Advice For Dads

Walk your kids to school, if humanly possible.

Being a parent… if you thought anything else was hard, you were incorrect. I have twin children. We have twin children. That is

Carlene MacMillan, MD

and myself. Thank goodness, I'm not attempting parenting on my own because it would eat me alive. My twin children, a boy and a girl, are awesome. I'm blessed to have these specific children. Prior kiddo writing is available here and here and here.

Many of us didn't have the best examples of parenting in our lives. My dad, who was a pretty good father to me but an even better father to other children he had, had to travel a lot. Many parents have to work more than they would like. My dad traveled five days a week. He was on a plane, flying around the country, but he was home on weekends, and, at least until I was in high school and he retired from his sales job, he was basically on the road. This was not entirely bad for my early childhood because my mother, despite working hard to build a not-for-profit, did most of it from Home when we were young. It also turns out to be the case that my dad did most of his drinking while he was on the road because he had an alcohol use disorder. This lasted until eight years before his death. So, all that travel probably saved me some heartache.

I don't think my parents were ideal, and I don't think they were that abnormal. Although our parents were born at the time they were born, and had the examples they had. Rarely are those going to be the examples, in their platonic ideal, that we would want for our children. Everyone aspires to be a slightly better parent than they had.

Quinn Muir, on a swing.

In doing a rewatch of The Tudors recently, I feel there's something perhaps most strange about King Henry's relationship with his children. His whole goal is to have these children, particularly a male child and then handed off to somebody else to do the raising. I don't know that King Henry is the average person in that era, in that he absolutely is not. He was a monarch. That's, by definition, not an everyday role.

But there's something relatable about it. My dad was away a lot and didn't see me much until I was older. Plenty of people have parents who work too much. My children almost certainly have parents who work too much.

“Daddy, get off your phone!” is a dagger in my heart whenever I hear it, and sometimes it lands while I write this newsletter. My daughter assures me it is boring.

How does one stick the landing on being a parent? You don't get to know what the important moments are going to be. There are a limited but massive number of moments in our lives, and predicting, in advance, when the important one is the one you'd want your parents around to support you? You can't. You can't know. It's like trying to predict the stock market but even more complicated because no one can game it. There's no market manipulation for the crucial moments for parents.

We want to be there for our kids when they're experiencing joy; we wanna be there for our kids when they're experiencing fear; we wanna be there for our kids when important things happen. But you don't get to know when the important things will happen. You also have to have a track record, with your children, of showing up for a lot of boring things to you that are also very important to them. School plays, sporting events, Lego competitions, moments of heartbreak, moments of triumph, some little, and others… big. You don't get to show up at one of these events and have it go well if you haven't shown up many of the others. You need to build a track record of trust with your kids. They need to know that you're going to be there for them.

Since you can't know the crucial moments? You can only show up in those moments— and not be treated like a visitor from a foreign land—if you have put in the time. I have a suggestion for Dads (and other parents, but it’s directed to fellow dads).

Do something with your kids regularly.

For me, I walk them to school. Every day.

You don't have to talk about anything specific; you don't have to have anything important or meaningful to say. This is not about profundity. This is not about doing it right. This is about having a track record of being in your kids's lives in whatever way makes plausible sense in your life. But do whatever it is regularly.

Routine is the best friend of parenting. We have Sunday dinner in our household. We don't have a regular family dinner every other night all week, sure, because between the two doctors who are these children's parents, there's just no way that's gonna happen anytime soon. We've got newsletters to write and CPT codes for which to advocate.

Trent Muir, on Drums.

Walk your kids to something regularly. Maybe it’s the bus stop. Perhaps it’s only 10 feet from your door to the bus pickup.

But show up for something, no matter how literally pedestrian, regularly. That way, when it matters, you will have some credibility.