role model, if that’s even on their radar.
From what I understand, your dad has provided your family with tremendous financial security.
That often comes at an equally large personal expense of time with loved ones.
It can be hard to strike the balance between all of the different needs and expectations that often pull us in different directions.
Today is my oldest son’s 20th birthday. We’re having Beef Wellington, but more importantly to me, we’re all eating together.
I strongly believe a big chunk of being a good parent is being the right type of parent for the kid. My parents were great parents for my brother but they missed the mark somewhat for me 'cause I had different needs.
I would be a fantastic parent if I was raising a younger version of me but I’m struggling to figure out how to be the best father to my kids. At least for my middle child. Parenting is tough even in a stable, loving home. If you throw a difficult situation at a family, something like divorce, unemployment, serious illness or death, being a good parent hits a new level of difficulty.
I love the idea of this thread.
Something Dave Tate wrote about recently is quantity time. No: not quality time: quantity time. I am STRUGGLING to get my kid to talk with me these days. It’s like a preview to teenage-hood. I’ll be riding with them in the car and telling them stories of my childhood and will get a “…wow”. I’ll tell them how proud I am of them for their accomplishments in Tang Soo Do and get “…thanks” or “ok”. It’s crushing. But in that regard, I need to be there ALL the time so that, in the moment my kid is ready to actually talk, I’m there. I can set aside a whole weekend and have these grand plans of getting in some real quality time fishing or playing board games or doing whatever and I just get a lukewarm reception, but I can also be chilling on the couch coming down from a rough day and THAT’S the moment they wanna talk about what’s going on at school, and I’m SO thankful I’m there for that.
And it also means I don’t feel guilt for the hours I spend physically next to them while they veg in front of the TV and I surf the net on my phone. Sometimes we both need the peace and quiet while still having the proximity, and it means, when they’re ready, so am I.
My target for fatherhood is 1) adequately equipping my kids with the tools, critical thinking ability, and adaptability to be independent operators when they graduate high school*, and 2) being the kind of dad (or parents) that they’ll still look forward to getting dinner with whenever I’m passing through their city or visa versa. Don’t have that codified and still a long way to go, but that’s what I’m shooting for.
*Not forcing them to be independent at that point just want them to be prepared for self sufficiency should it be required.
Kids measure love in time present.
Being there is not the same as being present.
The decision about if and which old folks home you go to ends up being your children’s
Taking those snippets of information into account is enough to make a good parenting decision in about 80% of situations - even if you are a total dick of a person.
I’m the father of a 31 year old daughter. She is a recent PhD graduate and just got married 2 years ago with my first grandchild on the way. She has always been a good daughter and never gave me too much trouble. She did clash with her mother in her teen years but I never allowed that to to go unnoticed and she was always made to apologize for her rudeness.
I NEVER allowed any unacceptable behavior to go unaddressed. I also spanked her when she was little and there was always the threat that a spanking was an option. Like I said, she was good most of the time but, when needed I could make the impression I needed to just by the tone of my voice.
I like to think I am partially responsible for her successful life so far but it probably just her plain old hard work.
I will say that raising a child now must be extremely difficult. The “electronics” issue is HUGE and I think should be extremely limited if allowed at all. One of the hardest things that I faced when raising a girl especially, was to teach her to be aware of her surroundings, and know that while most people are generally good, you should never assume that everyone is safe…while at the same time not make her so fear ridden that every body is out to get her. It always felt like a fine line to me.
Based on all my anecdotal evidence, i’m more and more convinced that raising a child to be a proper human being is dependent on, in order of importance-
-Your child’s innate temperament.
-Environment they grow up in (this is both the place where you live and the unconscious way in which your household acts; not sure which is more important so I lump them together)
-Your conscious actions and attempts at child-rearing are a distant third.
As someone who very much wants kids in the future, this terrifies me.
I strongly disagree with the notion that the some people here have it “figured out”, as you seem to allude to here and in other threads. Honestly, I am not terribly interested in what the dads think about how well they’re doing with their kids or their philosophy with childrearing because I feel that, unfortunately, does not matter. I’m far more curious about what their kids think about their dads-
Right this instant.
10 years from now.
20 years from now.
30 years from now.
Because it will probably be different at each stages, and will differ depending on the kids’ life experiences and temperament.
My dad was the typical father figure who worked a good job. As far as I was concerned in my childhood, he was emotionally distant and never seemed to care about me as a person. He was available to drive me places at night and on the weekends. He would readily answer questions I had and talked with me when I came to him, but never approached me with questions himself or opened up to show me who he was as a person.
Know why? Because he worked 60+ hours a week and no longer had an identity as an individual outside of being a father and a husband- He as an individual didn’t exist. And when he did try to get me involved in the few hobbies he had (physical activities like tennis and hiking), I actively rejected it because I found those boring.
And, of course it’s a lie to say that he wasn’t interested in me. He did ask me questions about me when he had the (rare) time to do so- the typical stuff like “how’re you doing?” “How’s school?” “Hey, want to play that board game we really liked to play together when you were a kid?” “Hey, that thing you’re doing looks cool, what is it?”
