Ask HN: How are you a good dad to your kids?
Father's day coming up. Looking for what you think makes a great father. What activities or time that you spend with your children that you find most valuable? How can a new father make a difference in my kids lives?
46 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] thread* Emotional regulation. When he's upset, hold him and allow him to feel my calm breathing, help him breathe
* How to tell other people that he'd like more of something, that he'd like something to stop, or that he'd like something
* Good connection time by holding him and dancing, playing outside in the grass
* Good connection time by wrestling and tickling. (Plus, I think that kids like this because it helps them learn how to defend themselves)
* Good examples. I'm very good at emotional regulation and very attuned to what I want and need. Same with toward his mom. There are very very few behaviors that I have that I wouldn't be ok with him copying. My behaviors serve me well and I feel content, so I know that if he just mirrors me, which he's likely to, he'll be in a good spot
* Healthy food, minimized exposure to plastics and environmental toxins
* Guided his behavior in a way that makes him enjoyable to be around, which helps him get good loving connection from various people in his life
* As much as possible, I bring him with me and show him the things that I do and how I do them
* Taught him things by focusing on quick positive reinforcement of what I do want, rather than negative reinforcement of what I don't want. This means he's not stressed and trying to avoid bad things, instead he can seek good things
* Responding to him rather than reacting to him
I believe that when parents are calm and content, then following their intuition will lead to great things. That's how I've approached it. I worked really hard for a few years before having kids on becoming more calm, more content, more responding less reacting, creating more emotional safety with my wife and to myself, and getting in touch with my intuition. Then with parenting, I've followed my intuition.
* As much as possible, other than basic bodily needs, made him adjust to us rather than us adjusting to him. This way we're calm and not stressed by things he's doing, which makes it easy for us to be there for him in the way he needs and to be a good example
* Allowing him to have lots of small failures. Whenever I can let him experience a small consequence that won't be too bad, I do. This has been super helpful. He's learned how to prevent lots of bigger ones. I mean for things like small falls.
* Generally allowing him to experience the natural consequences of his actions as much as possible, both good and bad. Even if it has a negative consequence for him, as long as it's not too much.
* Good sleep, minimal medical interventions, generally relying on the body to be an expert at a body thanks to millions of years of evolutionary refinement
* Giving him exposure to as many things that he might enjoy as possible (hobbies and activity wise), and helping him have a positive first experience. Then the rest is on him. But if I can give him positive first experiences to dozens of activities, then I trust he'll be able to find some he loves. If I didn't expose him to them, he might not find them, and if I didn't help him have a positive first exposure, then he might not find an interest. But then after that he's on his own with it other than if he shows a ton of interest in it I'll support his interest
* Not doing things for him that I don't want to do. I keep my "debt" at zero. I don't want to do anything that'll make me build up subtle resentment toward him.
* Allow him to keep the responsibility for things. Yesterday he climbed into a box and gets stuck. Rather than help him out, I put a hand on his back, helped him breathe, then encouraged him that he'll be able to get out, and sure enough he did.
* I don't do things for him once unless I'd do them for him always (if I let him do something once, he'll expect it the next time, so then either I need to disappoint him, or I need to do something I don't want to do)
* I aim to be as predictable as possible for him and to help his world be predictable. The brain is a prediction engine and hates surprises, so I minimize the surprises he has to deal with
* My view is that by 10-13 or so I'll need to have taught him any skills and given him the emotional associations (things I hope he avoids and seeks), because he won't listen much after that. Emotional associations I'll never try and lecture to him, I'll only try and show him so he develops the emotional learning himself
* My view is that I'm aiming to make myself obsolete as a parent. I eventually want him to not need me.
* At first, protect him from the realities of the world. Then, introduce the realities of the world one tiny piece at a time so that by the time he's an adult, it's not a shock that he has to adapt to all at once.
When he's upset, I put a hand on his back (bare skin) and hold it there, or I hold him on my chest while he breathes and I breathe with him.
Or if he falls over and is further away from me, I look at him, take a few big breaths and suggest that he takes some breaths.
By 18 mo he was often doing the deep breaths automatically.
What I mean is, if someone showed me "deep breaths" I wouldn't conclude "people have emotions, they can affect us adversely, some times we don't control them if we're absent minded, better put some conscious effort into keeping them in check", least of all when I was 18 months.
I also got him to do a few times a full 5 minutes of yoga in a row jaja.
I'm talking about the practiced/done skill of emotional regulation. Seeing his ability to self-soothe relative to other kids at 18 months, it's very clear that he has a solid amount of the skill of emotional regulation, even without any understanding of what it means.
He climbs up somewhere and gets kinda stuck. I go over to him and put my hand on his back and breathe and invite him to breathe. Then I spot him, but I don't help him down, I encourage him that he'll be able to get down.
