Parental Responsibility

Being a parent is one of the most rewarding things I've done in life. With that said, it's also exhausting, frustrating, and may or may not cause some frustrating situations between my wife and I, but at the end of the day, no matter how it went, there's a sense of peace and joy when you see your child finally sleeping.

As an over-thinker, however, being a parent is terrifying all the time. I constantly have mental battles with myself about being a helicopter parent. I want to catch him every time he falls, but I know that isn't the right thing to do. I think about how every single action of mine will affect who he is when he grows up. Even if I'm exhausted, I know he shouldn't watch too much TV / become addicted to YouTube. I know when I'm feeling lazy, I shouldn't just pick up McDonalds for dinner - he needs to eat real food. There are a million things going through my head all the time of what a "good parent" should do, and it is a never-ending struggle.

While I really don't have any good answers, I still want to dive into some of the thoughts I've had, who I somehow (sickeningly) base my parenting model on (RIP), and the things I've learned.

My son just started preschool, and while I haven't struggled as much as maybe some other people with this whole process, it is still hard watching him waddle into the classroom with his oversized Mario backpack and just letting him go. It's good for him, and I'm sure that it is also good for me, but it's still hard. That instinctual need to protect him doesn't just go away.

I think a lot about the former baseball player, Pete Rose (rest in peace), who hustled after every single pop up, even if it wasn't his ball to catch, he was going to be there to try to help in case his teammate made an error. 99% of those times he ran over there, it was all for naught, but in game six of the 1980 World Series, 39 year old Pete Rose ran over there just as he always did, and when the ball popped out of his teammate's glove, Pete snagged it out of the air before it hit the ground to get the out. The Phillies went on to close out the series that night (Tim McGraw's father, Tug, McGraw closed out the game). I'm sure you see where I'm going with this when it comes to parenting. I know I have to let my son fail on his own, but I'll be running over there every time to help, just in case he happens to need it.

Some of the greatest advice I've ever received was stolen from somebody on a podcast (maybe Tim Ferriss' podcast). Every time you walk into a room with somebody else, ask yourself, "What is the most important thing I could do for that person right now?" This obviously stretches much further than just parenting, but after an exhausting day of work, it pushes me from laying down on the couch on my phone to at least laying down on the floor playing with blocks.

Because the feedback you get for those good parental moments aren't going to fully show up until much further down the road, you don't get that instant gratification - you just have to trust that the process is working. That brings me to something that I learned and will be implementing in my life - getting compliments from strangers about being a good parent feels GOOD. I've received a few of them, and I obviously feel like I don't deserve them, but when somebody sees you doing your best as a parent and tells you that you're doing a really good job, it's hard not to have some pride, and it helps reinforce the habit of going the extra mile.

I'm sure I'll look back in five years and think about everything I could have done differently, but I hope that I help build up resilience and strength in failure for my child, and after five years, I'll probably look back at this article and think about how little I actually knew, which isn't a bad thing.