It’s just that I don’t remember those because I’m an idiot kid and will probably remain one for life.
As for his own relationship with his father- he never saw his father because his father left to work at a factory at 6AM and returned home sometime around 11PM, or so my dad says.
Now, I write all of this because of what I’m about to write now-
I feel like I understand my dad and his struggles, and I have no problem with him now that I’m in my early 30s. I feel that whatever anger and disappointment I held towards him in my childhood is now gone.
My brother, also in his early 30s, has an awful lot of resentment and anger towards my dad. In fact, he’s the one who clearly articulated all the negatives I wrote earlier. It feels like he’ll never get rid of it. My dad, me, and my brother have spent a lot of time talking about these issues, but whenever he gets very upset they will erupt back up to the surface as though all the talks we had before never happened.
There are some truly abusive and horrible fathers out there. In fact, the more I learn about the world, the more it seems that this is the norm, not the exception.
So I believe it’s cruel to say dads whose major crime is being “emotionally distant” and not having much time to spend with their kids are bad dads.
100% on board with this.
A secure, non-abusive upbringing is a massive privilege and already puts one a level above many parents.
Replying to my own point here, walking my kid to school today, you know what sparked a conversation? I told them I was making cheeseburgers for dinner tonight, because the Cowboys are playing, they’re my wife’s team, and she wanted to celebrate it with a cookout. My kid goes “Yum: I LOVE cheeseburgers”. Me too! And for the rest of the walk, we talked about our favorite cheeseburgers, how I’m taking us out to a special cheeseburger restaurant for my birthday (I know how to party), if we could eat cheeseburgers every day, etc.
Came home and crushed a workout after that. It made my morning.
One thing I’m struggling with is remembering that my kid is only 2. He experiences emotions in a big way and I often forget that he doesn’t have the mental capacity to process them as an adult would.
He and I are very similar in a lot of ways; one thing we both struggle with is getting an idea entrenched in our mind, and not being content until that idea is completed. I, at least, can take a step back and reassess if something doesn’t work out, but it’s harder for a kid.
If something doesn’t work out how he wants it to, it breaks him momentarily. He gets super frustrated and upset, and it can cause a cascading effect. I, because of my nature, automatically want to “fix” the issue, but often jump in too soon and only succeed in making him more frustrated, because I just add to his already overwhelmed state.
This, regrettably, can cause me to get frustrated in turn, because I can’t make the problem “go away”. It’s a hard habit to break, and it’s a big point of contention with us.
My goal is to be a safe space for my son. To be someone he feels like he can turn to when he needs help, and wants to have by his side to support him when he doesn’t feel able to do things alone.
Sometimes it honestly feels like kids at this age are an entirely different species.
Mate this is exactly what I was gonna write!
I sometimes find myself getting frustrated when my 8 and 11 year-old kids make choices like the 8 and 11 year-old unique individuals they are, and not like the 43 year-old me I’ve taken 43 years to become.
Me and the wife take turns checking each other on this one.
“Well Hon, he is 8 years old (now 9). Maybe we should give him a little leeway, huh?”.
High hopes!
So can you? Can you eat cheeseburgers everyday? Has anyone done the research here?
Nothing better than this. My oldest girl (5 now) is very “Type A” (for lack of a better term). She knows how to push things, but she also feels all emotions on a scale I didn’t think was possible.
Ditto - and also the hardest
I struggle with spending a lot of quality time with my 13 year old son. I want to spend more time with him, but with the wife in law school and the two girls ages 3 & 5, they seem to monopolize my time. I constantly have to remind myself my teenager is not another adult and cannot be treated as such.
Great thread.
Like @T3hPwnisher did, I’m replying to myself…
Raising children is the most important and hardest job there is. As a parent its our responsibility to raise genuinely good people, people that you would want as your friend, co worker, spouse, etc. I like think we did that with our daughter.
Some tips for new parents:
EDIT:
END RANT
Sorry, there is so much news today about young people that is so disappointing (safe spaces, squelching speech they dont like, etc). Those kids parents did not do a good job IMO
I have a bit more time to respond to this now, reading your post it was like reading my own thoughts 2 years ago. I struggled a bit with this but have really work to sort it out.
My wife is an early years education specialist so having her is like having a manual to our child’s mind. Lol.
She reminds me that me and my son are very much the same, so she asks how I would respond feel if some one told me “it won’t work like that” or “give it here and let me do it”. So I remind myself of this all the time and let him do his thing, make his own mistakes and find his own solutions.
Being a dad is my absolute life.
My wife is great like this too. There’s a certain fever pitch our kid will hit that just… triggers me. I start getting worked up and can’t figure out why he won’t just calm down, and my wife very plainly states, “Well, don’t you have a hard time calming down when you get upset?”
The answer of course is yes, because my son and I are so similar. He just doesn’t have the ability to pull himself out of the situation. Trying to reframe my thinking from “fix the issue” to being compassionate has been a long journey.