The Parent as Teacher
With Father’s Day just around the corner I am particularly grateful this year for the precious gift I was given two weeks ago. It’s also a chance to reflect on my 18+ years as a parent and give myself a self-assessment of sorts. Overall I think I have done pretty well while still making many mistakes, as is inevitable with raising other human beings. In addition to reflecting on my decisions at different times I cannot help but consider my overall parenting strategy.
I was raised by teachers. Not classroom teachers, but teachers nonetheless. My experience with both my parents as well as my grandparents was one of constant lessons. From the simple, “Chew with your mouth closed,” to the more complicated, “This is how to change a flat tire,” to the theoretical, “Here’s how you might mend your broken heart,” the most important adults in my life were constantly sharing their acquired knowledge with me. So of course, that is the way that I parent.
My daughters do not think of these lessons as teaching. They call them ‘lectures’ and there is a fair amount of eye-rolling that follows. For a long time I thought I must be doing something wrong. Maybe I was too stern. Maybe they wanted these bits of wisdom presented to them as suggestions instead of as facts. I have considered that perhaps the Internet Age has made them skeptics. Afterall, for every how-to video you will find on YouTube there are five others that tell you to do it a completely different way. Dad isn’t a doctor so when he gives advice on what to do with the blister on the back of their heel after a day of hiking, surely WebMD would be a better resource.
Make no mistake, I am not claiming my lessons should trump all others. An important part of growing up is also seeking knowledge outside your home and accepting that Dad Isn’t Always Right. I first moved beyond my father’s teachings when I bought my first foreign car. Several Hondas and Toyotas later I am pretty sure he was wrong about the superiority of American automobiles in the 1990s.
Writing for Front Porch Republic, Skyler Reidy discusses lessons also learned from a parent:
Little lessons like these, rooted in space and time, are the seeds from which habits grow. I still make a point to coil hoses when I’m done with them, and I feel my skin crawl when I see people put away hoses improperly. American flags and neighbors’ gates have also taken on an air of holy obligation. I’ve come to see what my father saw, that there is simply a way things are done.
My sense of frustration over having daughters that resist my teaching moments had dissipated in recent months as I have found a willing student in my oldest nephew. He and I have always been close and he has been spending some time in the woods with me this spring. As I pass on my knowledge of the outdoors and hunting he seems to genuinely enjoy learning from me and asks the questions that demonstrate a mind that understands. It soothes my pride in a way that I would be ashamed of if I was more humble.
As for my daughters, I know that they will get older and, as Reidy suggests, those lessons will become habits and they will do as I do and chuckle to themselves when they realize they were tricked into following dad’s advice. When I am gone I hope they will take comfort in those lessons the way I do now with my dad and my grandfather gone. Their teaching moments live on in me and for that I am extremely grateful.
Mouth closed, eh? While chewing? Impossible.Report
Several Hondas and Toyotas later I am pretty sure he was wrong about the superiority of American automobiles in the 1990s.
Doesn’t the “several” kind of undermine your point? 😉
On a serious note, though, Mike, I’m glad your daughter is ok, and I hope she’s handling the stress of her friend’s death reasonably well.Report
If your daughters described their post-hike symptoms to WebMD they’d get a diagnosis of “angina” or “herpes.” Dad is probably going to have better information to offer.Report
Lyme disease. On the Internet, all diseases are Lyme disease. Except Lyme disease, which is ALS.Report
It’s never lupus!Report
I went to the Doctor to get help with what I suspected was Lyme, but he just told me to put it in the coconut and drink them both up.
I gotta get a new Doctor.Report
Ouch.Report
Tell me about it. I also think he might have been nearsighted and misogynist, he kept calling me “silly woman”.Report
Perhaps he thought you were bad to the bone.Report
There could be a post in this somewhere: “Musical Misdiagnoses”.Report
Fortunately, you can treat them all with good lovin’Report
Except when I’ve got a bad case of lovin’ you.Report
Just try getting an accurate diagnosis on rockin’ pneumonia, which often presents with symptoms very similar to the boogie-woogie flu.Report
Or, if you check often enough, carpal tunnel.Report
I have discovered that if you go through enough steps with any symptom on WebMD, you eventually get to either cancer or late-stage AIDS.
I don’t use WebMD anymore.Report
I generally don’t consult the Internet for medical diagnoses because of the invariable appearance of the worst case scenario. The Russian, on the other hand, does. He recently had his gall bladder removed and found out about all possible side effects via Google. Some were pretty unpleasant, so of course he spent weeks worrying about which ones would afflict him. And talking about it incessantly.
Needless to say, the surgery was fairly easy, and he had no side effects.Report
Consulting the internet tends to work better when you’ve done work for Doctors Without Borders.
… of course, then you get the inevitable “What, you don’t have a thermometer” faceplants…Report
This is a great piece, Mike.
Be sure not to discount the countless lessons you offer them even when your mouth ain’t yappin’. Modeling is one of the most effective forms of teaching. How you interact with your wife teaches them what they should expect from their own partners and how they should treat them. How you respond to failure, adversity, and errors demonstrate how they should do the same. How you carry yourself with others shows them the social skills and expectations you value.
My wife laughs at how my dad and I will walk our lawn with the same gait and will stand with our wait shifted to the same leg when stopping to evaluate a tree’s health. My dad didn’t teach me to walk, but I learned nonetheless.Report
“Be sure not to discount the countless lessons you offer them even when your mouth ain’t yappin’. Modeling is one of the most effective forms of teaching. ”
St. Francis once said, ‘Preach the Gospel. When necessary, use words.’.Report
I’m not much for preaching, but I *love* that.Report
I SO want that on the wall outside my classroom. Shame it’d never fly in a public school.Report
Nothing creates a teachable moment like realizing your own way of doing things, well, sucks. I’ve seen many students even in a formal classroom say “I don’t need your help I got this”, then proceed to work for 10 minutes, check their answer and stare in frustration. Then they get up, bring their paper to me and say “Okay… do I do this again?”
