Your baby is placed in your arms and you start learning.
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Written in partnership with Toyota and #TheToyotaEffect.
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When I first held my newborn son, I felt many things—including a lurching sense of panic. I was surprised by this part of the new father experience. Aren’t men supposed to only feel some Lion King moment? When we hold our son to the sky, confident and secure in our power as fathers?
Becoming a father begins with simple questions like, “how do I hold his head and support his neck?” From there the questions never end. My fear came from the vastness of a new human life and my own raw insecurity in the face of it.
Elizabeth Stone wrote:
“Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
It was such a fragile moment standing there with a newborn son, knowing nothing. And that was my first real learning. I had to put my fears aside every single day. That is still my challenge; to not collapse into what I don’t know but instead to direct my focus to what is working, affirming, life giving, fun.
For other fathers the challenge may be to control our tempers or learn how to be playful; to let go of the pressures of responsibility and be in the moment with our beautiful children.
I have learned a million details of caregiving and patience. I’ve learned about myself and my capacity (surprising and powerful), my strength in the face of illness, (resourcing my son and myself), my hilarious nature (funny is so important) and my ability to finally step beyond myself, (perhaps for good).
We are all learning and continuing to learn.
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What We Need to Learn is Different for Each of Us
Millions of us dads are engaging parenting in ways that most of our fathers and grandfathers wouldn’t have dreamed of. For each of us, the process of learning to be a parent is totally different. Some of us are stay-at-home dads while our partners work. Others are both working and caring for our kids. Is there a way to think about this idea of learning how to parent every day without it being over-whelming?
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The Idea of Continuous Improvement and Its Roots in Business Processes
Think of the chaotic challenges businesses address when confronting the rapid pace of technological change and growth. That feeling of chaos is much like the way I felt as a new dad. How do companies deal with that change? And are there ways to take that idea of continuous improvement and use it as a framework for parenting?
Toyota is creating processes for continuous improvement, and then sharing them with other businesses and non-profits instead of keeping them proprietary. They call it The Toyota Effect. Toyota has made a series of films about it.
Coming Home tells the story of how Toyota helped a non-profit in New Orleans dramatically improve its process for rebuilding homes in New Orleans following the devastation of Katrina. It’s worth watching all these films as a way of being inspired in your own life.
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Continuous Improvement Dads
Can dads do a version of this continuous improvement process? Yes we can. We can share what works in order to improve our capacity and our creativity. We can share what we innovate with parenting.
Whether you are a full-time parent or you’re raising kids and bringing home the bacon (or veggie bacon) — there are plenty of ways you can learn the process of continuous improvement. Below are some ideas as thought-starters.
Toyota shares their process of continuous improvement because they know that when good ideas are shared, great things can happen. And we agree.
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Parenting tips for continuous improvement:
Don’t forget to watch The Toyota Effect films here.
Photo [main image] by: Margus Kulden