The Pitfalls of Parenting from Teenage Experience
When it comes to our kids growing up, many of us fall into the pattern of thinking about our children’s growing up through the lens of our own. Sometimes that means we want to give them something we didn’t have; sometimes it means we want to give them the same thing we did have; and sometimes it means boxing yourself into thinking their teenage experiences are going to be the same as yours.
The
good thing is as a dad you aren’t limited to messing up just one of these
things and you can get all three wrong. Learning while making mistakes is a
hallmark of fatherhood after all.
There
isn’t something automatically wrong about giving your kids something you didn’t
have as a kid. Plenty of great gifts have been given to kids because a parent
always wanted X when they were a kid and wanted to make it happen for their
child.
Where
it can go sideways on you though, is when you get hung up on whatever that
thing is. If it’s not a necessity then it’s not something that’s going to make
or break their childhood. A lot of unwise financial decisions have been made by
placing an unnecessary emphasis on something you thought you missed out on.
Pretty sure a third of Disney Vacations fall into this category…
The
next way parenting from a personal experience can get you is when you want to
give your kids something you did have. I’ve definitely passed on a tradition
and then regretted the emphasis I placed on it after seeing how important the
kids thought it was.
Super
Bowl Sunday is a good example. It was fun for me as a kid to go to family friends’
Super Bowl parties. I thought it would be fun to make a party out of the Super
Bowl with the boys at a young age. However, the Super Bowl represents a laundry
list of things I think are terrible: consumerism, materialism, gambling,
spoiled sports stars, and that’s not even touching on the halftime show.
Basically, I’ve accidentally made my kids think this is an important event
because I wanted to pass along the good memories of hanging out with people at
Super Bowl parties when I was a kid.
Which
sort of leads into the third way of messing up your child’s growing up: Thinking
their experience is going to be the same as yours. Because thinking it’s going
to be same can lead into you trying to curate their experience so it is the
same. And, with an exception for religious and family traditions, trying to
orchestrate your kids’ experience to be like yours is a fool’s errand.
This
one is particularly insidious for the sentimental. I have many fond memories of
a variety of experiences, but it’s hard to look at them objectively. Some fond memories
come from mistakes I made as a teenager or from situations it would be unwise
to encourage.
There’s
an interesting dynamic when it comes to the coming-of-age experiences of our
kids. You want to help them grow up, make good memories, and prepare them to
take their place in society -- but the only path you know is the one you took.
As obvious as it is, it’s somehow easy to forget some important differences: 1)
Your kid is not you. 2) Society has changed. 3) Just because it was your
experience (good or bad) doesn’t mean it has to be theirs.
The
last one seems to be the hardest pitfall to avoid. Instead of evaluating an
activity or experience on its merits we take the short cut of not thinking
about it at all if it falls into the bucket of a thing I did, especially if it
was something you enjoyed. It could be playing a sport, video games, going to
concerts, driving, or dating at a certain age or any number of other things.