I know I blew off somewhere around 80% of my parents’ advice. Then I had kids of my own. Then I had a job of my own. Then I… had a life of my own.
And ~THEN~ I realized my parents knew a great deal more than I thought at the time and I’ve spend about the last 20 years or so telling them “Yeah… that thing you tried to tell me back in the 90’s? Turns out you were right after all.”
Better late than never right?Report
“Nothing creates a teachable moment like realizing your own way of doing things, well, sucks.”
And that requires realizing you HAVE a way of doing things. The self-reflection required to step back and say, “This is the way I do things and here’s why,” is something lost on many people. They often don’t even think about what they do, how, and why; they simply do.Report
The Romans used to say grandparents and grandchildren were natural allies: they had an enemy in common. The same is true of Uncles/Aunts and Nephews/Nieces: an enemy in common.
With kids, the REC button is always on. They’re constantly watching us, observing how less-than-perfect we are. Every time they start with the eye-rolling — guess where they learned that? From watching their parents do the same thing to each other.
Kids understand authority. Like trust, authority is earned. Occasionally I’d turn to my kids, who weren’t always amenable to instruction and gripe to them: “Hey, did it ever occur to you that I was once your age, that I’ve felt the way you feel about someone telling me to do things? I wasn’t born this old, you know. If you want to figure this out for yourself, go for it. I’ll be over in my office, stop by when you want some help, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to try to teach a pig to sing. Wastes my time and annoys the pig.”Report
The Romans used to say grandparents and grandchildren were natural allies: they had an enemy in common.
Probably true, and I don’t mean to dispute it. But it curiously juxtaposes this NBER paper I saw just yesterday that claims grandparents who live with their grand kids have poorer health than those who don’t. I guess grandparents should ally with their grand kids from a distance, rather than in close quarters.Report
From Grimm’s Fairy Tales:
There was once a very old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold the spoon, and spilt the broth upon the table-cloth or let it run out of his mouth. His son and his son’s wife were disgusted at this, so the old grandfather at last had to sit in the corner behind the stove, and they gave him his food in an earthenware bowl, and not even enough of it. And he used to look towards the table with his eyes full of tears. Once, too, his trembling hands could not hold the bowl, and it fell to the ground and broke. The young wife scolded him, but he said nothing and only sighed. Then they brought him a wooden bowl for a few half-pence, out of which he had to eat.
They were once sitting thus when the little grandson of four years old began to gather together some bits of wood upon the ground. ’What are you doing there?’ asked the father. ’I am making a little trough,’ answered the child, ’for father and mother to eat out of when I am big.’
The man and his wife looked at each other for a while, and presently began to cry. Then they took the old grandfather to the table, and henceforth always let him eat with them, and likewise said nothing if he did spill a little of anything.Report
Make them fight a two-front war.Report
The Romans used to say grandparents and grandchildren were natural allies: they had an enemy in common.
The Romans and Sam Levenson.Report
You (and family) have been much in my thoughts.
We went through a very difficult year, troubles for both children when they were in high school. It was, in retrospect, a challenge I’m grateful for, though I’d not wish it on any family or child; it changed our family dynamic for the better. We know, beyond shadow of any doubt, we can trust and rely on each other. I know my lectures then shaped the adults I love now; I see it in the values they bring to little things they do each and every day. But at the time, I simply had to have faith that it would help shape them.
And I had to be prepared that it wouldn’t shape them in directions I wanted. A large part of parenting is the letting go. That is a lot more difficult then the hundreds of behaviors, big and small, we model each and every day. Some days, I think it’s the most important behavior to model; that message of, “I trust you to be.”Report
Zic,
My daughter went out with some friends last Saturday, about a week after The Wreck. It was unbelievably hard to let her go but we knew it was the right thing to do.Report
I bet it was hard. You did right, though. She needs you to trust her. It will help her trust herself again.
And someday, I’ll tell you about my son’s crotch rocket, but probably not about the day he lost it. He wasn’t hurt, but his freedom rode on the line, and on his way to his first day of college, too. Coyote.Report
My son, 15, has a little brother who’s 4 (he turns 5 next month). As a result of the difference in age between them, and the fact that his little brother’s biological father is not in the picture, my son vacillates between big brother and father figure. Watching him in his father-figure role has been fascinating for me, because so many of his “parenting” habits are copies of my own with him. I definitely get to see many of the good and bad habits I had when he was younger. For example, one of my habits was to explain both the why and the how of pretty much everything I did, as I did it. So I watch my son cooking dinner and saying to his little brother, who watches him attentively, “and now I do this for this reason, and then I do this other thing for this other reason.” On the other hand, I see how he gets frustrated with his little brother in much the same way that I used to get frustrated with him (his little brother is markedly speech delayed, as my son was, so their frustrations, and their frustrating behaviors, are very similar).
As a result of watching my son with his brother, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my parenting, and I’ve also made a concerted effort to explain why some of the things I did, which he is now repeating, were probably not the right things to do.Report
Great piece, Mike. I’m still hoping my stepson picked up something from either the Russian or me in the years that he lived with us. I’m not sure kids really hear their parents’ words of wisdom until much later on down the road, but that still doesn’t mean it’s not worth instructing them both by words and deeds.Report