As the father of three children who are all now technically adults, I can honestly say that the journey thus far has been a bit of a roller coaster. The highs have been amazing and the lows have been devastating. When your children pass exams, win trophies and are happy, there is an enormous sense of happiness. When you have hospital trips, failures and all of the other stresses of modern parenting, you feel like your head will explode.
Nothing in my education prepared me for fatherhood. My own father died eight years before my first sprog appeared. I am not sure what lessons he would have been able to have imparted, but I'd loved to have had him around for the journey. His idea of parenting and the modern view are totally different. He came from a generation and a culture steeped in violence, drink and war. The only time I ever really discussed parenting with him, he told me that his only job was to equip me to survive and have the mental and physical toughness to get by. I knew he loved me but once I'd passed the phase of being a child, this was never really expressed. Strangely the last time we actually met, we had the only real proper, pleasant conversation one to one as adults.
He confided that he'd come to respect me, having given up on me as a teenager. I was 24 at the time and had a job and a regular girlfriend and was doing something he thought was interesting. He'd also come to realise that my life in music was not only interesting, but I was quite good at what I was doing. He died suddenly, of an aneurysm, a couple of months later. I am eternally grateful of the fact we actually had time to become friends, after a long period of estrangement. In some ways he was even less well prepared than me to be a father. When he was interested in something, he was the best Dad in the world, but his wartime experiences had left him suffering with PTSD and he was liable to explode at any time. I only really understood this much later.
I have been thinking about what being a parent means, I think that in some ways his measure of being a good father, was pretty bang on, but in other ways not really fit for purpose in the year 2019. For me, there are actually four things that I think are four things that as a parent, you should always work to ensure
1. Your children should never cause harm to anyone else. This is the most important of all. The reason is that if they do then this will ultimately mean that they will fall foul of the other three. If you become aware that your child is a risk to other people, you have to do something about it. This could be carrying a knife, bullying or being part of a gang or it could manifest itself in other ways. Turning a blind eye will never end well. Addressing this may well damage your relationship with your child, but it may also mean that there is still a relationship in years to come. My advice is to be aware. I am lucky that this is not something I've had cause to be concerned over, to the best of my knowledge.
2. Your children should not cause harm to themselves. It is impossible to stop adults and teenagers doing things that you might feel are dangerous. So long as they are not endangering anyone else, I would say that your responsibility to to provide as safe a space as you can and always try and be a shoulder to cry on. It can be hard, don't be judgemental. It is something to some degree everyone I know with adult/teenage children has problems with and I think we all feel we've to some degree not done the best job we could.
3. Negativity is a poison in our society. One of the biggest changes from my fathers generation is that we are all now massively analytical. We want a name for everything and reason for all behaviours. This often ends up in negativity. As we need labels for everything, it often means everything becomes a problem to be addressed. We confuse problems with challenges. We all have challenges and surmounting them is a good thing. If your children become engulfed in a negative cycle or with a group of negative or destructive friends, it will always be hard for them to be happy. It will also make it hard for them to get on and achieve anything. Negativity is never cured by negativity, so always try and stay positive and guide to wards positive outcomes and solutions.
4. Have faith in your children. Have some trust in them, you've not walked the same path and seen the same sights. Schools and society have changed massively over the last 20-30 years and the lessons you learned may not apply in the same way. Have some faith in your children and be prepared to learn from them, it is a two way thing.
It isn't easy, the bottom line is that if you don't talk, if you don't have difficult conversations sometime, then you are fighting with one hand behind your back. If you can talk to your children, then you have some sort of chance of being their when they need you.
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