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What have you learned from being a parent?
Question aimed at those here that have children. What are some of the things you’ve learned? How has having children changed your perspective?
Question aimed at those here that have children. What are some of the things you’ve learned? How has having children changed your perspective?
Ten things I learned from Fatherhood:
I can experience the joy of something for the first time vicariously through my kids. If there is something that I love, I share it with them; if it clicks with them, then I can experience their first time doing a thing that I enjoy.
Dealing with kids is like being a good manager. My job as a parent - or as a good manager - is to support the people that I'm with. I cannot support someone by yelling at them or being angry at them. Supporting and teaching means understanding and patience. When someone makes a mistake, I need to show them how to not make a mistake, and I need to do so in a supporting and understanding way.
Kids can learn to communicate from a really young age. Child sign language is a great tool and more people should use it. Training our babies with some simple signs meant that instead of them crying and us not knowing why, they could cry and explain why and we could figure things out.
Even smart kids put lego up their nose.
I see parts of myself in my kids, and it is either exhilarating or depressing. I did not just pass on the best parts of myself, but it has helped me come to terms with some things that I didn't like about myself; when I see it in my kids, I understand that it isn't such a big deal.
Ritual and routine is incredibly important for kids. I had no idea that time management and sticking to a schedule would make things so much easier. When the kids were little, we did the same thing at the same time every day, and had a ritual for each distinct action. When we started the ritual for bedtime, and always did bedtime at the same time, the kids all slept just fine.
Gross things aren't really that gross. I can actually just clean up shit and barf, and it all washes off.
Things get lost and broken and it isn't a big deal. Stuff is just stuff.
How to do crossovers while skating, and getting the puck right on the tape with a good pass (thanks, son).
No amount of money ever bought a second of time. I guess Tony Stark told me that, but parenthood made me understand it. I'd rather lose out on a bit of money and see the school play, or go to the hockey game.
Ways my perspective has changed from Fatherhood:
I don't get excited much if things break or if mistakes are made. I used get pretty upset if things broke, or if I made mistakes, or if other people I was working / dealing with made mistakes. But mistakes just happen; things break, things get lost, things go wrong, and you can just deal with it and move on. I used to have a much tougher time dealing with things and moving on.
I used to care a lot less about the environment, but now it's one of my primary concerns, because it's directly going to have an impact on the lives of my children. More broadly, I recognize that there is more to life than just the now and that we have to be prepared for the future.
This is a good list. I have a small collection of items that were stuck up various orifices. I also have noticed the patience learned raising a child has helped me manager people.
I typed the following up last night but didn't post. I think it echos a lot of what you are saying in 1 & 5, plus one more.
It reminds you how hard growing up really was. Things that are so effortless now, were hard the first time. But also so fantastic. You get to experience fantastic first times again, vicariously.
I kind of feel like my heart grew legs and stepped right outside my body. Love isn't perfect. You still have all your flaws. You can even see your flaws more clearly, as they are often mirrored back at you from a much smaller package.
It's a great cure for laziness. There are so many fun things I am motivated to do. Not because I want to. Not because my kid wants to. But because it is good for us all to get outside and do something new together (and if I don't get the little adorable psychopath out of the house, we will all loose our shit.)
I feel this with every ounce of my soul. Hell is stir-crazy children.
That's at least as important as anything else I learned above.
It doesn't get less important when they're teenagers either.
I'll append to your list with mine, as yours are almost verbatim many things I learned.
Great additions, and I might also add an 11.a or 12.a - if you make a mistake and it involves your kid, then take ownership and apologize! Accept mistakes, normalize mistakes, accept responsibility, normalize responsibility.
There is an unintended consequence with that approach. My kid tends to be upfront about his bad behavior. Other kids, not so much. He kinda gets screwed when the other kid says "I didn't push him, but he definitely pushed me."
I meant that as a parent, if you make a mistake, apologize to your child, but I also agree that what you brought up is an issue. I think that in the long run, though, if your kid has integrity, then adults will understand that about your kid, so when they say, "I did push him, but these things also happened" then adults, once they get to know your kid, will understand and believe them over other kids that don't have integrity.
