quote: | Originally posted by Silky Johnson
Ah man, you sound like an awesome dad.
I think that is precisely the toughest part about parenting - not putting your own shit onto your kid. You have to be pretty self aware. I am damn petrified of passing on my type A tendencies to our kid, it's even more challenging than I thought to be constantly aware of how I model behaviour. Thank fuck my husband is super chill, we create a good balance. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have had a kid, hahah. |
I don't know if I am "good" or not. If I have had ANY "general" success at all as a parent, and, specifically, as a male parent, I owe the "general" success to having 2 outstanding parents who to this day serve as role models. If I've had any success, specifically, as the male/dad parenting figure, then I definitely owe that to my father. He is wise beyond his years. I've never seen a more capable, intelligent, and truly talented man. It's hard to believe he is 71, now, and that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind. I acknowledge that life is fleeting and temporary, and when he is gone, I will accept it, but I can't lie: my world will shatter, for a time, and it will never go back together the same, after.
I've done my best to show "my" girls what it is like to have a stable father/man figure in the home. I get up and go to work every day, whether I feel like it or not. I help with all of the house chores, and often complete most of them myself on the weekends. I keep firewood in the shed and the stove fed in the winter. I keep the grass cut in the summer. I don't go to bars after work or "hang out with the guys" instead of coming home. I wash dishes after the wife cooks, and I've always backed her when the ex-husbands were in the wrong/being general assholes. I've done my best to be the primary breadwinner so that she only has to work part time and can pour as much of her life into her girls as she wants. I'm also, by nature, overly empathetic, so this allows me to often times be a mediator between mom and girls, and it's allowed them to see that a man/father isn't just someone who yells at the wife/kids every time there is a disagreement over ANY issue.
Now, with that said, there are a ton of things I could have done better over the years, and I fully acknowledge that. But, when I look back on it and self-evaluate, I can honestly say I feel I've gotten more right than wrong. And, when compared to what their biological fathers have done, especially, I've gotten far more right.
My girls know that I will always be here for them, no matter what. Even when one of them chooses to take the car joyriding, run it off in the ditch, and flee the scene, thus introducing the "juvenile justice system" to our family...at the worst possible time, as we'd much rather focus on getting the wife's lymphoma into remission. But, here we are, and I love my juvenile delinquent all the same, and we'll go with her on the journey and use it as best we can to learn and grow.
Short story long: parenting is hard as fuck...but, I'm not sure where I'd have ended up in life had I not taken on the role. I feel like it wouldn't be a "good" place, if that makes any sense at all. The path I was on was rather self-destructive, and though I will always be my own worst enemy, taking a "break" to raise a couple of girls certainly has slowed the self-destruction.
God, do I ever ramble. Press 1 if you read this shit and are still awake. Press 2 if you want your money back.
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