What They Never Told Me About Being a Dad: 9 Lessons That Changed Everything

I have spent the last 22 years in deep commitment to my role as a father. It has not been an easy road; the journey has been fraught with peril and challenged me to become so much more than I was at the beginning. I have four children, two from my first marriage and two from my second. My first two, boys both, have moved out and are pursuing their own lives now. My second two, both girls, are fast approaching that same precipice. There are a number of things I’ve learned in the journey and I want to share them with you:

1. My greatest learning is encompassed in one simple phrase: “loving repetition”. I have certainly been guilty of breaking this rule in life as a parent, but over time my understanding and application of it has become almost second nature. In the beginning, I took things personally… “For the millionth time, put your shoes in order!” “How many times do I have to tell you to remember your water bottle?!” “What’s it going to take to get you to stop forgetting to pack your mouthguard?!” “How many times are you going to wash the same clean laundry?? Put it away first!” The list of my frustrations just grew and grew and I got angrier and angrier, yet nothing changed… until I did. Until I realized that it wasn’t personal, that their beautiful, developing, bright young minds were simply being age-appropriate. I believe that one of the most fundamental roles in parenting is to help children develop frameworks for memory that allow them to function in the world. There are many ways to teach this process. For me, fear of violence of some sort was on the other end of my constant mistakes, and a deep and abiding shame the result of it. Shame is a wild and nasty animal, as most readers can attest to. The less of it instilled in a child, the better. If you could accomplish the same thing and have everyone come out relatively unscathed, would you choose that path?
   

2. It is important to embody the example of the person I most want my children to be. Parenting is not telling your children what to do or how to be; it is showing them what to do and how to be. It’s not often spoken of, but parents are on exactly the same journey as their children; it just happens in a different way. And let me tell you , your children are watching. We think we are watching them because we are, but more often than not, we are watching to correct; but the children are watching to learn. Imagine how fascinating and new your life might seem if you added a healthy dose of ‘watching to learn’ to your parenting toolbox? Contrary to some commonly held parenting philosophies, children are not clay for parents to mold; they are their own clay, their own creators, and they are way smarter than many give credit for. And the less credit you give them, the less power to become themselves you empower them with (from within a healthy set of boundaries) and the further you will feel yourself drift from them. This process doesn’t stop at our children either, or shouldn’t: parents are their own clay, and it is the way that they sculpt themselves that gives children the impetus to sculpt in return. Ultimately, parents must grow up alongside their children or risk their children never knowing how to grow up.
   

3. Sub-context is everything. Children understand it far better than the words used to convey them. So do adults, but many of us have been hardened to the idea, and many of us have given up on listening for what’s actually being said. When a person feels disdain, frustration, or contempt, it doesn’t matter what they say: the only thing the child hears is the disdain, frustration, or contempt. It piles on the shame no differently than outright disdain, frustration, or contempt; it’s just done more insidiously. If you see an adult lashing out, acting ‘childish’, creating unneeded suffering for themselves, it’s a good bet they are acting from the shame instilled in them at a young age. Conversely, when you observe the grounded actions of a well-adjusted adult occurring, chances are they’ve either walked through the crucible of their own shame through persistent ‘work’ or they never had those ideas planted in them in the first place.
   

4. Don’t do your kids’ homework for them. When my oldest boy was in elementary school, he would often come home with a project of some kind to be completed. He would ask for my help, and I would bowl him over with it. Upon completion, it looked like I had done the bulk of the work, and my son had simply signed his name on it. This resulted in at least three unwanted energetics: He learned a fraction of what he could have learned, he became more dependent on me than on himself, and he didn’t get to live with the consequences of his effort, positive or negative. My unconscious drive at the time was to ‘bubblewrap’ him and try to save him from some facsimile of pain I suffered in my childhood. I love my children so deeply, so profoundly, and so completely that there was a time when I tried to save them from every imagined fear I could come up with. I’ve watched others do it as well, and it never seemed to result in the intended outcome. Instead, all I did was create a new set of obstacles for them to overcome; ones that were far more difficult to navigate than the pain of a broken arm or the personal disappointment of a project unfinished.
   

