I love being a dad. I have always been a self proclaimed ‘child monger’; making faces at kids on the subway and such. Kids generally like me and I like them. Kids generally smile at me, respond to me – and mostly they give me an excuse to act like a 3 year old myself.

Having just spent a few weeks with my kids; Gabe (who turned 6 yesterday) and Micah (3.5) and I have been thinking about them a lot. I aspire to be a good daddy. Gabe has told me on a few occasions that I am a ‘good daddy’ so I wanted to write up a quick retrospective of a few weeks with the kids – where am I doing well as a dad, where do I need to work, what do they respond to, etc.

My goals as a dad

• To make my boys know they are loved and valued
• To make my boys respect themselves and others
• To prepare my boys to be flexible to lives that change
• To instill in my boys the passion for whatever they find in their lives to care about
• To instill a love of learning in my boys
• To help prepare them to have healthy, meaningful, rewarding relationships with others
• To help them love and respect each other as brothers, people, and friends

My mechanisms for achieving these goals

• Listen to them, be attentive
• Give them boundaries and let them know where they are
• Talk to them at their level
• Put them in good schools
• Cooperate with my wife, align our expectations, talk about the kids
• Spend time with them one-on-one and with the whole family
• Use an even tone when speaking to them
• Think about parenting
• Read about parenting

Where can I improve?

After a few weeks of being with the kids all day, every day – here is what I think I can improve on:

• Micah is still ‘the baby’ a bit. I need to align myself with Gabe as much as Micah when there are arguments, battles, etc. Little boys fight – it is important to make them both know they are respected and have a voice when they get in a tussle.
• Patience. There is no end to the amount of patience that you need to have as a parent. My wife is more patient than I. I have patience, I could use more.
• Evenness of speech. I simply need to keep an even tone when speaking to the boys, when they are in a fight, when they are being nutty, when they are doing anything – I need to have an even tone. This is a ’subclass of’ patience I think.

Divisiveness/ Togetherness

Whenever you have greater than 1 child, it is important to drive them together. My wife Shannon and I work hard at driving our sons together and are very cognizant of ‘not driving wedges’ between our sons. It is very easy to be divisive or cause dynamics that make kids resent one another. “Why is HE getting all the attention?”, “Why am I always getting in trouble?”, etc. This is one of those areas that I think Shannon and I are doing well, but only because we are ALWAYS really thinking of how to avoid driving wedges between our boys, and focusing on how to coerce them into brotherly love.

Boundaries

I thought that the idea of boundaries and their importance needed a quick comment. I think that the concept of boundaries is one of the most central and critical concepts in parenting. Kids thrive on strucuture and expectations. Kids need to know where the ‘edges’ of their lives are. It is SO important (IMHO) to let kids know where their bounds are in their lives. How do you do this? Well, mostly by telling kids where the boundaries are, offering a penalty for violating (and the hard bit) following through with the penalty WHENEVER the violate the boundary. CONSISTENCY is KING with kids.

I read in some book about parenting once; (psuedo-quote) “Kids do not hear what you say, they hear the actions”. So if you say something like “if you color on the wall; then you will go to bed early”, then the child colors on the wall and they DO NOT go to bed early, then the kids learn they DO NOT REALLY HAVE A BOUNDARY.

A general concept in my life that I try to adhere to is; having a STRICT match between my word and my actions. Child rearing is one area of life where the benefits of this mantra are clear. It is clear that this is an important concept to live by in other relationships, work, etc – but in parenting – it is just in your face. When you violate your word, you kids learn that their boundary is NOT where you SAID, but where you acted. They learn you are malleable, and they try to push you and cajole you to sort out where that actual boundary is.

Anyhow – there is my humble 2 cents on being a good daddy. I am not saying I AM a good daddy, just that I want to be I will ALWAYS be improving in this, and I will ALWAYS need to improve here.

-Chris-

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