It is super annoying when parents constantly talk about their children and the very normal things they are learning, but as a parent, I get it. You start off with this tiny, fragile and completely useless baby that is unable to do anything for itself at all other than cry and evacuate its bowels and then through your own parenting and teaching, support and tears, it grows and develops and starts to learn and do stuff for itself.
A first word. A first step. A first joke.
And you know there are going to be a million firsts and while you look forward to some, you fear many other, especially once they are outside of the your own circle of control. At some stage, all you can do as a parent is hope that you have done enough that your child has adequate skills to face the world ahead and, their eyes open so they can evaluate their surroundings and apply what they know, well.
You also know - they are going to fail. A lot.
And no matter how much you may want to be there for them, it isn't always possible, so you hope that they fail in areas that they can recover from and learn, so that they pass the tests where failure is catastrophic.
Parenting is very easy these days.
All you need to do is sit them in front of a screen from a young age and train them to be content consumers, creating nothing. They will sit quietly and stay out of your hair as long as there is a screen to watch with some inane show with bright colors and a lot of movement.
Good parenting is much harder.
Being active with a child, helping them discover and develop their skills, while making sure that they are picking up the understanding to navigate a rapidly changing world, that the parents themselves often struggle to negotiate. While it is filled with so many moments of joy, the chores and the fears are ceaseless, always present, always there in the background, waiting.
And all of this has to take place while the parent is trying to live a life too, maintain relationships with adults, hold down a job to pay the bills and of course, find some personal reason to keep on going. It is no wonder so many people say "their kids are everything" and that they "do it all for their kids" because, it is incredibly hard to find the time to take care of them and take care of ourselves.
The "dad bod" can be earned, it isn't necessarily laziness.
But, you have to show up and show out too - to set an example for the child so that they have a role model they can look up to, rather than one that they fight to get away from. Yes, they will all want to grow their wings and move from the parent, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and it is good for them to understand, they are likely very similar and as such, will face similar personal challenges.
And face them they must, because at some point, there will not be anyone there to catch them when they fall, no safety net left, other than the one they carry with them through their skillset and personality, their tenacity and resilience - if they have any at all.
At some point, the floaties come off and the conditions of "swim or sink" come into effect and as a parent, the hope is that there will be a lot more swimming than sinking, especially as the water gets deeper and even tippytoes no longer touch the bottom.
You want them to be happy, you want them to be brave, you want them to explore the world and reach their potential. Yet, you also want them to be safe and protected. You want them to be warm and loved in a world that can be incredibly violent and cruel.
And you know they are never safe. There are always risks.
You know that you can do everything right and they can do everything right and still, failure happens and no matter who or what is at fault, it is your child who has to live through and deal with the experiences they encounter. The good ones and the bad ones.
At some point, those many smiles of a carefree life with the occasional tear at a scraped knee are replaced as the weight of the world starts to bear down on their shoulders. And like the parent, responsibility of taking care of themselves and meeting the needs of others becomes a constant process of compromise. Potential put on the shelf, dreams discarded and broken hearts that no parent can mend.
It is as scary as fuck.
Which is why most parents try to block it from their minds and refuse to think about the worst of the worst outcomes, relying on the warnings of "don't run down the stairs" to suffice as lifelong lesson to apply to every trial they will face. You hear those parents constantly warning of the dangers of everything and wish that they would let their children be free to discover for themselves, but I do this too.
It is incredibly hard not to.
I don't want to raise a child filled with the fear to act, but I also don't want to raise a child that doesn't understand the risks of how they act in various conditions. They need to be attentive and skilled, but it is easy to slip into the long list of warnings instead of the many small failures and lessons learned from them.
And this is why it is so easy to raise a child on a screen, because there they can be safe, sitting on the couch, nothing to cut them, no one to harm them.
But, safe for how long? What happens when they get out of the home and they discover the reality of the world is nothing like the reality of the screen? What happens when they realize that all the skills they watched other people perform, they do not possess at all?
Are they safe?
Or will they struggle?
Struggle is a good teacher. Pain excellent homework. However, if it is met with resistance, fear and panic, it becomes consuming, an excuse - a lifestyle habit.
When the world happens to us, rather than we being agents of our own experience, we become passengers on the rollercoaster, with no choice of the direction, nor the curves along the way. We have no control and therefore, no ability to find peace, tranquility and the space to care for ourselves, or love others.
Today was the hottest day of the summer and probably the last hot day for 2022 and for the first time, Smallsteps took her floaties off. After one trial run with my hands under her belly, she dived in and took her first strokes through the water under her own power. She only made it a few feet, but it is a start. I want her to swim well.
Because, I remember the first day I learned to swim.
