“Draw a T-Rex, Daddy!” my son asks my husband, jumping up and down. His baby-fine blonde hair bobs and sways as he leaps; a three-year-old is always in motion.
“A T-Rex? Okay.” My husband begins tracing his index finger lightly along my son’s spine, the “draw a dinosaur on his back” reward for good behaviour (in this case, putting away his toys) that’s proven to be more effective than sugary treats or threats to take away his favourite trucks.
My son’s dark lashes slowly close over his round cheeks as he reaches a state of total calm and comfort. He’s always been sensory-driven, fearing loud noises and craving physical contact with those he loves best. I watch quietly so I don’t interrupt the spell, and I marvel at the sweetness of this moment. I drink it in, knowing all too well how soon he’ll grow up and no longer care about this—about dinosaurs, loving embraces, or even his beloved stuffy, “Bun.”
I missed out on too much with my eldest. Working all day, picking her up from daycare, and throwing supper together meant that we only spent about two, maybe three, hours together during the week. The weekends were filled with her, of course, but her dad and I were exhausted.
I know we turned to YouTube Kids far too often. I know we didn’t take her to enough kid-friendly outings, or throw her the best or grandest birthdays. While we took her camping from time to time and helped her try out new experiences, like going down the slide backwards, ballet class, or leaping into a swimming pool, I feel like we missed out on a lot of opportunities for familial closeness.
I know we did a few things right. We read to her every night and kept her safe. We told her often that we loved her; something that still spills out every day with genuine affection. There’s no mistaking that our kids always know they are safe and cherished. But we’re not perfect, and their dad and I look at each other sometimes, after they have done something funny or cute or silly, and I know we’re both wondering the same thing:
Did we do enough?
I sometimes live in fear that we haven’t; that we’ve failed. And sometimes, that fear takes my breath away.
Core memory unlocked
My daughter loved the movie Inside Out.
We did too. I think it was one of the last good movies Disney managed, actually, and we still watch it from time to time to remember the lessons taught by each and every character.
Especially Bing Bong. Damn you, Bing Bong: no one makes grown adults weep like you.
Anyway, Riley struggles in that movie like so many kids do. A big move, new friends, and emotions that go literally haywire at the worst possible moments—all so heartbreakingly relatable. Life is unfair.
I think her parents missed the mark a bit, being too busy with the move and some understated problem with her dad’s work to focus on Riley. They pull it together at the end of the movie (another moment that leaves our entire living room weeping pathetically), but I wonder, far too often, if we have pulled it together for our kids.
I remember going camping with my dad a lot when I was younger. We went when I grew up, too, and I loved it even as an adult. Those core memories stick like glue in my brain, and they fill me with warmth and love and the knowledge that my dad loved me enough to deal with everything that goes into packing up your kids to take them camping.
I appreciate it even more as an adult; I now know how much it took for him to accomplish this kind of thing. First, he’d been working all week and probably would have liked to be able to sit down with a beer, but he packed up all our camping stuff instead. Then he piled us (or sometimes just me) into the car and drove over an hour to the campground, where he paid money to essentially park a vehicle for two days. Then he had to deal with the weather, mosquitoes, wasps, and a whiny teenager who was probably less helpful than she knew.
After all of that, he had to sleep on the ground.
I cherish my dad more than he could possibly know, for the camping and for so much more. Both of my parents have invested so much of their time and energy into creating memories that last, and their kids appreciate their efforts more than we could possibly express. I sincerely hope that I’m giving my own kids the same kinds of special memories, but more often than not, real-life stuff prevents magical weekends away in the mountains. Despite that, we’re trying, and I hope it will be enough.
As a parent, you have to make that magic happen; sometimes it means being creative. However you do it, though, creating those lasting, core memories for your kids is going to make all the difference in not only their childhoods, but in their adult lives as well.
Someone I am very close to grew up with a relatively absent father (compared to my own, extremely present father), and that has left him with very few cherished memories of his childhood. There were no memorable canoeing trips along a silent, magically still lake at dawn. There were no memories of that first fish caught or that genuine heart-to-heart that changed his life’s trajectory. There were no memories that left him with the desire to emulate his dad one day.
What he did remember was discipline and curfews and how to be secretive around his parents, and he grew up separate from them and their expectations for him. If there’s anything to take away from that kind of parenting, it’s that: the separation is real.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to be so far removed from my kids, no matter what happens.
Parenting requires patience
If you don’t have kids, let me fill you in on one very real, constant truth: kid stuff is mind-numbingly boring.
Another truth: despite the inevitable boredom you will have to repeatedly endure, taking part in the boring stuff with your kids is damn near vital to their health and happiness. It’s going to require an immense amount of patience on your part, and I promise you, it will be a taxing experience at times.
Kids need to get loud and rowdy. They need to run and jump and bonk their heads and scrape their knees, and they need you to encourage their exploration of not only the world around them, but their limits within that world.
They also need the quieter moments with you, reading and learning to write their names, and they need your guidance as the infallible adult in their lives who knows everything to impart that endless wisdom upon them. None of that is true, of course—we are all flawed, clueless people—but to them, you are everything.
As boring as it can become, it’s important that you do just that: be everything. Trust me, it won’t last forever.
Draw the freaking dinosaur
More often than not, I don’t feel like drawing a dinosaur on my son’s back, especially when it comes with requests for additions like hair and spikes and big smiles and a fence and a tree and the sun and some clouds. Our lives are filled with these small requests: cuddles, songs, stories, and no less than ten hugs and kisses at bedtime.
But it’s important to do it. The window for this time in his life is so, so tiny, that how could I possibly let it slip away?
And really, what else do you have to do?
Spending time with your kids is simple, but it seems to be rare in many households. From marriage troubles to career distractions to financial distress, there are so many things that get in the way of building a strong relationship with kids—it’s up to you, as the parent, to keep those relationships closely tied together. The positive impact it will have on your kids is too great and too permanent to ignore.
So don’t ignore your babies. They’re only “babies” for a nanosecond anyway, and if my 8 going on 18-year-old is any indication, childhood as a whole is even shorter. When your toddler requests that you draw a dinosaur, play cars with him, or look at something he made, just do it; there will come a time that your heart will ache for the days he did.
And there’s nothing quite like the agony of regret.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