But there are also other things to teach, which is that not adults can be trusted; while it is important to be truthful to me I don't encourage my kids to bring up everything with, say, their principal or their boss. Not everyone is on your side, so be truthful, but don't overshare!
One moment that stands out to me after all these years was when I had yelled at my son to stop doing something a bunch of times. A bit later, he got hurt and was crying. I started in with the "I told you so" stuff. He shouted at me "Can't you just be there for me instead of yelling at me!"
That one moment changed me. There's a time for the lectures and lessons. When your kid is hurt and crying is not that time.
Oh yea, we learned that one too. Comfort and care first, lecture later.
When my future teenager inevitably comes home very drunk or high, going to give them junk food, a glass of water, and put them to bed. Lecture/punishment comes in the morning.
May I ask why you think that being drunk requires punishment?
Personal opinion, I'm not @vord:
The alcohol culture of today is idiotic. People who get super drunk to the point of blackout / hangover / vomiting / etc is just ... what on earth is enjoyable about vomiting, exactly? It fucks up your health and fucks up your brain and makes you feel like shit.
I drink sometimes (socially only), I get high when I feel like it, and I know my body and my alcohols well enough to know how to maximize how "good" I feel with alcohol (which is a tipsy-high I can get with some liqueurs).
Learning all this took me a while. But it started with under-consumption, not over-consumption. And it comes with the hard requirement of not being surrounded by morons who shit on you if you order a coke or a virgin cocktail.
I'm not a parent but I hope that when I am, and my kids are old enough, I can teach them how to drink in a sustainable way that doesn't lead to psychological or physical health issues.
I agree with everything you have said, I'm just not clear on how punishment addresses this instead of communication, introduction which breeds familiarity, and support with understanding. For the most part, I think punishment for things is fairly archaic, and usually results in the opposite of what is intended. If you punish a teenager for something, then they're a lot more likely to continue with the behaviour and then try to hide it from you, and not stop the behaviour. In my experience as a parent, if you come at things from support, education, and understanding, it's a lot easier to get your kid of any age to understand what you want them to understand, but if you come at them with the idea of authority and power, then they will rebel and not listen.
Of course, there is a limit beyond which punishment is probably required, but if you always approach things from an open and educational perspective instead of from a "I am the dad and my word is law and you shall do as I say" point of view, then kids are a lot more likely to listen.
I think of punishment (usually in the form of taking away some privilege they previously took for granted) as teaching them that actions have consequences and that making bad decisions, breaking established rules, or not fulfilling obligations tend to have negative consequences that make life less enjoyable. I think that taking a "what did you learn from this experience" educational approach for everything (perhaps aside from the first time they make a specific mistake) might be doing them a disservice in teaching them that they'll always get another chance when they make poor choices, which isn't so much true out in the real world.
It has been my experience that most things already have natural consequences. If you break something, it is broken and doesn't exist; if you treat someone poorly, they don't like you as much. If you drink, you feel lousy and have a hangover. We usually try to identify what the natural consequences of actions are, and talk about them, and we don't just fix them. For example, my son broke an electronic device at the beginning of the summer. When I was a kid, if I broke something, I would get punished for it; I would have to do yard work of some kind, or I'd be grounded and wouldn't be able to go out with my friends. But the natural consequence of breaking something is that it is broken. When my son broke his device, we didn't give him heck for it; I gave him a hug and commiserated with him about it. We talked about how it sucks to not have your tablet, and we came up with a plan for getting a new tablet. And over time he "saved up enough" (ie. we waited an arbitrary number of weeks) and he was able to get a new one.
He learned:
I definitely agree that it is important for kids to learn that actions have consequences, but I think that it's also really important for kids to not have to learn "when I tell dad about stuff, he punishes me to try to teach me a lesson". Instead, help them see the lesson that already exists and work with them to avoid it in the future.
