June 15th, 2024
Posted 1 day ahead, as I will be traveling tomorrow.
“Daddy can you pick me up?
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment. One day you will set them down and never realize it was the last time, until it becomes a memory.”
Dr. Suess
I really did not want to be a father. It scared me. That is probably the reason that I was 38 years old when my first son was born. By then, I had aged enough to realize that not everything was about me and what made me feel good.
Once I had sons to take care of, I was determined that I would be as good a father as I could. I didn’t want to be a parent that spent as little time as possible with his children, no matter how difficult and tiresome that turned out to be. I think many fathers have children when too young. They still think too much about their own needs and pleasures, and neglect others.
Being responsible as a father, helped prepare me for the time in 2002 when I suddenly found myself being a single parent. Once your household goes from 2 people sharing the load down to 1, your workload doubles. Working a full time job and taking care of 2 children can be very tiring and at first, a little chaotic. I remember asking a psychologist at the time, “what do I need to do to make sure my boys aren’t adversely affected by living with a single parent?” Surprisingly, she advised me that it involved a very simple concept, but one that was very daunting for most people to implement.
The concept was “to make them the number one priority in your life”. That sounds easy when you say it to yourself, but in practice it is very difficult. It means all the things YOU enjoy doing are over. Everything you do, wraps around their life. It means you will spend much of your time driving them to band practices, school clubs and activities, baseball, soccer and basketball practices and games. And you can’t just drop them off. Many parents do that to the bane of teachers and coaches who are responsible for them when you don’t show up on time at the end. They aren’t your baby sitters. It is very important for your child to know that you are there to watch them, and observe their accomplishments. Many of these events require you to be there to cheer your child on or congratulate them on a task well done. Occasionally you have to pick them up from a field or court, and take them to an Immediate Care Facility. Injuries happen. You may have to console them when they or their team don’t do well.
Homework becomes a part of your life. You can never tell your child to just figure it out themselves. If you don’t know a subject, you have to take the time to learn just like them. I spent more than 2 hours for 5 nights a week during the semester my younger son took Advanced Placement World History to help him do well in the course. And that was after his basketball practices and games, often ending at mid-night or later. You have to make trips to the craft and hardware store to procure the items they need to build all the special projects that various teachers require for their courses. This includes things like 3D flowers that depict all the scientific parts, models of the Solar System to scale (actually impossible, as it is to vast to fit in a small town, or carry in on the bus), and a working solar oven that will bake cookies. A lot of these things will force you to get up early so you can transport it to the school as taking it on the bus will result in destruction before it makes it to class. Then you have to try to make it into your job afterwards.
There are also non-school and sports related things they like to do. You have to stay up past mid-night to catch the first showing of a “Lord of the Rings”, “Star Wars”, or a super hero movie. You go camping, bike riding, fishing, or shopping. You take them out for pizza, to a professional sports event, the food court at the mall, a friends house, to overnighters, or you host overnighters. You watch television, but not any show you want to watch. It could be a cartoon when they are young, or an NBA basketball game when they are older. Basically, you become a taxi driver, housekeeper, maid, and cook.
If they are the number one priority, you can never say, “Well I can’t be there for you as I have to work. If I don’t, we won’t have food to eat or a house in which to live”. If that is your case, you better get a new job. Your career is priority number 2. Anything YOU want is priority 3+. That includes sleep, relaxing in a chair, your hobby, or reading a book. You have to take vacations that they like, not ones you enjoy. For up to 18 years of your life, it is all about them.
“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”
Catherine M. Wallace
Well, you might think, that sounds like spoiling your children. Yes, it might, if you were a 2 parent home. But, you are trying to overcome a huge deficit in their upbringing, that almost always has a negative impact on their lives. Two parents can share the load. But working alone, you are trying to keep them from falling into the same troubling statistical group as children from most broken homes.
Maybe you will say “what is in it for me?” You will be tired, bored, frustrated, disinterested, can sometimes be crabby, and will be completely worn out. On the other hand, you might also walk down the hallway at their school, and hear other students whisper enviously, “that guy is Tyler’s dad”. Or, a teacher might tell you, “we wish every student behaved like Zach”. If you are successful, you will also discover at the end, that it was the best 18 years of your life. And if anybody asked, “would you do it again?” your answer would be “in a heartbeat!”
All these things don’t make you some sort of hero. They are just the job you accepted when you become a father. They are your responsibility.
Just a reminder: One day you will have a clean house and a car with a spotless interior, and all you'll want is for the ones who made the mess to come home.
Starting All Over 