Good Lifestyle

Editor's note: This article was originally published in the Spring / Summer 2004 issue ofBetter lifemagazine.

Earlier this year, we dropped our daughter in college. Like his brother in front of her, she went and grew up on us. And as I write, I have a little malt and I feel downright ascirable, even sad, from the cutout of the years of dad. Of course, I still have a role as a father's role. But it's just a little more part and, worse, do not include all the best stewardship sandwiches, buying tabes, blocking the door behind them every night when they come home. Clearly, an era is over.

And as usual, every time a buzzer sounds, the competitor inside wants a score. "How did I do?" murmurs the bottom lobe of my brain. Normally, I'm not much for self-criticism. I come from the school of Reggie Jackson, who asked to describe his gaps once confessed that yes, okay, he probably worked too much. But in one way or another, the capture of my children cracked my shell. Suddenly, I can see areas of dad weakness.

Now, do not deceive me. My children are lucky to have me. After all, there were no sirens or flashing lights in their childhood. I am not forbidden to cross state lines. I recovered here my official position: they could have worse worse in Father Sweepstakes. Nevertheless, looking back, it is clear that they could have done better, too. If I could go back in time, here are some things I would have done differently, more or less. And for more use the most noble life, see the20 ways of parenting is different from it was 20 years ago.

Some of my most lively family memories come from the road: midnight swimming at Disney World, hiking over the tree line like swallowed night Colorado. Of course, they stand out in part because they were exceptions to the fifteen of our three bedroom cape in New Jersey, and we saw new places. But for me, the call to travel as a team is not that it expands. This is the opposite on the contrary.

In one way or another, when you are lifted from your normal habitat, I fell in an unknown place where no one knows who you are all four, you see your team with fresh eyes. In one way or another, after a day at Colonel Wilson's reptile village, with you all cudded in two beds in America's anonymity of $ 39.95 A-Night, looking at a movie Walnut and eat a pizza, you feel bound, not just DNA or at the circumstance but also by the memories you have made together. No passport or planning or silver batteries required. Just go. Three days of hiking in the nearest national park. A weekend to watch the yanks play theOrioles in Camden Yards. Just go. For ideas, take a look at the15 summer family trips that your teenage children did not hate.

I am a sunny man, so I spent a lot of time reassuring my children. They came home from the fourth year with a problem and I would explain it rather than really hear it and understand their anxiety. Bad Plan. I sympathize more, handle the reality less. In this way, they could confide more in me without fear of being talked about their feelings.

If you ask me, most fathers of my generation do not shout enough. We try to reason with children who have no concept of what is reasonable. Once, I heard a guy cajoled his son of the roof of a mini-van, explaining why he was not sure to go up there. "If dad had to stop short, you could fall and hurt me, and it would make me sad." Yikes! Sometimes shouting is better than building self-esteem. Consider this of the child psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim: "We have become the most angry with our children when we see aspects of our own personalities that we disapprove." Bull's-Eye! I support the father's wrath when children won the wrath of a right man.

But my anger was not always the honest and real and helpful kind. Sometimes it was the whirlwind of my self-hamiting. It was not right, and I would bring it back if I could. My hunch is that floating anger freely makes children more shy than they would otherwise be. And for more parenting secrets, consult the35 Lies Each parent must master.

It's not a look to find common ground with children. A basketball hoop in the driveway is a bridge through the Gulf. It is hospitable H-O-R-S-E games with your 52-pound grader and real competition with your teenage forward. The beauty is that the court does not require any conversation, that the two fathers and the children hate. The Sounds and Mixtures of the Alley Basketball - The Bonk of the Rock on Blacktop, the Lope and the Faithing and Recovery - are WD-40, relaxing everything and calming the spirits of the big boys and their children .

The 10 minutes just before children fall asleep are often gold. In a way, they went, and sometimes, as they put their pajamas and brushing their teeth, the anxieties of the day fall and they will start talking in a wandering and unfortunate way. Often, revelations float on the surface and you will get some glimpses of dreads or enthusiasms or curiosities that the momentum of the day could have been obscured. Do not be taken on the ground floor in the second quarter of Lakers-warriors, just when children are about to flourish. Hang out around their room for about 10 minutes, and see if you can not catch a flash of something, small people trying toThe big who they suspect considerably from them.

My Hostune is that years, well after my departure, whenever my daughter thinks of me, the first word that illuminates the mind will be "peaches". Not the fruit, but the faithful shiny and white hamster that was the founding mother of our rodent dynasty. For a period of four years, when my daughter was fifth year through the eighth, she and I conspired to sensitize innumerable generations of good and true hamsters. And the sensory memories of the equipment required to tend to say domestic animals - the grinding of a wheel hamster, the smell of Piney wood chips - will always summon dad for his daughter, his daughter for dad. Fishing has the clic of reels, the texture of a basket of Creel. Car care provides keys and emanations and hand soaps around which the pearls of memories are developing. I would have shared more things with my golf children, hunting, baseball, coin collection, camping, no matter, no matter, all that has the material to shape the memory. If you need an extra thrust to the shelter, check the15 extraordinary benefits to adopt a pet.

Often, at the end of the day, I was tired. Erazaled by obligations and overwhelmed by a period of attention too short, I am not always engaged with my children in all that reads them, which contributed to their homework, listening to their stories of trauma or triumph. But almost every time I had to exceed the initial inertia by the guilt or descent of mom, there were moments of revolving just around the turn. We stumbled on stupid games and jokes that have evolved in the Stalwarts of our family culture. Thoreau celebrated what he nicknamed "the gospel according to this moment". If I could go back in time, I would try to think about the past and in the future a little less.

Let's say that a man had a son less interested in sport than in elves and wizards andcomics.And let's say that this son who was in all the bright and good and loving ways simply did not match the preconceived idea of ​​his father of what his son would be like. He was waiting for a Hardy Huck Finn-an outgoing sporty boy, and he had a dark, shy, sweet. A fully cultivated man should have known that there are a million trails to virility; He should have cherished dark and shy and sweet more. His inability to embrace these elves was to appear as a reproach.

I touched my children a lot when they were small. We fought and cuddled and slept together every time someone was scared. But as they aged, I had less sensy. Of course, it has made sense. The fourteen years rarely appreciate the same monster games they did a few years ago. But in part, I'm afraid I touched them less because I felt marginalized by their disinterest in me. Yes, I gave them their space, but I also hold the endorsement of a faucet on the shoulder passing in the kitchen, a kiss on top of the head while penetrating the door at work. Too bad on this adult ass for holding on the children he loved. Human touch prevails over the language of the construction esteem. A father just should continue to use his hands.

I spent a lot of time with my children. But the lion's share was with the two together. I wonder if it did not stop me from hearing the unique sound of my boy and my daughter. God knows that we had a lot of laughter as a group, but in my next life, I could institutionalize some fair-the-American traditions with each of them. Something tells me that if I had a breakfast on Saturday morning without failing with my daughter - my son was asleep anyway - I could have heard his solo voice a touch more clearly and she could have understood the particularity of my love for her.

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