Too often, Father's Day is a pleasant Sunday in June, when
the kids let dad sleep late, mom makes a special breakfast, and another tie
gets added to the wardrobe. But Susie
asked me to think about what fatherhood means, to me as a dad, to me as a kid, and
to my children, and so I've been remembering what it was like when I became a
father, and my relationship with my own dad, and trying to put those thoughts
into a coherent form. It's hard, because
so much of fatherhood is emotional - fear, pride, love, frustration, joy - and
talking about emotions is something most men aren't particularly good at.
I had a friend in my neighborhood growing up, Lance, and I
remember that we knew his mom, but we never heard about his dad. One day, another friend asked where his dad
was, and he answered, very matter-of-factly, "I don't have a
father." Now, I don't know if
that's because his father had died, had left, was never in the picture, or
what, but I do remember, even at age 8 or so, thinking how sad and strange that
was. So when my own parents divorced
when I was around 10, and my mom broke the news to us, I can vividly remember being
distraught, and asking her, "Does this mean I won't have a
father?" Of course, she reassured
me otherwise, and she was right.
My relationship with my dad changed, as you'd expect.
Instead of seeing him at dinner every night, he'd come and take the four of us
to his new home twice a week. He wasn't around to be the role model, or to play
ball, or fix my bike. I never thought it was the fault of us kids that he left,
but in the back of my mind, I always wondered how he could leave us, the kids,
"if he really loved us." He did love us, to be sure, but it took a
long time for me to be confident in that again.
I remember the moment I really felt like a dad for the first time.
We were in the hospital after David had been born, and the nurse had
just wheeled him into the room from the nursery for the first time. He was ... well, I was going to say "so
small," but he was a big baby... so fragile and helpless. The nurse fussed with his blankets, and
started to leave. I stopped her, and
asked, "Is it ok if I pick him up?" She just smiled, and said,
"He's your son." My son.
My responsibility. Wow.
As a father, I want my children to succeed. As a former
child, I remember that it's not possible to succeed at everything. At least,
not the first time. I want my children
to be willing to try. I want them to know that my pride in them is absolute,
success or failure, but that they will never know what they can do, or even
what the like to do, until they first make the attempt. That's not to say I'm going to force them to
try sumo wrestling, or sword swallowing.
It just means that if they express any interest in a thing, and it's
within my means, I'll see that they get the chance to have a go. But - and
there's always a but - I also want them to know the value of persistence.
"If at first you don't succeed," and all that.
I want my children to be happy. That's the easy one. But what does that mean?
I believe it means that they have the means and opportunity to be their own people
- the people they want to be.
I want them, eventually, to know that while they may not
always be dependent on me, they can always depend on me.
Most of what I know about being a dad I learned by learning
to be an adult. I've always tried to treat my children as people, and not just
"the kids," as if they were some sort of tadpole, unable to learn to
hop until they became full grown frogs. These little people - and children are little people in their own right -
don't know anything that we don't teach them. Why would you not treat them as
you want to be treated? Why would you want to take this empty vessel and fill
it with stupidity? Screaming at a child for doing childish things makes no
sense. Of course a child wants to
swallow that golf ball - he's never seen one, and it just might be tasty! Of course a child is going to pull on
the dog's tail - it's fuzzy, and it moves, and she's never seen one before. Yes,
by all means, stop them from doing dangerous things, but if you don't use the
opportunity to teach them something, you've missed the point of parenthood. If
you model poor behavior, they learn poor behavior. If you model self-reliance and pride, they
learn that. And if you teach them nothing, they learn - nothing. This is not a
great insight, but it's one of those things that's so simple, it's easy to
overlook when raising children. The old management saw of "set the standard
high, and your people will meet it" seems to work with children as well.
I'm not talking about "tiger mom" standard-setting, I'm talking about
"I expect you to do the right thing because it's right." It's not
just behavior, either. I learned, from my mother-in-law and how she dealt with
my nieces, that if you don't talk down to a child, the child doesn't come to
rely on that simple mode of dealing with the world, but grows into his
intellect naturally and quickly. This makes sense, in hindsight. They say the early years are the best time
for children to learn a foreign language, because their minds are still
growing. So of course it's going to be
the best time to learn manners, counting, reading, or whatever. And if you
treat your children like people, they'll learn that that's just how people
relate to each other. It’s called empathy, and I'm unimaginably proud of my
children, because they have learned this, and learned it early. For example,
when Lily was about 5, she came home from school and asked, "Can Teddy
come around soon?" When Susie
asked, "Do you want Teddy to come around, then?", Lily said,
"Well, Teddy wants himself to come around, and I just want Teddy to be
happy." That, to me, is parenting success.
I've been a very lucky father. This may be the haze of
memory, but I believe I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of
times I have had to discipline either
of my children. I think this comes from treating them as responsible, and
expecting responsibility. Sure, we have
the typical "I don't wanna go to bed!" dramatics, but so far there
have been very few "punishments." This fills me with no small amount
of pride: in them, I have the beginnings of two very nice people. People I like
to be around, and people others like
to be around. That's all that any father
- any parent - could hope for.