Often, he only wanted his mom to do the breathing with him. That's fine. He falls, cries, we both offer him a hug, he goes to mom and she breathes with him while he cries and I put my hand on his back while she's holding him and offer him a gentle gaze if he wants to look at me, while I breathe with him as well.
I didn't do the "hand in skin" part, because he had his clothes on and when I tried putting my hand inside his clothes it just annoyed him more.
He was having a tantrum. I sat on the couch and sat him on my lap facing me. I pulled him towards me chest on chest. He quickly got more annoyed to be held down but I kept him there. I started doing deep breaths. It took him a bit to realize that we were "doing something" but slowly he started settling down and within 10 minutes he had stopped crying. This is in contrast with "normal" where if I hold him down while having a tantrum it just escalates. Eventually I stopped when I noticed that he was about to fall asleep.
It's unclear whether the deep breaths actually contributed or whether this was just a lucky one-off. I'll continue this.
They will inevitiably rebel to one degree or another as teens, but as adults will revert to the model you provided.
1 Listening to them talk about stuff that is interesting to them but not to me such as video games, kids' books, toys.
2 Fixing their broken toys.
3 Building science models with them
4 Helping them collect stuff (such as rocks etc.) for school projects
5 Not yell at them when they don't get a simple math or programming concept (I have had a multi decade head start on them so I need to be patient)
I take both seriously. I’m not being trite, I structure my work day so I have real time with my son every day. I do activities that we can do together on the weekend, some that he enjoys and some we can enjoy together. I work every day on modeling good behavior for him, I don’t get frustrated when he is acting out, etc. don’t be crazy when you’ve got a two year old isn’t that intense, when you’ve got a 14 year old I’m sure it’s going to be trying.
Friends that I have who are relatively well adjusted had parents who mostly did both. They also seem to have good relationships with their parents in adulthood. It’s not going to make a good parenting book, but let’s be honest none of us are going to A/B test this stuff.
I feel that people take it as huge endeavour to raise a child. It is a big task indeed, but there is no need to go over the top.
After having kids of my own, a flood of disturbing realizations came to me about all the things they didn't do. For example, my parents never played with me. Ever. They never asked me about my day, asked what I was interested in, asked for my opinions on things, or tried to get to know me. We never hugged either. They were both completely incapable of comforting me when I was upset, and would get angry at me for expressing my emotions. They didn't teach me anything. Nothing. They didn't teach me how to cook, how to do laundry, how to manage money, how to fix stuff around the house, or how to manage my time. They gave me zero structure or rules, and simply did not care what I did or how late I stayed up. I was a latchkey kid starting at the age of 9. I spent the majority of my free time playing video games in my parents' basement.
My dad was also a "functioning" alcoholic. He was functioning in the sense that he could hold down a well-paying corporate job, but was otherwise totally checked out. He would get home from work at 6, pour a glass of scotch, plop down in front of the TV, and stay seated there for the rest of the night. Weekends weren't that different. Although he was physically present, he may as well have not been in my life at all. My mom wasn't much better. Although she didn't have a drinking problem, she enabled my dad's drinking and was obsessed with her own career, and was basically checked out as a parent as well.
It took my until the age of 34 to realize that my upbringing has had a disastrous impact on my mental health. Although from the outside my life looks pretty successful and prosperous, my inner world has been a jumbled mess of anxiety, fear, denial, and avoidance for my entire life. When I learned about the concept of "hypervigilance", it was like having my core personality trait summed up as a trauma symptom.
It's been a massive uphill battle for me to learn, essentially from scratch, how to be a good father. My number one goal is be emotionally present for my sons. My oldest isn't even two yet, but I try to: comfort him when he's upset, give him the vocabulary to express what he's feeling, play with him on the floor everyday, teach him the names of things we see on our walks together (birds, plants, trees, etc.), read to him, and give him choices that he can make on his own. As he gets older, I want to help him discover who he is and what he likes, rather than force him to like the things I like. Above all, I want to be present in his life, and for him to truly feel that he's loved and supported by me.
> answering here since I'm rate-limited:
Took maybe a year or two. I see them a couple times a year. Not saying to ignore facts and forget what they are, but to stop holding the grudge and move on.
For the shrinks, I wouldn't call it a "bad" experience, but an unfruitful one. Lots of words, terminology, techniques--just to dig the hole deeper. Better and simpler to just chalk it up to their own limitations as human beings and forgive. You don't get pissed at the dog for not knowing how to use a toilet. As the child, you are made from the same stuff. Without their counterexample, you probably would have settled into the same error.
For me personally, I think it's too soon to forgive them. The past six months have been the first time in my life that I've allowed myself to feel all the pent up rage I have towards them. It's the first time that I've stopped making excuses for their behavior too. I feel like I need to process all this anger before I can forgive them. And even then, I'm not sure I want them back in my life. They've continued to disappoint me even well into adulthood. For example, they chose to go on a long vacation instead of being in town during the birth of my first son (their first grandson). They missed his first birthday party as well, despite living only 45 minutes away.
