Previous posts in the series: On being a new parent, one year in, having a second kid, and five years in.
It’s been nearly three years since my last parenting update, so I thought it was time for another one.
Now that AI is better than me at everything I used to take pride in, my experience raising kids is maybe one of the only things I still bring to the table in life, so I may as well write about it, right?
Kidding! I’m fine, really. Totally fine. 😅
Anyway…
Here are some random thoughts about parenting my boys—who are now six and nearly-eight.
Starting to grow up
We like to assign clear labels to things. And, while it’s pretty clear that a five-year-old is a “child”, and a 30-year-old is an “adult”, it’s also clear that there is not a specific moment in time when a child suddenly transitions into an adult. We grow up over time.
I think about this now, because the earliest seeds of adulthood are starting to form in my kids. Somewhere around this age you can start teaching kids how they should behave, instead of taking it for granted that they will do what they want because they don’t know any better. Like—a toddler can rip off his clothes and take a dump in the middle of your living room, and you’ll think “man I wish he didn’t do that”, but you won’t fault him for it. He’s a toddler. But by the time a kid is five or six, you start to develop expectations around how they are supposed to behave and start trying to teach them social norms, responsibilities, and these other adult things.
This is hard! It’s hard for two reasons. One is that, well, they’re kids. They may not listen and have short attention spans and can react weird to criticism. But, the other reason it’s hard is that you have to start letting go of them being “just a little kid”. They are still just a little kid, but they’re also starting to grow up.
The older my kids get, the easier it is for me to teach them things, and to get them to behave in a way that is more “proper in society”. I can assign them chores and teach them about incentives and punishments. I can chastise them for interrupting a conversation, or having bad manners at the table. I can tell them that they’re not allowed to make armpit fart sounds when we eat at a restaurant, no matter how funny they think it is. And they eventually get these things! But each little “correction” also makes them less innocent and more prone to hesitating or thinking about what they are supposed to say and do. In other words, making them less like kids and more like adults.
It’s wonderful seeing them grow, and it’s painful seeing what gets left behind.
Personalities run deep
It takes a while for personalities to emerge in kids. As babies they are basically super-needy plants: blobs that drink and poop but otherwise don’t do much. Over time, as they acquire new skills, they start to show flashes of who they are—little things they find funny or like to do over and over. Once they get language they can express themselves even more. And yet, it’s still quite a while before they are “human” enough to really give you a sense of who they are.
But, by the time your kid is six, they undoubtedly have a personality. And that personality is fundamentally baked into them in a way that is quite surprising! Like, two kids with the same parents, growing up in the same house, surrounded by the same people, can (and will) end up completely different.
My kids have a lot in common, but they also have wildly different personalities: one is the quietest person in our family, and the other is the biggest extrovert. And looking back, those differences were visible even when they were barely old enough to talk. Which is interesting! In the “nature vs nurture” debate it’s a point for nature.
This also implies that we might have a lot less control over the people our kids turn out to be than we think. I sometimes find this comforting. If my kids end up as screw-ups I won’t entirely blame myself.
The other fun part about your kids having these deep-rooted personalities is that you get to know them! By talking with them, you get to discover who they are and how they think. Getting to know another person hasn’t been this interesting to me in years. It’s kind of like the feeling you had staying up late at night talking to a new best friend in college, but instead of a new friend it’s your offspring. Ok, and also they are a child and mostly want to talk about Nintendo and dessert. But it’s still fun getting to know them and their unique worldview!
Dealing with more complex emotions
When your baby is sad it’s sad, but it’s usually trivially fixable. They’re hungry, or their butt itches, or they’re tired. When your toddler is sad, it’s sad, but it’s also usually trivially fixable. They got hurt, they didn’t get their way, and so on. When your seven-year-old gets sad it starts to get more complicated. They didn’t like how the thing you said made them feel, or they’re insecure about how good they are at math. For the first time, my reaction to one of these problems is not simply to solve it or dismiss it or distract from it, but it’s to relate to it, and try to talk through it. These problems are harder and more complex to deal with, and it is a new parenting muscle that you start flexing more and more often as your kids get older.
The power of inception
Even though their personalities run deep, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to incept kids into almost anything if you’re persistent enough. Certainly things like cults and kidnappers exemplify this, but there are much more wholesome, moderate variants to the idea.
My kids are into hiking. We just got back from a weekend in the mountains where we went on a long hike every day. Every time I asked the kids if they wanted to take the longer route or the shorter route they said “longer!”
Lockwood on the mountain this past weekend. We started down in that town (Greyton).
Were my kids born with a love of hiking? Almost certainly not. Based on our genes and interests, they’re probably much more inclined towards math and video games. I’m pretty sure my kids like hiking because they have been doing it with me since they were literally weeks old. Hiking is just a thing that we do a lot, and, because they’re kids, they adapt and come to enjoy it.
Once you realize you can incept your kids into most things you can be quite strategic in how you employ this power. It does take commitment, because change is hard for kids, but if you can get over the hump from “change” to “routine” then you’ve basically won.
Most families incept specific values and traits in their kids as a natural reflection of their priorities. For example, we’ve gotten our kids into hiking, good at traveling, and able to entertain themselves for long periods of time because those are priorities for us. Other families might prioritize academics, sports, good manners, community service and so on.
I imagine this malleability does not last forever, so it’s good to incept your kids into traits you want from them while they’re still impressionable!
Living in the good old days
There’s a famous clip from The Office series finale where Andy says “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
I think about this idea a lot. It’s so easy to think about things that we’ve lost while neglecting to focus on the things we have. It was only when my body started giving me all kinds of aches and pains that I realized how lucky I was to be able to run injury-free for as many years as I did. But now when I’m feeling bent out of shape about my body, I try to look at older people and focus on the fact that I still have it pretty good.
Anyway, I think knowing you’re in the good old days is objectively easier with kids, because kids by-and-large follow a set path. They are a lot of work and kinda blob-ish when they’re small. They get easier and more interesting until they’re pretty easy and interesting somewhere around the age of five. Then they stay that way until they start getting all angsty and rebellious sometime in their early teens. In other words, the good old days of parenthood is something like the period when your kids are between five and twelve.
With my youngest having just turned six, this puts me squarely in the best years of parenthood! The beginning of the golden era. I have something like five years to enjoy this before my oldest starts wanting nothing to do with me.
I know this sounds kind of silly or obvious, but I think it’s worth trying to sit with that idea as much as possible. This is it! I’m living in the good old days with these people.
What does that mean, practically?
I think it means prioritizing time with the kids, even if it doesn’t always feel important or even necessarily enjoyable. It means trying to appreciate their shortcomings—the ways in which they clearly don’t operate as adults—and not rush them too fast into growing up and becoming more measured and less joyful. It also means trying to soak up as much of this period as possible. Maybe that’s the best reason to keep writing about parenting. So that one day, when I look back on the good old days, I’ll at least appreciate that I knew I was in them.