Good points. I agree that piling punishment on top for things that already have obvious natural consequences seems rather pointless. In my mind I was thinking more along the lines of when they break house rules--like don't sneak screen toys after bed time, don't eat junk food without asking right before dinner. If the kid broke their own device I would react the same way you describe... if he snuck one of my devices that he knows he's not allowed to use without asking and broke that, then I'd likely have a different reaction.
I guess to get back to the original point, I probably wouldn't feel obligated to punish one of my kids if they came home drunk. If they got drunk at home, however, by breaking into the liquor cabinet while we're out, then I'd probably feel differently (but that would be punishment for the act of stealing the alcohol, as opposed to the act of getting drunk).
First, I'll acknowledge that I cherry-picked something easy in my example, so I just want to break down what I might do in the situation you described (mostly as an exercise for myself).
This is lengthy and maybe not useful, and sounds a bit "punishmenty" anyways.
If my son took my iPad after bed time and broke it, there would be a bit of a discussion about how that made me feel. I'd let him know that I was sad and angry that he broke something of mine, and that I was disappointed in the choices that he'd made, and we would discuss how he felt about causing my sadness, anger, and disappointment, and why he was breaking a house rule by looking at screens after lights-out. We would discuss trust, using other people's things without permission, work hardware vs. home hardware, screen access etc. Then we would discuss how to make things better. This would likely include a plan from him to figure out how to repay the value of whatever was broken and a discussion about the privilege of access to the internet. For a 7-year old, I wouldn't hold him accountable for the full value of my iPad, but we would probably come to an agreement where he provided a service of some kind for some amount of working off his "debt" such as weed the interlocking bricks outside for some amount of hours, for example.I guess that's sort of like punishment with extra steps, but I think it should be self-directed, and I think it is similar to what I would do if, say, my mom came over and took my iPad without asking and broke it. I have "power" over my kids, so I try not to exercise the power of parenthood to punish. Instead, I try to enact the same sort of reaction that I would have with someone over whom I have no power. And I'm not perfect, so I don't always do this right, and sometimes things do make me angry, so I might make a snap judgment that is bad and enact a punishment that is nonsensical and anger-based; if that happens, when I have calmed down, I will rescind the punishment, and apologize for my mistake, and then we will have a rational discussion.
Sometimes the discussion itself is punishment enough, I've noticed.
Reminding children of empathy, and them realizing for themselves how they hurt someone (physically or emotionally) can produce the desired result (not repeating of behavior) in a more positive way, though the crying that sometimes accompanies it is heartwrenching. Helping them be mindful of empathy helps engrain it more into the everyday, and will hopefully have positive long-term impacts.
The amount of required punishment/reparations is somewhat related to amount of remorse.
A few reasons, in additon to @Adys's statements. Keep in mind USA centric:
And honestly, more than anything...it's going to because they were sneaking anround and hiding/lying about it when confronted.
I do intend to introduce alcohol in a healthy, metered way as my children age, probably starting around 12 to 16. A beer or cocktail here or there won't do much. But teenage peer drinking kills people.
I think that all of the reasons that you listed are incredibly important ones for avoiding having drunk teenagers - and I want to avoid having my teenager drink too much as well - but I think that a policy of understanding and safety is a better one than punishment and retribution.
In my opinion, there is a circular issue here; sneaking and lying is usually to avoid punishment, so if kids are used to being punished for transgressions, then they'll know that when they do something bad they will a) not tell you about it and b) not trust you enough to tell you when they have problems.
We have a policy with our kids (though we only have one teenager right now) which is:
More generally, we have a policy of "if you make a mistake, tell us about it, and we will try to help". This policy has helped a lot, because many of my friends' kids (or my kids' friends) immediately try to hide their mistakes from their parents, because when they make a mistake, they know that they are going to be punished. When our kids make a mistake, they usually come to us and let us know, and we figure out what we can do together to fix things. It means that our kids tend not to sneak around and hide; when they make bad choices (and all kids, especially teenagers make bad choices) then they come to us with them and we don't have a nasty surprise later.
