Parenting: It Always Starts with You
You're raising future adults, have you first raised yourself?
If you’ve never tried becoming a proper adult, you’re going to find parenting more challenging than if you’ve kicked your own ass over the years. That’s because parenting is fundamentally an endeavor of training and developing future adults. What kind of adult are you?
You can only teach them what you know.
Seems obvious, right? That kind of line is something generic you’d see inside a fortune cookie or maybe as a caption to a bland corporate motivational picture. Really think it through for a minute.
If your kid cries, what do you do? Do you know how to process your own emotions? Or are you a bundle of unresolved trauma yourself, and when your child cries, you seek to soothe him or her immediately. Anything to make it stop. Why tho? What’s wrong with letting a kid keep those emotional channels open by having them release their energy? Maybe you’re too weak to let it flow into you?
Kids will piss you off. That’s because your mind is weak.
Who cares if kids act like kids? Sure you have to supervise them. No one is saying to raise wolves. Usually you’re most frustrated when your child doesn’t model adult behavior. How good is your adult behavior? Do you give into petty family drama, feel jealousy, and overeat or under-exercise? Is your own heart full of greed, jealousy, and lust? Probably. It’s bizarre that we expect children to behave as idealized version of adults. It’s a standard we don’t even live.
You will get tired, do more low zone cardio.
“Life is aerobic.” This is hard to explain unless you’ve done athletic stuff. Let’s see.
Chasing kids around should not make you winded.
You may reach VT1, which is when you can sort of feel your breath kicking in. You should be able to spend hours going after and playing with your children. Doesn’t mean it won’t feel like nothing. It should not feel “hard.”
If running after your kids is making you legitimately physically tired, you have Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome. (Read here to fix that.)
You also probably have poor mitochondrial health and are going to have a bunch of health stuff fail you badly. Training isn’t about vanity. I used to shave my arms and inject trenbolone. That all seems hilariously narcissistic now. Even goofy.
You’re going to die sooner and be less of a good parent if you’re not getting in an aspirational amount of movement.
You’ll find the right amount for yourself. Personally I shoot for 40 hours a month. Last month it was only 36 hours due to being sick post-Christmas. Other times I luck out and hit 44 hours. Once I hit over 60 hours. No idea how I wasn’t passed out tired.
Some guys my age are training for Ironmans and have weeks where they hit 30 hours in a week and regularly do 80-100 hours a month. That wouldn’t work for me. It may for you. Find out, you might be pleasantly surprised!
(There’s no way I could get all of this in. Doesn’t mean you can’t.)
Background stress determines training volume. If other stuff is hectic, do your workouts but keep it chill. When life is chill, use that time to add some volume.
Anyway, I upped the hours of my lower end stuff and after a few months (it takes a while, and you don’t notice gains really as this is happening primarily on a cellular level, which sure all training effects are), I definitely had more stamina throughout the day.
This is a good read on these subjects.
Also listen to Peter Attia’s podcast regularly.
Bed time is the Witching Hour.
By 6 or so p.m., I’m tired. And my life is pretty ideal. Wife is a super mom. My work schedule is flexible. All empathy for those in different life circumstances.
I don’t pretend to have a rough life. (HOWEVER, no one has an easy life. That’s something you’ll learn if you’re young and make it to an older or middle age. You’d be surprised what people deal with behind the scenes. You never have any clue, honestly.)
You have to watch yourself. Kids have huge surge of energy before bedtime. They will go from running around like feral lemurs to snoozing.
So the hour or two when you’re ready for the day to be over and the kids think it’s beginning is when you must watch your vibe.
Also that’s why the low end cardio helps. It’s subtle. You will 100% understand once you do it.
Your kids don’t understand words, they FEEL ENERGY.
Imagine this.
You wake up. Standing over you is a 15 foot, 500 pound Goliath. It’s making noises you don’t understand. What would your survival mechanism be?
You’d want to feel out the vibe. You’d be completely in tune to the giant’s facial expressions and emotions. Is this monstrous entity angry, happy, or sad?
Kids see us as bigger than Shaq. They don’t understand our language yet. It’s all vibrational during early developmental years.
Kids don’t care about facts, they feel your feelings.
Something I’ve noticed, and this is a real problem I’m working on.
Right now I’m writing. I look angry. It’s focused intensity. My 4 year old walks in (while the baby naps, my kid is playing and I’m writing) and wants to play Memory. We play this game several times a day. It’s not an unusual request from her.
Do I snippy snap, “What!?” There’s no foul intent. Kid doesn’t know that. Kid sees large angry human.
Be mindful of your vibrations. How does your body feel? That’s way more important than your words.
Watch this video. It’s true.
Parenting will purify your soul, if you let your children teach you.
Have you seen that Morgan Freeman video where he said, “You prayed for patience, and then got upset when God gave your struggles. How else would you have learned to be patient?” Maybe Instagram will show you that clip not via spyware. Good one, go find it.
When children upset you, why? What is it about the situation that is triggering something inside you?
My children tell me they hate me, then love me, then I’m the best dad in the world and the worst. They are kids. Why would their insults work? However a lot of parents internalize and take these jabs personal.
Why does it bother you if a child cries? Maybe it’s because you’re afraid to cry? Maybe you have unprocessed trauma? I don’t know. That’s for you to find out.
When your child falls down and gets hurt, how do you feel? Are your projecting your fear on the child, or worse, is your helplessness creating anxiety and anger inside you?
Do you talk to your children like they are full people, or do you see them as “just kids.” That could be how you were treated.
Maybe you don’t feel like you have enough power in the outside world, or maybe your internal power is low, and you therefore talk down to your kids?
You won’t know your wife, or husband, or yourself until you have children.
Watch yourself and your partner. Then you will finally begin to understand them, and yourself.
"Why would these insults work?" This was a powerful point made. It seems tolerance is coming up everywhere. From rhetoric on the left to sermons at church. This is an important distinction on how tolerate insults from kids, but not from adults. I feel, and I hope I can be corrected if wrong, if we tolerate insults from adults we are tolerating our own lack of respect, self-worth, or principles.
"Between Parent and Child", by Hiam Ginott is an eye opener book. It's the Bible for raising children. (Not that my opinion matters to any of you lol) The big takeaway is demonstrating EMPATHY toward children. Perhaps there'd be less screwed up people in the world if they grew up with Empathetic parents instead of Boomer parents telling them to shut up, mind your business, take your pills to make the hurt go away. Also, "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen" great book, from a Ginott student.