Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

Pass it On

6 Written by Keith on August 27, 2009 – 10:51 am

I was poking around on other blogs this morning doing some commenting and reading when I came across an article that got me thinking.  This is it,  Busy Dad Blog.  The dad is not a professional chef, from what I can tell, but he does seem to know something about cooking.  His son came to him one night and said he wanted to skip his math homework.  His dad thought about it a little and then said yes.  But, the catch was that the kid, Fury, would have to cook his own dinner.  Well, the article comes with a bunch of pictures of what happened next, but the point is that this father decided that there are educational opportunities that are at least as important as any book learning.  He’s right.  It’s great to learn math problems and do the whole formal education thing.  However, there are too many parents who overlook the small, everyday activities that end up shaping our kids more than book learning ever could.  If I want my kids to really learn then I will have to pour myself into them, not just demand that they complete a number of math problems every day.

Mistakes

I can think of a few mistakes that I’ve made as a father (just a few, achem).  Everybody makes mistakes.  My dad made a mistake while raising me.  He made his living as a salesman, which is not terribly exciting as far as I’m concerned — not the point.  When I think of my dad though, salesman is the last thing I think.  I think of him as a carpenter and a sailor, neither of which he ever made any money at; those are just the things that he loves the most.  He loves making things, and he loves sailing.  Salesman? That’s just for money.  His mistake with me was not forcing me, and having enough patience with me, to learn what he knows.  I can’t even build a birdhouse, and I’m a terrible sailor.  Those are two things I’ve always wanted to learn, but I didn’t because I was scared to screw up and disappoint my dad.  There are some times that parents just need to force their kids to start and to finish something regardless of timidity or protestations.  Deep down I always wanted him to teach me, but I never showed it because I thought the consequence of failure was greater than the reward of success.  I was wrong, and he was wrong.  Parents make mistakes all the time, I am not immune to them any more than anybody else.  My dad is a great dad who just happened to screw up on that little bit.

Learn Something Useful

Sometimes parents think they don’t have a skill valuable enough to pass on.  That might be true, but it’s not the end.  We can always learn new things and grow into different people than who we are.  A good example in my own life is Archery.  I took it up three years ago, at the age of 32, and I absolutely love it.  As a result of my newfound ability to hit bullseyes almost every time (no sights or counterbalance I might add), my kids have taken up the sport.  We’re doing it together.  I learned martial arts as an adult also, and now my kids are starting it.  It’s never too late to have a hobby, and it’s never too late to get your kids interested in hobbies outside of school.  Think of all the little things we each know.  It could be a foreign language, writing abilities, cooking, sports, math, or whatever.  The point is that parents have something they love to do enough to teach their kids.  Having kids makes for a perfect excuse to learn something you’ve always wanted to learn.  You’re doing it for your kids.  What better reason?

Spitting Image

I’m a lot like my dad in many ways.  I couldn’t help turning out similar to him.  Kids pick up all kinds of mannerisms and attitudes stemming solely from proximity to their parents.  It isn’t that parents need to install, like software, information into their children’s heads for them to start up and get going.  Kids are self determining automatons.  I turned out just fine regardless of ever learning how to sail or make a birdhouse.  I gathered different skills and became my own person.  But, at the same time, I’m still unmistakably my fathers son.  The point here is that we don’t teach our kids our skills to make them into us, we teach them skills so that they have an advantage in life.  How annoying would it be if people had to reinvent the wheel every time they got the hankering to go someplace?  I turned out just fine in my own right, but knowing how to fix things and build things could have saved me a ton of money through the years.  Every time something needs fixing, I call a repairman.  If I had learned to work with my hands as a kid it would have been easier for me now.  I can still learn of course, but if that skill were ingrained in me then I wouldn’t have to add it to my list of things I want to learn; I would already have it.

My conclusion to all this is that it’s important for parents to teach their kids more than standard educational things.  We should graft bits of our wisdom onto them as they grow so that when they are adults they have a preset baseline from which to work.  They will become their own people and forge paths of their own, no doubt.  But, if all else fails they will have skills to fall back on and a place to start again.  I’m teaching my own kids how to write because it’s the most valuable skill I have to offer them.  If I were a scientist and knew a lot about astronomy or biology then I would teach my kids that.  If I were a fireman I would teach my kids CPR, fire safety, and all about fire fighting equipment.  The list of skills we carry with us is much longer sometimes than we give ourselves credit for.  Reach down into that bag of tricks and start passing them on to the kids!

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