Raising children: like everyone else I have an opinion
I often like to say that raising kids is best encapsulated by the great philosopher Mike Tyson: “Everyone thinks they have a plan until they get punched in the face.” Nothing prepares you to be a parent and as soon as your first baby is born, everything that you thought about what you would be as a parent and what you want in your kids goes right out the window. Like many guys, if I had boys, I wanted them to grow up to fulfill my dream of being a professional athlete — and never ceased to torment my ex-wife with this dream. And while my words may have carried overboard, when my second was born at just 24 weeks at 1 pound & 10 ounces, “I just want a normal, healthy child” took on an entirely new meaning.
But once you get into raising children, I think it’s important to focus on the word “raise.” We’re not growing children’ they’ll get bigger but to truly develop into adolescents, young adults and good people as adults, there’s a big job for us to do as parents. Kids aren’t potty trained, learn to read, try new foods, develop the right manners or do their homework on their own. We as parents need to take ownership and take concrete action to guide and take them from what nature creates to become independent adults. It takes a ton of effort, emotions like you can’t believe, patience you never thought you had and yes, endless love.
I’ve come to believe there are four phases of raising children and as someone once told me, it’s just one long goodbye:
The God
The Benevolent Dictator
The Coach
The Professor
The God(Up to 4)
When your kids are babies and young toddlers, you have one goal: to keep them alive. With my first, I was petrified. I had zero idea how to do it and nature creates in you this protectionist paranoia & neuroticism at all times. You children rely on you completely to fulfill 100% of their life’s needs. You bathe them, change them, feed them, them at all times and even dictate (or at least try to) when they sleep. You help them to crawl and walk and then not get into things where they can hurt themselves. It’s your job to get them to a certain size without killing themselves because they literally don’t know any better and are solely dependent upon you. You must account for their whereabouts at all times and if you are not “on guard” protecting them, you better know who it is and have full trust in them. I recall once we got a nanny that every Monday morning was like a sigh of relief. “At last, a professional is here who knows what they’re doing!” (and the pressure is now off of me).
As babies become toddlers, they become as one pre-school director once called them, “little scientists.” How loudly can I bang this pot until I have to stop? What if it’s not quite so loud? If I hit my brother, how will he react? How close to the stove can I get before my parents say something? Or freak out? and how will they act? As a parent, I think your role is very similar to that of an animal trainer; getting them into good habits and making clear, with constant rewards and small punishments, the consequences of a multitude of actions over and over again to satisfy their scientific curiosity. Once you realize it’s not a matter of testing so much as learning through constant experimentation it makes a lot more sense and drives you less crazy.
If this sounds exhausting it is, but fortunately babies and toddlers generally sleep a lot. That’s the only way everyone survives! But it’s also a time when your children are most dependent on you and you spend the most amount of time with them. So as tiring as it is and as many days occur when you’re just watching the clock, the time actually does go by and you have to resist the temptation to keep this phase going forever because the special moments are so special, the joys are the purest and bond you share is so tight. In the desire to develop a long-term sense of independence, it also means for the first time also starting to let go as a parent, a feeling that’s the first step in the long goodbye, but often missed by many and I believe is incredibly important.
