Being a dad is incredibly hard. There is this guy, a dad like me (but not like me, y’know?), who has a blog called daddy doin work. He’s been on a commercial and several other things talking about how it is raising kids. A lot of men talk about how it is raising kids. I tend to wonder how much of what the say is real and how much is made for tv. I tend to wonder that about people’s kids in general, because I feel like I have a very different set of dudes living under my roof and, honestly, sometimes I feel like I am fighting a losing battle. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have the understanding of how to win or even what winning means.
My kids are difficult. They are rambunctious and athletic and loud. Each has a decidedly different personality and level and style of intellect. This has created a number of interesting situations in my life. For example, I am a coach to my kids and having them along with a handful of other talented kids around has led to many friendly and not so friendly rivalries in the town. For a turn I was caught up in all of that drama. Then I decided to purposefully go out and connect with these rivals and play together, just to see how it is and how my kids are when they aren’t the coaches kid. It led me to understand that these kids are talented in some ways, but perhaps not nearly as much as I want them to be. It also led me to understand that they are well behaved and engaged when I’m not the boss. Finally it led me to recognize that those animosities and rivalries largely exist independent of the kids and become about the parents and how they see themselves and interact and what they find important and are threatened by, judged, and compared to. That is a blog for another day. This is about this daddy doin work.
So what I learned about my kids in relation to father’s day is that they respect and love me and follow my lead to a certain extent, but they also look to me for entertainment as much as direction. Even when they act out it is more often about boredom and me not giving them enough activities than it is about any real lasting anger. When I was a kid I had five or fewer friends and maybe one who would ever visit. I found stuff to do on my own, because my parents worked all the time. My kids don’t know that life and, since I’m basically their ‘Cruise Director’ as the love of my life puts it, they don’t know how to handle themselves day to day without me.
I need to nip that shit in the bud.
Some Thoughts:
- This is the essence of Stephen Colbert. Please remember to sprinkle a little over your life each day.