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Learning To Parent by Experience
Before I became a parent, I did not know how to
parent. I had the modeling of my own parents. A
mixed blessing. I also had many theories from my
training as a psychotherapist. Some have held
water. Others leaked badly. I read books about
parenting. But the books did not agree with each
other.
Luckily, just as I became a father, an expert on
raising children moved into our house. She calls me
Daddy. Everything I thought might be true about
parenting has since had to be tested by this little
child development specialist. Only direct
experience with her has converted theory into
skill.
The accumulation of experience, however, has an
essential component: mistakes. I have made many of
them. Countless times I have watched my daughter
respond the "wrong" way to what I considered to be
the "right" parenting technique. Eventually my
experience and my mistakes teach me something new.
Then I confidently apply my new expertise to other
children, and what happens? More mistakes. It seems
I really have only learned to parent my own child.
And she keeps changing!
Knowing the importance of experience and
mistakes, let us consider the predicament of most
fathers, whose work takes them away from their
children.
Mom or another caregiver has been with the kids
all day, making mistakes and learning from them.
Dad takes over in the evening and promptly
begins... making mistakes. Mom is watching,
listening, perhaps correcting him. Its embarrassing
as all hell!
Dads often don't get to see the experience and
mistakes that taught Mom what she knows. Many
mistakenly come to think that women are innately
more skilled at this stuff than men. In comparison
to those with more experience, fathers often feel
inadequate and vulnerable to criticism. They see
themselves bumble and they begin to relinquish care
giving to those who have developed more skills. In
so doing they forgo the direct experience with
their children that is necessary to develop their
own parenting skills.
The tragic irony is that a father's lack of
experience parenting may lead him to avoid spending
time with his children, the only cure for his lack
of experience!
For fathers to stay active and involved with
their kids we have to be able to feel successful in
this role. First we must claim our inherent
potential to be excellent caregivers. We are not
doomed to failure because of our gender. Secondly,
we must value our unique connection to our
children. No matter what our foibles, there is
something about who we are that is important for
our children to know. We enrich their lives by
relating our unique perspectives. We offer an
important alternative to our children's other
caregivers, each of whom, no mater how skilled,
have their blind spots. And thirdly, we must give
ourselves permission to make mistakes, look
awkward, and thereby gather the experience that
will make us excellent parents. We do not need to
know everything from the start. Experience is there
to teach us if we are patient enough to gather it
before we judge ourselves compared to those with
more of it. When we give ourselves the space to
make mistakes with our children, we can feel the
personal victories of figuring out creative
solutions by ourselves.
© 2007, Tim
Hartnett
Other Father Issues,
Books
* * *
Your children need your presence more than your
presents. - Jesse Jackson
Tim
Hartnett, Ph.D. is a licensed Marriage and Family
Therapist in private practice in Santa Cruz, CA. He
specializes in Individual Counseling, Couples
Therapy, and Divorce Mediation. He can be reached
at 831.464.2922 or through his website:
www.TimHartnett.com
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