We live in a society where everyone has their own opinion. You read an article and you think you are the expert on the topic. The more you are emotionally involved, the more you think you are in the right.
There are hundreds of books (not articles) in a library on how to raise a child, how to be a better parent, how to tackle impossible fatherhood etc. For me, this was especially challenging
because I was deeply lacking a father figure in my childhood. I have only a few memories of my father before the fifth year of my life. My male personas in my childhood were mostly my grandpa and uncle. So I had
a vague idea of what a father or a husband should do but nothing less. Still, as I became a father, I started treating myself as an unwritten sheet of paper. And I liked it because I had this idea of becoming the best possible
father my kids could ever wish for. After all, I chose the correct methods to apply to my kids. There is one minor issue here that I didn’t take into consideration when I read all those books. And that issue is
that I forgot, how kids quickly change. They change quicker than I can remember what should I do as a father in certain periods of their childhood. Luckily I buy books that I think are of great value and have some sort of common
sense inside them. I deeply cherish books where personal stories of parents and kids are involved. I also love the psychology behind everything. So books gave me a great sense of security and confidence in how to raise
a healthy kid.
Recently I came across a podcast: The HeartWorking Dad Podcast for Christian Fathers1 where Gabriel in one of his episodes talks about how important is to reflect yourself where is your heart when you are actively raising your kid. And it struck me how many times I used my force and not my power to achieve something with kids. For example, I said to SA to clean her clothes. I repeated it multiple times and she refused to do it until I used my force and made her do it. Of course problem here was not my daughter when she ignored me as I told her to clean up after herself. She ignored me because I had no contact with her. I was applying military techniques to her. My heart was not with her. My heart was distant, cold, and if I’m honest, frightened. In the moment I was not aware of my inner infinite power that was laid down on me when I was born as a man. The way I see it when it comes to raising a child and it’s not told in all the books are two main ingredients that every man should know of.
- Without connection with my kids I am not raising a child, I am having an obedient/disobedient kid. (I already have a dog that is obedient, I don’t my kid to be like a dog which would be silly).
- If my heart is distant and cold (and I think this is the consequence of the first failing point above) kids will ignore me. I would also ignore and hide from my cold distant boss. Someone will say, yeah but sometimes I’m in a hurry I don’t have time for all that compassionate cr*p. I get it. And believe me especially when you have an infant child this can happen a lot. I mean being in a hurry. So you just have to lower the bar to match the kids’s capabilities. Also sometimes you just do it instead of a kid in one of those urgencies. I think the key is to remember they are kids and we have an obligation to raise them appropriately to their years so they will become compassionate healthy moral human beings.