If you’re a father-to-be, there’s an important movie scene I want to share with you.
Less than three minutes into the 2009 comedy Away We Go, a pregnant Verona (played by Maya Rudolph) wakes up to find Burt (played by John Krasinski, if Jim from The Office had been born an outdoors-wannabe working an insurance sales job) sitting at a desk. He’s whittling a stick with a knife.
“What are you doing?” Verona asks.
“Cobbling,” Burt says. “I really want to be that dad who knows how to make stuff out of wood. I really want our kid to wake up in the morning and walk out on the back porch and find me cobbling.”
“No. That’s not what it’s called.”
“Yeah it is.”
“Burt, cobbling is shoes. That’s why they call people who make shoes ‘cobblers.’ You’re not cobbling; you’re carving. Or possibly whittling.”
A stunned Burt takes a moment to think. “Oh, I got this great book on knots,” he continues. “Three hundred knots, and I want to learn them all. And I still have to build that kiln. Man, we gotta be ready.”
Yes, soon-to-be-dad, you do need to be ready. But maybe not in the way you think.
We are in a world of idealistic Pinterest boards and YouTube how-tos, and no one can blame someone like Burt who’s about to become a father for envisioning the perfect childhood for their new son or daughter.
I made in my imagination a vision board for my children before they were born. Idealism filled the display with cutout magazine pictures of hiking and kayaking, of well-worn baseball gloves and dusty cleats, of reading classic kid books by Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary, and of course sitting on the couch watching Star Wars.
The truth, though, is I’ve largely described my childhood. Not theirs.
See, the best laid plans, whether you want to teach your kid how to tie knots or throw a baseball, may not come to pass.
Our boys incorporate parts of my vision board, but what I and many fathers fail to foresee is how their children, even at the earliest stages of life, will begin creating their own vision boards.
Hiking? Lately, my boys tend to complain about walking too much. They enjoyed Mouse and the Motorcycle, but Lego Ninjago picture books are far more exciting. And Star Wars? Too scary, Daddy. Can we just have a snack?
It took a long time for me to see the problem. The harder I tried to lead them, to assure how awesome something was, the more they seemed to resist.
This wasn’t going according to plan. Burt probably found this out too.
Parenting isn’t a one-way street, and that’s especially true for fatherhood. I grew so frustrated by the occasional lack of interest in what I wanted them to find interesting that I was stress eating the kids’ dry cereal one handful after another while collapsing in a stinking pile of confusion and self-pity.
Before they were born, I wanted to lead our tiny humanoids toward an idealized vision of growing up, a vision formulated largely on the best of my own experiences. Nothing wrong with that.
But what Burt and you will discover is that kind of rigid thinking will lead to enough stress, anxiety, and frustration to fill an entire man cave slowly converted into a child’s play room.
Find balance. Parenthood is not largely about us, dads. It’s a complicated process of moments when you have to use your best judgment. Should you lead the way for your children, steering them to the things you think they’ll enjoy? Or should you step back and watch as they observe and discover the world for themselves? They may not like the things you loved as a child.
Or they may. There’s no magic formula, no how-to YouTube video, no Pinterest board to tell you how to manage this. Only your own judgment. You’ll get it wrong, or you’ll get it right, but either way, be flexible to adjust as circumstances warrant.
Give your children the guidance they need while also providing opportunities for them to learn for themselves. In this way, we have a better chance of discovering who our children truly are instead of overzealously engineering them to be who we want them to be. Which do you think is closer to love?
So imagine the kind of father you want to be. Nothing wrong with that. Better to take some time to consider this instead of ignoring it. Imagine what you’d like your children to discover and enjoy. But also consider well the other side of parenthood, the listening part, the stepping back and letting your child become who they want to be, try what they want to try, and have a say in how their childhood is shaped.
Parenting and childhood—it’s a shared experience.
