No one ever said parenting would be easy. In fact, what we tend to hear is how difficult parenting is. “The hardest job you will ever love”. Whatever that means. Yet, as a parent trying to be a better father there is a lifetime of lessons to be unlearned. Lessons wrongly learned, misinformed, misconstrued, the list goes on. There is also the stigma of how society views the desire to be a good parent. Lip service. Not action.
That is why podcasts like The Daily Dad and Scott Galloway’s No Malice; books like Searching for Bobby Fischer and Teaching to Transgress; and emails like Parenting.com, the list goes on for each area, are subscribed to. Each one being ingested in hopes of tips and tricks to better navigate parenting. A little something that sticks. A word of wisdom. A parenting thought that makes being a better father a little easier.
A filter has developed where things get passed through the desire to be a better father. The current book being read is “Spark” by Claudia Kalb. The subtitle: How Genius Ignites, From Child Prodigies to Late Bloomers. This is for me and for my daughter. The common thread so far with child prodigies has been active, involved parents.
It feels as if concepts like helicopter parenting, bulldozing parenting, anything to do with active parenting, is being used as a derogatory term from previous generations. Generations past that are now being called to task for their lack of parenting. It has become shaming to try and be a good parent. Can helicopter parenting and bulldoze parenting be taken too far? Maybe. But if you are going to err, maybe erring on the side of being overly attentive is an adjustment for kids (now parents) having been given a key to the house and taught to use the microwave and told “good luck” from age 3.
Taking in books, podcasts, newsletters, etc. random thoughts occur about what may have been missed in my childhood. Reading “Spark” has created a rabbit hole of thoughts around what I wish were different for my childhood. Not in an ego way. In a self-improvement, what can be taught to my daughter kind of way.
A thought that stood out from reading “Spark” was a wish to have been taught to say, “I am wrong” and be okay with failure. Concepts that were not given attention. Dictionary.com defines parenting as: [ˈperənt]; VERB; parenting (present participle) – be or act as a mother or father to (someone).”the warmth and attention that are the hallmarks of good parenting”; synonyms: bring up · be the parent of · look after · take care of · rear · raise · nurture
Reading through the Google search to define parent and parenting brings up similar, but differently worded versions of “to parent” and “parenting”. None of them define parenting using the word “Teacher”. Which seems to be the main job of a parent. As a parent our job is to teach to: love, be loved, know what is safe, what can cause harm. How to crawl, walk, run. How to add and subtract. How to fail and pick themselves back up. Then to fall back down. How to read and ride a bike.
Maybe parents “helicopter parent” because they were never taught to teach. So, they are learning. Helicoptering being a direct result of the fear of having fallen and had no one there to teach us it is okay to fall. Then how to get back up. We would rather catch, then watch fall. Previous generations desire to shame today’s parenting is the definition of narcissism (Narcissism is the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one’s idealized self-image and attributes. The term originated from Greek mythology, where a young man named Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Narcissism or pathological self-absorption was first identified as a disorder in 1898 by Havelock Ellis and featured in subsequent psychological models, e.g., in Freud’s On Narcissism. The American Psychiatric Association has listed the classification narcissistic personality disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1968, drawing on the historical concept of megalomania). Their way was right, so our way must be wrong.
Learning to say, “I was wrong” and to be okay with failure does not typically just happen. For most of us it must be learned. It is learned by someone taking the time to teach and be an example. It takes failing, looking at the child and saying, “That was okay. Now, let us try again.” As pop culture as it is, Yoda was wrong. There is no do or do not. There is only trying. Then trying again.
Bruce Lee never wanted to be called “Master”, because once at the top there is only one way to go… down. His idea was to stay forever the student. To always be teaching and learning. Never the master. Something he learned from philosophy and teachers. Something that can be taught and shared with my daugther. Now, a choice you can make to share with you and yours.
A Vegan Father… a person who learned to be oaky with failure.
Posted. Not Perfect.
A Better Father 