Does one have to be a creative genius to be a great parent?
With Father’s Day around the corner, I have been thinking a lot about the role of dads in a family.
My father, John, a.k.a. “Tato”, has been my MVP, especially recently as I prepped for the Art In The Garden and Ukrainian Roots: Art by the Diaspora shows. He cut all the foam board for the labels, helped transport all my work, screwed D hooks on the back of pieces and painstakingly hung more than forty pieces at the Montclair Public Library. He makes dad jokes along the way and pokes fun at his mistakes, making the most tedious tasks tolerable…fun even! He taught me how to never take myself too seriously and the value of being a bit self deprecating; laughing at yourself is a very useful life tool and makes for great fireside stories. I can always count on my father to dig into his treasure trove of supplies when I need something random. My father’s love language is “acts of service”.
Tato, he is the guy who taught me worrying is a waste of energy. This is great advice and wisdom I strive to employ…every. dang. day.
I know another father whose love language is also “acts of service”; my husband, Steve. My husband is incredible. He is always going through his mental to do list, knocking one thing off that list at a time. Sometimes it is multiple tasks at once, because, you know, efficiency!
He rallies my kids, delegates chores, summons them to lend a pair of hands, and chases after them when they try to escape back to their video games.
My husband is willing to talk about challenges we are having any time. He is quick to listen and validate my feelings. He also calls me out on my bullsh*t. We argue and fight; we often agree to disagree. We allow our children to witness how to “fight fair”. I think it is so important to model to our children how to have a healthy argument. Holding anger and feelings inside has zero positive outcome.
The man also knows how to have fun; he is always up for hosting a social gathering, taking people for boat rides, ski trips, shopping sprees, dinner out, games,…you get the idea…he is a people person and an amazing coach to our kids in soccer, basketball and life. His creativity comes in the form of solving problems. He’s a fixer. Often he says, “There isn’t a problem you and I can’t solve together.” I love that.
I’m sure it is a pretty common parenting woe to feel like you’re failing at it. When kids make bad choices, don’t listen, shut the world out, keep up bad habits, act out, et cetera, we tend to blame ourselves. When I see kids getting into trouble or behaving badly, at all ages, I always feel bad for the parent. I also smile to myself because it is so reassuring to realize your parenting plights are common and normal. I am ready to bet money that the parent was trying their best, and they feel like crap as their child seems to have gone off the rails.
Parenting requires A TON of creativity to keep the family functioning. For a family to thrive, it seems one would have to be a creative genius. There is the logistics of getting people to where they need to be. We have to literally clone ourselves to be in two places at once. Problem solving last minute projects with a lack of supplies is one of my favorites (nope). My least favorite creative task is sleuthing to keep the kiddos safe online and in real life. What a time sucker! Scavenging for lost items takes a lot of imagination, which is especially frustrating when you’re raging mad and have a million other priorities requiring your attention. Coming up with special ways to celebrate milestones…some parents are so good at this! I am not. Planning experiences instead of adding to the clutter in the house can get very expensive quickly…so more creativity is required. We try to channel our inner Marie Kondo to organize closets, cabinets and drawers to fit all our stuff in a house bursting at the seams. Don’t get me started about meal time creativity! Are you a sneaky chef or a short order cook making a different culinary delight for each person in the family? Ugh, so annoying. For the record I gave up on that a long time ago and threw nutrition to the wind. I got over the feeling of being judged. It just isn’t a sustainable way to live!
Parents are the most creative people I know. We are artists. We are also con artists sometimes, just to get our kids to do what we need them to do. God forgive me….but…parenting fatigue…it is real and frankly, depressing at times.
Adulting is difficult, parenting is impossible. That thought has bubbled up for me a lot, especially after I heard about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. My oldest son was in Kindergarten when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut took place. Today he is just two years younger than the Robb Elementary School shooter...the shooter would have been my son’s age when covid pandemic hit the country. I still can’t wrap my brain around that. My youngest is the same age as the 19 children who were killed. All of this gutted me, and I continue to grieve for those babies. Since Sandy Hook, not a school day goes by where I don’t drop my kids off at school and say “I love you” with full knowledge that schools are safe, but our schools are not immune to tragedy from gun violence. I burst into tears when I think about the community in Uvalde…how are those parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and the whole community able to get through every next hour, day, week? The pain these families are experiencing is unfathomable.
When I hear people comment that it is bad parenting that caused the shooter to murder those children and teachers, my chest gets tight and I find it difficult to breathe. I think to myself “hurt people, they hurt people”. How do we help hurt people so they don’t hurt people?! All parents make some bad choices during the child rearing years. There is no such thing as perfect parenting. It isn’t one factor that causes or can prevent these tragedies. Parents, simply, can not control everything their children do. We teach them, guide them, slowly let go, cross our fingers, remain an available resource and then hope for the best.
Being a father must be especially difficult. Culture in the U.S. still hasn’t shifted enough to create space for boys to be emotional beings (read: human!), have a vocabulary for their feelings, and feel safe to express what they are experiencing.
I truly feel we are failing our boys on a grand level. How our culture defines masculinity is still a recipe for disaster. I cringe every time I hear “man up!”, “be a man!”, “don’t be a crybaby!”, “you wuss!”, “sissy”, etc. I even heard my beloved, amazing husband recently say “don’t act like a little girl”. You can imagine what my reaction to that was. He got an earful.
Couple all of this with isolation due to the COVID pandemic, social media dynamics, exposure to violence via gaming and movies, smart phones making access to God-knows-what, easy access to weapons, an entire lifetime of lockdown drills in schools, it is NO WONDER our boys…our future fathers, partners, husbands, friends are in crisis.
So on this Father’s Day and every day after, I urge all of us to get curious about what it is to be a boy, a man and a father today and what we can do to build a better future for our boys and our communities.
Please watch the documentary The Mask You Live In. It is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qqEMcX1zvzE