5. Managing the emotional world of a child isn’t about the child, it’s about us as parents and our inability to cope with our own emotional worlds. For an uncomfortable space of time, I was a ticking time bomb of unresolved trauma mixed with the emotional capacity of a child. No one showed me what emotional regulation was. The extent of it was most often stated, “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” “Stop blubbering!” “Feelings? You think I give a f*ck about feelings?” The only thing I learned was how to weaponize my emotions with a healthy dose of, you guessed it, shame. I implore you, don’t take your child’s emotional outbursts personally. If you can’t handle their wild and innocent outbursts, if you can’t handle the anger they feel when you express a personal boundary, if you can’t wrap your head around the grief a child feels when they lose their favourite stuffed toy, you need help. Seek it. Then bring the knowledge you gain back to the relationship. It will change everything, I promise.
   

6. You will not know who your child really is in the world before their pre-frontal cortex comes online. If you are fretting and wringing your hands and afraid of the trajectory your child might take and they are less than 18 or 19 years old, let it go. If you had told me when my sons were in their middle teen years that they were going to be responsible, well-adjusted, successful people in their own right; out in the world taking on the trials and tribulations of adulthood with capacity and verve, I would have chuckled and said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I was terrified that one of them was going to be living under a bridge and the other was going to be relegated to a life of broken dreams from the curse of wishing and wanting but never doing. I had concerns for my daughters as well, but as one crests into her adulthood and her pre-frontal cortex comes online, I see that the same goes for her, and I have no doubt the youngest will flourish as well. I learned, perhaps just in time, that unconditional love, holding a handful of clear, personal boundaries, letting them discover the consequences of their actions, and the setting of example were some of the best tools in the toolbox.
   

7. It’s the journey, not the destination. Now that I am staring down the pipe of empty nesting, I realize that it is simply the closing of one arc and the beginning of another. It is a transition space where the sharing of home ceases but the role of father continues as it always has: Setting a good example, asking good questions, providing advice when it’s asked for, and most importantly, ensuring that my children know my love and support does not come at a cost. There is no magic moment where we get to breathe out a lasting sigh and dust our hands off. We are always ‘on’ as parents, the ‘on’ just adapts to the circumstances. I can’t emphasize this enough: whether our children are 5 or 35 or 55, they are, and always will be, watching. Our influence takes different forms, but it never ends. If, at any point, you find your judgement of your child is that they are lacking, the first step towards change always needs to be your own. I don’t think we realize just how potent the living of our lives is to the choices our children make about their own.
   

8. To that end, be prepared for the closing of the childhood arc. It’ll come up on you before you even know it and if you’ve done your job right and have looked after yourself well enough, and have the fates on your side, you’ll be staring down the pipe of many more years without them at home than with them at home. If your identity is completely wrapped up in parenting, it’ll be a hard pill to swallow. If you haven’t worked your grief chops, and your kids are still at home, best to start now so it doesn’t bowl you over completely. And when the time comes, don’t be afraid to sit on their empty bed in their empty room and cry and beat your chest and wail and sob until the grief finds its way out of your body. It might feel foreign to you but I guarantee when you come out the other end you’ll be ready to find your acceptance.
   

9. It’s never too late to shut up and listen. I’ve known many people with strained relationships with their children, whether those children are 17 or 57. The ones who’ve recovered those relationships have been, without fail, the ones who tucked their ego between their legs, set their pain aside, and simply listened to the words of their children. It’s as close to magic as I’ve ever seen, both in my own life with my own children and the lives of my clients with theirs. To be seen and to be heard and to be acknowledged is a universal salve, and the outcome is inevitably connection, a closing of the gap, a movement towards instead of away. Try it if you haven’t already. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.