It was my birthday and we celebrated after hours at an aquatic center a friend of the family owned. After taking my first strokes in a children's wading pool, I moved into a larger pool filled with confidence, while the rest of the family were elsewhere. I swam my first few feet into the middle and ran out of energy, with the bottom was well beyond the reach of my tippytoes.
I literally drowned.
I resigned myself to my fate and found peace and tranquility in the depths, filled with calmness. And, just as my eyes were closing for what I believed to be the last time, someone jumped in and performed resuscitation, bring me back.
I failed.
But I got a second chance.
I didn't tell my parents until almost twenty years later, so they never knew how close they had come to losing a child.
I hope that Smallsteps will always feel that she can come to me with anything, but no matter how much a parent cares and wants to support, the child's life is their own and the majority of it, is lived out of sight of the parent. Especially the worst of it.
All I can do is my best to help her have what she needs to survive.
But all of these ordinary milestones in life, are magical to me daily. And I am guessing I am not the only parent who sometimes sits in awe of it all and wants to share the magic with others. Even if they don't care or understand what is so special.
It was a good day.
A special day.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Shit man that's crazy! I couldn't imagine what it would be like to drown and come back. That's fucking scary and definitely one of the memories you will never lose, Alzheimers be damned!
One of the funniest and cutest things about little smallsteps is that nose of hers! I don't know why but I think it's awesome lol very norse I think, or that region up there in Funland.
I hear you on the parenting and the challenges of it all. It's stressful as shit to do it all and work a job, navigate life and a mortgage and all that stuff that we were unprepared for until you just jump in and kind of do it one day. It's not fun sometimes but I wouldn't have it any other way. I want to try and be the best I can for my family and leave a lasting impression of how I think a father and husband should be. In hopes that one day, the little man will be a better version of me!
It is hard to not yell a warning every time they are about to do something foolish that will break something or hurt themselves. I've gotten better at it lately, with him getting a bit more mature than in months and years past. It's good but it's also sad to see the little ones growing up! :( lol
I cringe at the days when my wife is feeling under the weather and can't entertain and do the things she needs to so in order for me to keep working we give him an iPad and let him watch some shows. He's thankfully got an incredible imagination and lately sticks to watching fishing shows and stuff, making a mess of the living room but it's both good and bad. He was fileting a cucumber for dinner tonight, pretending it was a fish lol so I guess there are some things that he benefits from if it falls in his interest zone! But other parents do this all day every day and it's sad. We've invited some of our friends and their kids to do stuff with us but most of them refuse because their kids aren't into being outside fishing and all that. It's a damn shame!
I am not likely to forget it - I can still feel the feeling of it when I choose, which is kind of cool. The thing that was most surprising was after the initial struggle to survive on the surface, as I sank and resigned myself to fate, I was completely calm. There was no fear, no worry, no panic. Because of this experience, I don't fear death.
Lol the nose!! It is mine - so I feel sorry for her later in life :D
One of the things I have learned is that caring for the family means caring for oneself too. Neglect the self too much and everything else falls apart. I think that this is part of the reason so many marriages fail, because they don't spend time caring for themselves as a couple. Of course, there is the balance needed in there, some go overboard and into the realms of child neglect.
I do this daily! I don't want to - but it just comes out.... :D
For the first four years there was no screens at all - then Covid. We had to use it so we could work - but we limited it heavily. This summer I taught Smallsteps how to turn the TV on herself and choose some preselected shows.
It won't happen once she starts school in a few weeks, but I make a bowl of breakfast for her the night before (cucumber, carrots, grapes, cheese etc) and put it in the fridge and write a note for her to read in the morning that gives her something to do while watching, like draw a picture. Often though, she ends up drawing, playing, reading anyway, not really watching. It gives us a chance to have a sleep-in for an extra hour and, it gives her some responsibility and sense of taking care of herself.
Normally when kids here start school (not preschool like Smallsteps will start in a few weeks) they get a phone. I am thinking that the phone we get will be one of those phone watches with no apps and limited numbers.
Being able to swim seems to be a special thing. When I was growing up I learned to swim. As I grew I was very surprised to learn that not many people can swim. Most of the people I worked with through the years never learned to swim, and I don't know very many people that have ever swam in the ocean. I used to love swimming, but with age and time and distance from childhood I simply have not done much swimming in the last fifteen years.
Smallsteps is learning a tool that not many will have, likely even fewer in her generation will know how to swim than in mine and yours. What you mention about not having the skill of others in videos is very real it seems. Game bikers, and skateboarders never having actually rode a bike or a skateboard in real life. I do feel sorry for the kids raised by video.
It is a vital skill in Australia (I am not a good swimmer at all) and in Finland, because the entire summer centers around the water, beaches and pools in Australia, lakes in Finland. So many people drown it is crazy though.