The Benevolent Dictator Phase (4 - 10)
For many parents, this phase is the best! You can breathe a little because your children aren’t completely dependent upon you for survival at all times and you’re generally young enough that you can enjoy the idle time without limitations. Your kids aren’t just potty trained, you don’t have to be thinking about the next time they have to go at all times, they not only can articulate what they want but also get it for themselves, can eat independently, you can leave them alone for more than 20 seconds without worrying and you don’t have to pack a giant suitcase with special food, toys and diapers any time you go away for a weekend. But you are still all powerful, call knowing and though you may be questioned, your authority is never. It’s during the this phase where kids will say hilarious things like “my dad can beat up your dad.” It’s also during this phase when your kid can ask you any question and you can answer with “because I said so” and it’s blindly accepted! The Benevolent Dictator phase is a ton of fun because your kids will do pretty much whatever you make them do and go along with anything, but I personally have found it more fun to be emergent with my kids. Ultimately it’s best to follow their interests and explore them. As much as you may have your hopes, dreams and interests, if they don’t share yours, sure they’ll go along with it in this phase, but eventually they’ll hate you and you have no idea what to do with them. So in many respects, it’s about teaching children how to be resilient and being so yourself if what you had in mind for them doesn’t pan out. It’s their childhood, not yours to live again. But it’s also when you need to instill your values and things that you will not bend on. I have a rule with my kids that they’re not to disturb me before 7AM so I can get some sleep. Before 7 they better not wake me up and there are no rewards — like watching TV, if they get up early. One time my son came in my room at 5:30am and I grumpily & instinctively yelled at him “Go back to bed!” and he slunk away not to disturb me until 7am that day — and hilariously any other day since. Later that morning, he confessed to me that he was upset because I was “mean to him” but I also explained to him that I had my boundaries, what the consequences were of his doing it and while I didn’t mean to upset him, he also had to learn that it was a line that should not be crossed except in an emergency.
During this phase, your children are starting to go to school, you can rely upon babysitters more than daycare or nannies and they start doing things like going to friends houses or having “drop off” activities. In summers and other breaks, you can get more adventurous with travel, day camp starts and you can even start on sleep away camps. It is a time of nurturing continuing independence but recognizing that you still maintain authority.
The Coaching Phase (Around 10 to or through college)
As kids start the latter years of elementary school, their independence grows. You may start relying your kids to get themselves ready for school and self-dismiss. You force them do what they don’t want to do but generally it’s in the goal of doing what’s good for them. Like making them do their homework or disciplining them when they break curfew. Just as a coach may make you do laps for a screw-up it’s good for kids to learn the structure that goes with making mistakes. Kids don’t often want to go to homework, even if they aim to strive academically or wake up early to train for their sport they love. This is when they learn the value of hard work and that nothing meaningful comes easy.
The other thing that happens is that you are no longer God, all knowing and all powerful. For adolescents, it’s a definite revelation when they realize, “wait a second, my dad doesn’t know everything and he’s kind of nuts.” This is both a phase when you as a parent start to show your age where you can’t keep up with your kids physically but your kids also realize there are things that they know more than you about, whether pop culture, trends in technology and start to form their own philosophical and political opinions.
All of this can be great if you see yourself as a coach but will lead to absolute terror if you’re still holding onto the God or Protector phases. As a parent, I’d like to think the biggest mistake you can make is to try to hold onto the formal power you’ve enjoyed in the first two phases and not evolve accordingly. Sure, your kids are still completely dependent upon your financially, but generally they are logistically independent and may even be able to find independence by working jobs. So while you do enjoy control over the basic needs of shelter, sustenance, clothing & other necessities, there’s little else that you can control through authority alone. You have to create a space where you maintain the respect of your kids and maintain the approachability as it’s also when mental health may also be a concern and children start grappling with new relationships & new emotions.
This is also the phase where the phrase, “bigger kids, bigger problems” truly becomes apparent in this stage. Though I did not grow up with Social Media & mobile devices they become a really important center of children’s lives and it’s also where the significant responsibilities of driving or caring for other children start to emerge. It’s also a time when kids start to explore their own sexuality, identify and explore new experiences, not all of which are legal. This is why this phase is typically the most stressful on both sides of the ledger.
The Professorial Phase (post-college)
Once your children become grown and independent, your influence wanes and frankly, you can’t make them do anything, At this point, you are a source of advice and a guider, but they don’t have to follow your advice and need to fully own the decisions they make. It’s also a stage where there is the greatest amount of variability in your connections with your kids. It can range from their still living with you (hopefully under circumstances you bothy enjoy) to not having a relationship at all (which is especially likely if you haven’t done the coaching phase well).
At this point in order to maintain any type of meaningful relationship, you have to treat your children as equals. I like to think that it’s important to start with what you want and work backwards. So the way you approach all of the earlier phases is critical to having the relationship with your children you want when they become grown ups. Because they have more control over what it is at this point than you probably do.
Eventually when your kids have kids themselves, you become an emeritus professor and sit back and watch them do it all over again.