I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.But all they want to do
Excerpt from “Introduction to Poetry,” by Billy Collins
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it
It’s hard, immersed as we are in a language of usefulness and purpose and success, to grasp what it means to delight in something for what it is. We know this is a poem, Collins’s students say, but what does it mean? What did the author intend by writing it? Just who the heck does he think he is, writing a poem that doesn’t mean something?
People face a much stronger expectation to be useful than words, and our own children a higher expectation still—it’s not enough that they make it in this world; we want them to excel.
That’s a good thing to want, and much of our labor as fathers is intended to build up our children. To set them on a right path, equipped to succeed.
But what path?
The right one, of course. Like, a really good one.
Good for whom?
Well, for them, duh. Is this a trick question?
But what if the good path for your child entails little financial success? What if it means being an oddball whom most people don’t understand? What if the good path means not being one of the “normal” kids, not having cool Instagram moments, or not getting good grades in school because her teachers are mindnumbingly dull? What if it means no college, because he wants to fix things with his hands?
This habit is about training our eyes to see what is delightful in our children, especially that which is different from us. To see the good in them that we might otherwise miss, because we’re too preoccupied with how they’re not what we expected.
Thank God they’re not what we expected.
Look, I know: Parenting entails disappointment. Our kids embarrass us in the grocery store. We get a note from the teacher because they flunked two tests in a row. They date the wrong kids, listen to the wrong music, wear stupid clothes, get stupid haircuts, stay up too late, eat too much junk, slouch in their chairs, wreck our cars, leave the back door unlocked no matter how many times we remind them.
I’ve learned two things the hard way about disappointment. The first is that they know. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to them about their screw-ups, and issue punishments when necessary. It just means that we don’t need to belabor how screwed up we think their screw-ups are. They know already. Disappointment comes out of our pores, just as it oozed out of our parents before us.
The other thing I’ve learned is to look for the difference—in myself—between disappointment when they fall short of their best, and disappointment when they fall short of who I want them to be.
Every person’s best is to be loving toward others, to be creative, to work and ask questions and discover his purpose in Creation. We should be disappointed when our children fall short of these ideals, just as we’re disappointed in ourselves when we fall short.
It’s the other kind of falling short I have to guard against—the kind that’s a gap between my fantasy of a perfect life and the life that is the best one for my particular child to live. Full of the essential human virtues, yes. But one that realizes his ambitions, rooted in his strengths, his vision. Not mine.
The difficulty is that we all want to cast our preferences as virtues. My grandmother believed it was a sin for men to have long hair. My grandfather believed blacks and whites shouldn’t intermarry. I believe bad novels are evil. We all make our preferred lifestyles into revelations from God. And we become a puritanical parent who slathers his children in guilt when they don’t have his likes and dislikes, don’t achieve what he achieved, don’t believe what he believes.
It’s a recipe for a broken relationship and a hamstrung child. We can do better, dads.
And where we start is by practicing the habit of just delighting in them. No agenda to better them, just pure enjoyment. Enjoy their noise, their chaos, their silliness. Their inability to follow the rules of a board game. Their desire to watch morons on Youtube talk about moronic video games. The way they blithely spill their breakfast cereal all over the table. Their poor clothing choices and their bad music and their farts. Take some time to embrace all of it, if only for a few minutes a day.
As I calmly write this culmination to the twelve habits of Intentional Fathering, one of my twins has decided to help occupy my writing chair, cramping my ability to make notes.
Now his brother has joined him. My instinct is to grump at them. I’m doing Important Work here. But I don’t think I’m going to. I’m going to end it here, because you get the point.
I’m going to let them make a mess of my notes and my clothes, and then I’m going to join them in waking their older brothers, and I’m going to watch the ensuing chaos with delight. Because life is short, and our time with them is shorter, and if they take nothing else from us I think they’ll be in good shape to face the world knowing that we loved them.
No matter what else we accomplished or left undone, we loved them.
I love these little people; and it is no slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens
Additional Resources
Seeing for the First Time. Part meditation, part guidance on how to see familiar things with fresh eyes.
The Power of Touch. Dr. Karen Young breaks down all the ways loving touch makes us better, happier, stronger human beings.
The Understated Affection of Fathers. Professor Kory Floyd, a specialist in male communication, explains the subtle ways fathers have of expressing love.