Don’t raise your kids to be exactly like you. Let them find their own path while they explore the world around them.
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As a dad of three and at the ripe age of forty-nine, I can toss out a few parenting pointers now and again. In fact, at the age of forty-nine, I should already be doing this, preferably from a rocking chair on my deck. My wisdom comes from my own experiences as well as from engagement with other parents. I see their folly and my own and in my aged analytically bent mind, I manipulate it into something I hope my kids one day can use to their advantage.
Lately, I have come to realize that all three of my boys are doing pretty darn good. They are all quite different and each have their own paths before them. I think a few of my own ways of parenting have helped this along. From a very young age my father learned that I was not interested in the things he was to the extent he was. He played football and boxed and both played and coached hockey. I read books, built model rockets, played Dungeons and Dragons and soccer. He never pushed me to take an interest in his sports and hobbies beyond an initial introduction and as a result I found my own pastimes.
When I became a dad, I took on the same approach. A good example is soccer. I played soccer until a few years ago and though two of my boys tried it for a season, it wasn’t for them. I didn’t push them, I didn’t try to convince them, and I didn’t suggest they reconsider. It was just my thing, not theirs and it did not reflect badly on me or my ego if they didn’t wish to play. One boy skateboards, one studied karate for many years and one is a provincial level competitive gymnast. I think this is just fine even though just like my dad, I had no abilities to do those things to the degree they do. It’s all good.
Another contrary example is camping. As much as the younger two do go away every summer for two to four weeks their interest in tent camping is minimal at best. When I was a kid this is one situation where my parents stepped away from their standard parenting style and as a result, failed. I was forced to camp every other weekend from May until September and one or two full weeks whenever my parents took vacation. My sister and I eventually rebelled when we were older, refusing to go and back then it wasn’t because we had internet or video games drawing us back, but simply we didn’t want to spend our entire summer with our parents in the woods. Before that point, the fun always wore off after a few trips, the entire summer becoming rapidly boring and monotonous.
I can in all honesty say that I enjoy camping now more than then but still I go once or twice a year at best, but there was a period from the age of fifteen until my late thirties when I may have gone camping three times. I would have definitely benefitted from doing so more during those years for a variety of reasons, but my parents forcing us to go, trying desperately to get us to take part in something they loved drove me away. Nowadays, I ask my boys every spring if they want to go and where. We camp all of one weekend and have fun but when we return, it rarely comes up as an option until the following year.
A good deal of parenting is teaching and broadening horizons. Exposing your kids to the world around them in many ways is not just good for them, but good for you. Taking them outside of their element, showing them new and different things, allowing them the ability to explore and form their own life to come. Folly lies in setting expectations. There is no success in molding your children to be, like and do the same things as you. There is no happiness to be gained by them in being steered away from their own choices in life. One can direct and should direct them away from unsound and unsafe activities and interests, but you need to let them fly a bit before they leave the nest or they will not want to ever return.
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Photo: Getty
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