Oh these are not mutually exclusive....I just didn't dig into it in depth. You actually describe almost exactly what we do for most things. The punishment doesn't come until that kind of policy is violated, multiple times.
They will never be in trouble for breaking something, or being late. They will be punished for lying about it, or habitually not texting for being late. We're also intending to not force location sharing on their phone for that exact reason.
Understood! I appreciate the full explanation greatly, by the way, so thank you for sticking with me. I'm always interested in reading and understanding how thoughtful, purposeful, deliberate people approach things, usually so I can learn something.
I disagree. I never really feared punishment from my parents growing up (my mother is a child psychologist so she was quite progressive on child-rearing). But I did occasionally sneak around and lie just because I knew they'd be overprotective and worry about me despite me knowing I could handle myself.
In hindsight, I wasn't necessarily fully equipped to handle myself but that's just part of growing up. There's a natural dynamic tension between parents and kids where we push and pull against each other as we figure stuff out.
To clarify, I did not claim that all sneaking is to avoid punishment. Sometimes my kids don't share stuff, and they do so for a variety of reasons, but it's not to avoid punishment. And some people (and I'm not saying this is you) are just sneaky and will do so no matter what your policy is, so apply anything I say with a grain of salt, because no two people are exactly the same.
My point was that punishment doesn't usually correct behaviour, it encourages hiding behaviour.
I'm not a parent, so feel free to weigh by critique with what it's worth (very little), but isn't this nearly double jeopardy? I mean, I'd certainly be concerned with my hypothetical teenager driving under the influence, for example, since I don't high expectations for teenagers to accurately discern between rules that can sometimes be bent (e.g., drinking) and rules that should never be broken (e.g., drinking and driving). However, if you're going to punish the child anyway, what's the incentive for being honest? Or do you have a specific scenario in mind?
I'll go simple, with a broken coffee cup. I hear a cup break. I come to room and ask what happened. Two divergent scenarios. The first has happened to us many times (not just coffee cups mind). The second has only happened once.
Child apologizes says they broke the coffee cup. Say "Thank you for telling me," help them clean up and discuss any feelings. Sometimes it's an accident. Sometimes it's intentional. If it's intentional we discuss the impact to others and how they might feel.
Child hides broken cup under cabinet. Says the cat did it, but we had proof. Discussion ensues and find cup was broken intentionally, but they were afraid of being punished. On top of the discussion above, TV is taken away for the day. But the reason was"You are being punished not for breaking the thing, but lying about it. If you had just told us, there would not have been a punishment."
It's subtle, but it's about feedback loops. We also do a pretty robust teachings for questioning authority, hard/soft rules, and how law and morality are distinct things. If we're being unfair, they're not afraid to tell us and we give them an honest listen.
That said, we've also had to echo the phrase "Comply, then ask why" many times. Questioning why we need to hold hands to cross the street is a good thing. Doing so while trying to cross the street, not so much. It's followed up with "Sometimes it's more important to listen and do what you're told first. We'll happily discuss and explain later."
Oooooh. I like this.
Here's another for you:
"Just because I'm laughing, doesn't mean you're not in trouble."
It's partially in jest...but also because we're easy laughs and as parents we laugh when we know we shouldn't.
Here's some things that have worked really well for us with toddlers that I think should be in every parent's toolbox:
Naming and validating feelings has been very beneficial in our household: "It’s OK to feel mad, it’s not OK to hit."
Offering choice to your kids (even false or non-nonsensical choices e.g naming an option they'll never pick) is a good redirection tool to diffuse or avoid tantrums. “It’s OK to feel sad, but we have to brush our teeth. Did you want to use your purple toothbrush or your green toothbrush?"
I will echo that structure/routine is huge for kids. When kids know what to expect and when, they’re preloaded on what’s going on. They also love knowing what to do and where to go, and routines/rituals let them participate without any help from mom or dad.