That's interesting that you advise staying away from shrinks. Did you have a bad experience? I've been relying heavily on my therapist (and books written by therapists) to help me process these realizations. It's been extremely painful but overall I've found it helpful, especially the books.
There are a bunch of books on it now but the first was Running on Empty by Dr. Jonice Webb. She describes it well. Someone here on HN recommended it a few weeks ago and I read it. And low and behold I identify with it completely and it explains a lot of my life. And now I am working to break that cycle with my kids and wife first and eventually my parents if possible. It's been a lot of hard work.
I'm doing really well all things considered. As someone with older kids, if I may: don't ever lie to your kids about anything, ever, and if they ask you something you don't want to answer, tell them you don't want to answer it. Expect the same of them, and respect them when they don't want to tell you something too, unless it's pertinent to your duty to them. At some point your kids will realize they don't have to listen to you, and at that point they have to want to listen to you or they won't do it. For that, they have to respect you, look up to you and trust you. The only way to ensure this is to live up to what you expect of them and never bullshit them.
Do your hobbies and chores with them. This is horrible and painful as they set an epsilon < 1 multiplier to everything you need to do - take out trash, shop, change tires, fill dishwasher, fix, cook, clean... do everything you can together. Around year 5 the epsilon will start to go over 1 sometimes. At year 7 it will be over 1 most of the time.
Read to them every day. Tell them tall tales every day. Open as many window to the world as you can and see what interests them, tell more tales about that.
When you are angry at them and want to shout and hit the little buggers and loose control try to squat next to them and shout them at their level instead of using your adult height leverage. I found it helps a lot :)
I know this isn't as fun as teaching your kid how to ride a bike, but in the early years, it's very important to show up and do the work and not just be another person in your child's life who will transform into a father when bedtimes are later and communication is improved. It's also important to our marriage. She's not the mom, and I'm not the worker. We're the parents, and we're both involved in our children's lives.
One semi-related point of pride: We are English-speakers in a non-English-speaking country. I realized that there's no cultural reason my kids should call me "dad," "father," "daddy," "pops," or the like. No matter what they call me, it'll be weird to the native speakers of the local language. My wife and I decided the kids could call me "opossum" (pronounced "possum"). The oldest one has many stuffed opossum toys, and she likes to watch videos about opossums. She outgrew her baby blanket, but she was attached to it and didn't want to give it up. Since our daughter loves dogs, my wife bought one with dogs on it. That lasted 2 or 3 nights before she was back to the baby blanket. I ordered her a larger blanket with opossums and flowers on it, and she now proudly uses that one. Even though she doesn't understand the connection between me and the animal, she knows there is one, she's happy about it, and that is so fulfilling to me as her opossum.
I try to engage my kids around that, and try to encourage them in their strengths, help them through their weaknesses.
I also try to give advice when they are flustered. Listen to them when they are excited. Help them hash through their passion projects (my 3 kids have very different desires: so one is building games and I give him game / coding feedback, one is writing a book and I help him w/ his worldbuilding and story beats, one is working on internet influencing so I brainstorm and assist with technical issues).
I honestly don't know if it's the most valuable things to do because my kids are still young. I have 4 now, but I believe always finding time to spend with them and have things to talk about is most important no matter what it is.
I always liked this advice: Don't give the things you've never had, teach them the things you didn't know when you were young.
I simply went along with whatever they had wanted to do. My wife was stuck with all the non-fun stuff. We climbed mountains, we hiked across deserts, we flew airplanes, we canoed rivers, we ate whatever we wanted and when we wanted (at least when the wife was not around), let them routinely skip school when the wife was not in town, taught them to use all of the power and hand tools in my shop, taught them to use all of the equipment on my electronics benches, took them to IPSC matches, took them to rock concerts (at least I did not allow any weed smoking). Took them to whatever R-rated movies they wanted. Read Heinlein, Asimov, Sprague de Camp, Le Guin, and other such stuff when they were young as bed-time fare. I shit you not, their favorite was 'A Brief History of Time' - not a chance that kids at 5 and 7 years of age understood that Hawking shit, but they liked it.
The boy got a fancy PhD and does stupid shit for stupid people that pay him obscene salaries. The girl got music and math degrees and teaches music and math in a New Mexico public school.
My wife says that they turned out ok in spite of my non-efforts, not because of them. She may be correct, I dunno.
1. Have never knownly lied to my daughter- not about Santa Claus nor extreme sex. If she asks a question I answer it to the best of my ability.
2. Trust - I have have a very high level of trust and she has much more freedom than other children in her class.
3. Constantly saying how proud I am of her and how much I love her.
It help we are in Australia where it is very safe, no guns.