My mother encouraged us not to swim because of her fears of drowning. Seems a bit counter-productive!
What I think is most insidious with the consumption of skill is the feeling of having the skill. It is like watchin a Kungfu film and then getting into a fight with a Kungfu master.
That is so true in so many ways. We have or had some commercials over here for Holiday Inn hotels that took that view. "I'm not a (choose a profession), but I did stay at a Holiday Inn.
Stupid people do stupid things.
I don't think that most parents can do those, at least in my country. I think stomach comes first, I can hear this from a dad/mum anytime "I am feeding 4 stomaches"
Therefore, I don't think that this dad or mum would prepare their children well for life, but the children would compulsorily prepare themselves on their own, as I did.
It is common most places I think. As long as the kid os fed, the job is done. I think there is more to it than that, especially now - and, even the type of food matters. A few weeks ago while Smallsteps was on the beach eating carrots and raisins, her friend was eating sweet biscuits as a meal - suffice to say, there was an obvious difference between the two.
Also, sometimes children of neglectful parents do very well, because they are able to learn what not to do in life :D
The beauty of the inner monologue becoming a post. What a beautiful Parenthood! I wish more parents had these ideas about raising their children. Maybe we would have more competent adults in the world.
Lovely pictures. Smallsteps has gorwn quite a lot since I last saw a picture of her. And good thing she has all the room for growth plus the safe network of these ideas.
I find interesting that story about drowning. It happened to me as well, but during a swimming class. My parents were present and I still remember their shocked when the teacher jumped into the pool to rescue me. But before bing more afraid of the fact that I almost drown, they kept me in thoses classes until I could swim properly.
It is an scary world and people need to be ready to face challenges of any kind that may arise.
I reckon if all parents wrote near daily, they would discover some good opportunities.
I am glad your parents persevered and taught you. Mine (mother) encouraged us not to swim at all, because of the fears of drowning. When I was revived, my first words were "Don't tell my mother".
This is where our parenting fears restrict our children from learning what they need. Australia is a massive island, Finland has 200,000 lakes - swimming is a must have skill and I am lacking.
The thinking exercise would be good indeed.
Well, it was simples. Besides we live near the coast and swimming is important. My father can't swim. That's another important thing. I even got to compete and stuff. But I wasn't very athletic. And also had to through a fear of depths.
😟
Ebb and flow of life... your life ebbed and someone's life flowed into you.
I used to think more spiritually about these things when I was young - but these days, I just say "life is pretty random". :D
Priceless moments, experiences and of course photos. It looks like a great day to spend with the family.
It was a nice day. Smallsteps enjoyed it immensely!
Smallsteps really look nice in most of the pictures and it shows that she likes to explore and experience things.
She loves it, but she is also quite reserved and needs some support and encouragement to dive into new things - once in though, she goes with it.
So many beautiful pictures with deep words crafted in this post.
Parenting is such a serious task. There is so much to do and yet some children may not turn out right.
I am so scared of being a failed parent. But is there a way to parenting?
Is there like a guide?
Well, I guess there are some tings that should be done and one of those things will include focusing on what you can control and leaving what you cannot control to nature.
Really deep post.
Hopefully the images align with the text - or the text the images - not sure which way.
Parenting is a serious task and in my opinion, the guides are generally just that - guides. There is no manual, but I reckon what is most important is our ability to pay attention at the right times and the skills to evaluate what is actually needed. I fail often at this - there are always so many distractions in this life, some important, some unnecessary, pulling attention away.
This is a serious concern.
I wonder if I could still swim. It has been ages since the last time I swam...
Don't jump straight into the deep end then! :D
Your daughter is awesome, happy to be learning to swim. Parenting
is the hardest job in the world, there are no guidelines, just love them and all the rest will come.
You are right, the love is what should bring the rest. But it makes me wonder how many actually love their kids, considering how they treat them.
Thanks for sharing! It's always scary to have a near death experience, fortunately everything's ok.
Those ordinary milestones are pretty magical.
A lot of ordinary mundane things are if you actually think about them, which we don't most of the time because familiarity breeds contempt or whatever that saying is :)
Children need outdoor activities to find inner strength, even though they falter, as we did, they learn from scrapes and bruising exactly the same way.
We cannot protect them everywhere, teaching them from young to embrace nasty with good is all we can hope for.
Happy belated birthday wishes, Smallsteps like each little person is special, all need guidance and assistance, not smothering nor sitting in front of screens.
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There's nothing more to say. Such a beautifully written post that captures what every parent feels. The later, if you are fortunate, you go through the same emotions when your grandchildren come on the scene. There is something wonderful and at the same time frightening, about bringing up children.