Here’s some stuff we do in our house that may or may not work for you:
We never make special meals for our kids. They eat what we eat and while we do somewhat steer meal choices around that ( avoiding really spicy food for example) it’s made them into pretty good eaters. Green vegetables are still hit or miss, but they’re pretty adventurous and will often try something and spit it out if they don’t like it (which we also encourage.) We also have a stand to let them help cook with us in the kitchen and they help us in the garden – which helps demystify food and get them interested in their meals. Sometimes they don't eat much at all, which is also fine. Resist the urge to breakout the cereal!
We sleep trained our kids. I’ve heard this jokingly described as “strategic neglect” and while there’s some truth to that, I think it’s been one of the biggest difference makers here. Being a good parent 100% of the time is impossible, but you can be a better parent more often if you take care of yourself as well as your kids. Having a hard 7:30 bedtime gives you some of your life back and I can’t understand how friends of mine survive who’s kids go to bed as late as 9 or 10.
I'll toss a +1 to your "stuff we do".
Aside from lower salt and heat, kids eat what we do. We let them have input on meals...sometimes you just don't like a thing. I had an aversion to mushrooms for 30+ years. So if they really don't like something, we'll keep it out of the rotation more often than not and they won't be forced to eat it on leftover night when we do serve it. The only way to stop a kid from being a picky eater is to not enable it. Not to say starve the kid....but also don't give into the tantrum because you served homemade mac n cheese and not the box. A hunger strike is not neglect unless you're also refusing to give them any food.
Sleep training is a necessity. The neglect part is really just a question of how and when. If kid is too young not really helping anyone, and "cry till you sleep or its morning" feels needlessly cruel. I personally favor the 5/15/30 wait then comfort approach. Give them a chance to calm down, but make it clear its their job to sleep on their own. More often than not 25 minutes total (with 2 comforts) was all it took early on, and then consistent sleep through the night.
I'll also pile on to "you eat what we eat" and "sleep training". Both were incredibly important, and we've had kids sleeping through the night from ~6 months old, and sleeping through in their own rooms. And like @streblo our bedtime routine starts relatively early compared to some of the other parents we know. My brother's kids (who are one and three) start their bed routine at 8:30, which is after my seven year old is typically asleep.
We also did our sleep training like you did - 5 / 15 / 30. We also found that coupled with baby sign we could often just deal with stuff - if the baby was crying and then signed for milk, then easy peasy.
Late to the party here:
But as a person with Autism, and sensory issues the you eat, what we eat thing ought to him limits. Now granted I do not have kids, but maybe someday if the Gods are kind. Anyway some of my worst memories growing up have to do with food. Pasta is generally nasty and fish usually smells so strong it makes me nauseous, and gets my synesthesia going real bad. But when i would tell the adults including parents about it. they'd accuse me of lying and insist i eat what was in front me. Which didn't lay a foundation of trust.
I don't know how you'd craft a food is a safe space sort of policy while still getting the kid to eat healthy
I think it absolutely must have limits, and it is a two way street; if the kids request something and it's not something that I'm overly into, I still eat it. And none of my kids have sensory issues, which kind of brings up the fact that these general things learnt all have very specific implementations that we all kind of handwaved away. These are all general approaches, but there are lots of specifics that might make these general approaches quite bad, so you have to weight everything with a grain of salt.
Sleep training sucked so bad. It hurt us so bad to hear them crying out for us and knowing we can't rush in there and comfort them. Obviously if they got hurt, we'd do that. But when it's just "I don't want to sleep!!!" fussing, that's different. But not really to us emotionally, because that "hear child cry, need to parent" instinct kicks in and you gotta fight that.
But it was worth it. Those couple of hours without the kids in the evening are so important to my wife and I's sanity. Neither of us would have any time for hobbies, relaxation, etc. without it. Not to mention no time for us to be a couple.
I've learned how little parents know about raising children, which makes me wonder how little parents really matter beyond the fundamentals of providing love, structure and support.
