Daughters and Sons
When you view your children as a welcome opportunity instead of an interruption, you feel differently about parenthood.
People commonly ask me how I am raising my daughters, and it’s an amusing question. The subtext is that I’m a toxic masculinity guy. Anyway it’s funny to me, as I don’t have a fixed version of what a “real man” or “real woman” should be. Humans express themselves in various forms, and generally we want to keep our children away from known vices like promiscuity and opioids. Protect them from perverts. Otherwise you’re kidding yourself if you think you can control their destiny. (And that would be pathetic, anyway, don’t you have your own life?)
Your children are mostly out of your control, anyway.
My 6 year old trains BJJ and catches lizards. She does kettlebell exercises with me. My 4 year old changes her outfits several times a day and walks about 10 steps before she sits down “to rest.” She has princess dresses and somehow found a pair of plastic shoes with heels. She is obsessed with “being fancy,” and for my birthday dinner, insistent on wearing a Beauty and the Beast dress, necklace, and those heels.
They’ve both been parented the same way, they are totally different.
Why?
Because DNA. Because ancestors. Because we didn’t come out of test tubes. This shouldn’t be overly complicated to understand.
You’re less a parent and more a coach.
My older daughter will be more soulful and needs to learn to not let compassion for others lead you to be manipulated. My younger daughter needs more guidance and attention, starting early, for obvious reasons.
If I tried making my older be a Disney princess, she’d maybe conform out of being forced to, and she’d resent me. Same is true if I pushed my younger daughter into more physical fitness activities.
We let them be who they are, warn them about “the bad people,” and set a good example at home for them to model as they get older.
We are raising “spiritual beings in physical bodies,” not automatons for the system.
Children want your attention.
There’s a saying that goes, “Quantity time is quality time.”
Everyone wants to find a loophole to this, especially men. “I am not ignoring my children, I am building a better life for them!” Then why do you turn on ESPN when you get home?
You need to decompress? So does your wife. Oh and your children need your attention.
Everyone in the household has emotional needs. But only the man - who will totally tell you that his children are his life - gets to zone out.
(Ironically it is these same men who claim that women / children are the emotional ones.)
Whenever I hear older parents talk about how their teenagers become “rebellious,” I wonder how much time was clocked in during those early years.
“Wait Until ____.”
Why is it that when you seem to be enjoying parenthood, people will say, “Just wait until ____.” They say this about everything by the way. Wait until you get my age.
Maybe.
Let’s compare notes on what you were up to when you were my current age? Did you really take your own life seriously by decade, or did you coast? If you coasted, then yes, this stuff is hard. 100% I agree.
Anyway….
Your Bimbo / Mr Cool Guy Life was Not Interrupted. (Get Over Yourself.)
It’s annoying how people cry about how hard it is raising kids, and I have some theories. Too many parents view their children as having interrupted some imagined amazing life.
You see this on Instagram with “wine moms.” They “joke” all day about counting down until they can drink wine, because their kids are stressful! No, you’re an alcoholic. That’s totally a separate matter from the work of raising little ones.
Dads can be toxic in their own way. If it weren’t for kids and wifey holding them back, they’d totally be living the lifestyle of James Bond (or the guy from Scarface).
The root cause of this is that these are generally basic people who think going to brunch or getting drunk is an “adventure.”
When you view your children as a welcome opportunity instead of an interruption, you feel differently about parenthood.
Well how do you raise daughters vs. sons?
I was a boy raised around boys and we were pretty psycho. The Lord of the Flies is probably what would happen, except that after a war there’s be an established hierarchy and then periods of stability.
Young men need boundaries, and it’s a father’s job to enforce them.
However the biggest issue I see in raising boys is the belief that boys and men don’t have emotions. “Learn to control your emotions.” Yes, I agree. I wrote a best-selling book about this in 2015.
Controlling emotions doesn’t mean denying them. From what I’ve seen and experienced, child-aged boys are more emotional than child-aged era girls. The boys at the mat at BJJ cry a little more frequently than the girls do.
You’re not helping boys by telling them to stop crying. Emotional control is based on dialogue and unpacking.
Why do you feel this way?
What led to this?
Do you like feeling this way?
Do you believe crying helps you feel better or worse?
Sometimes when my daughters think they are hurt, I ask them: “Did you die?” Once they really, no, they didn’t, they see it’s not really a big deal and move on.
Holding onto emotions creates scar tissue. Scar tissue is weaker than muscular tissue…
Parenting is amazing, ignore the haters.
People telling you how hard parenting is are right, it’s hard, but you also have to ask yourself what those people did that was great.
Going to the gym regularly is hard. Playing office politics is hard. Starting a business is really hard.
Sitting home at the couch doing nothing is hard. Being a slave to your vices is the hardest life of all.
There’s no escape from the work of life, and that’s why it’s better to embrace and enjoy it.
“Although the road is never ending take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance... On this path let the heart be your guide for the body is hesitant and full of fear. - Rumi
The differences in personality between my kids is just so entertaining to me. While I do believe in certain overall parenting approaches (do you know the love and logic books? Very helpful I think), as a pediatrician I also see almost daily families with 2,3,4 kids where the approach that worked great with one or two of them does nothing for the next one. The parents go “I thought we were just such good parents but I guess not, the first kid was just more laid back in retrospect ” or something like that. There’s no universal approach, same as in anything, you truly have to enjoy getting to discover each child alongside them and then slowly figure out what works and what doesn’t. I agree, it is very worthwhile, and so much fun!
Thank you for the great post.
One pet peeve is how adults think all teens are these disrespectful nightmare types. I know so many upstanding, respectful, outright admirable teens (we have lots of homeschool friends), the “you know how teens are” thing seems like an easy out for certain parents. But who knows, mine are so young, ask me again in 20…