You take the screaming, shitting thing home and have an "oh shit, I have no idea what I am doing" moment. It never really stops. As a teacher, you probably intuitively know this. Parents have no clue. Even with the second child. I've had the help of a prenatal nurse raising my infant, and an experienced nanny raising my toddler. They both taught me that kids are so wildly different, what works for one will not work for the second. I've seen the same parents raise five different children with five completely different results. I've seen a teacher who was able to maintain steely discipline over 20-30 kids completely fail to maintain discipline over one of her own. I've seen parents do all the right things, and yet still their kids go wild, and other parents don't seem to give a shit, yet their kids turn out like gold.
I've also learned that teachers are amazing. So thank you.
More than anything, for the first 4ish years or so, we're helping them craft the lens through which they see the world. Almost all of the memories they have of that time will be a mushy mess before they're 10....but their memories and experience will guide their actions for decades to come.
Daycare is one of the greatest tragedies of the western world in my mind.
I think they've done some studies, and concluded that it's better to have a lower adult/child ratio, but I don't think it's going to make or break a child. Forcing mothers (or fathers) to stay at home and look after the children & household however, is not always ideal for the parent?
It might not be...but that's also one rub about parenting I think. You're not doing what's best for you, you're doing what's best for your kids. I see a marked difference in behavior between kids that have at least one parent home full-time and kids whom I've only met their nanny. I see another divide between parents that were able to take > 1 month off to care for their newborn and parents that had to return to work that week.
I agree that these services are important to have available, but also it should kinda be a method of last resort.
To clarify: Which ages are we talking about?
Because I was in "daycare", "kindergarten" or whatever from age 3 on. Only until noon, mom was part-timing it. Which was also the general MO in my vicinity; only a few kids were in the special program for even younger kids, and on the rare occasions I had to stay after lunch, the kindergarten was getting rather empty. And I don't think your criticism applies to 3+ kids. They're starting to figure out social stuff; they need some amount of other social contacts.
As for full-time (i.e. during a full-time workday) daycare, or daycare for younger kids, I think I agree.
I am referring to full-day childcare for under the age of 4. Specifically full-day nannies or childcare center. Pre-K and other part-day schooling is very important from a social aspect.
But nothing more depressing than seeing a room full of 18 month old babies watching youtube because the understaffed childcare facility can't even keep their staff from doing so when you're touring for pre-k schools.
If that's what your holding up as an example, then yea that sounds awful. But at least where I'm from, that seems a bit far-fetched? Our kids under 4 go to daycare (not right now because of maternity leave) and I think they have benefited a lot. There's 1:4 staff to kids ratio and kids engaging even in parallel play pick up on lots of social cues from being around other kids. My daughter, before we had two kids, was teaching me how to share and take turns while my wife and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. "Did you teach her this?" "No, did you?!"
Agreed about parental leave though. As a Canadian though, the parental leave for Americans always shocks me. We get 15 weeks for the birthing parent, plus up to 69 weeks to be split among the parents (although benefits are defined for a 40 week term).
Count your blessings I suppose. The for-profit daycare business serving the poorer neighboorhoods and collecting state subsidies is a bit of a travesty, and sadly not as uncommon as many would wish.
Perhaps it would be more accurate for me to say that the necessity of daycare paired with dual-income households is the tragedy.
I took 12 weeks for my second, half unpaid...the max that would keep my legal protections. It was not enough time.
One of the big things I've learned is that parenting can only influence the behavior of children to a certain degree, and the extent differs for every child. Before I had kids I was one of those people who thought "oh those brats are only misbehaving because the parents aren't doing their job." Now I realize how ridiculous that line of thinking is and when I hear or read other people (who are invariably childless) expressing similar opinions I just roll my eyes.
Oh yea. There's definitely room for "parents aren't doing their job," but you know....sometimes a kid just gonna throw a tantrum in a grocery store because you won't let them yank over a giant display of cans.
And sometimes your kid is just gonna be the one pulling over the display of cans because you're sleep deprived and you decided that's not the hill you have the energy to die on that day.