I think a lot of people believe becoming a parent automatically earns them the title.
You have a child, so now you are a mother.
You have a child, so now you are a father.
But I do not think it is that simple.
Having a child makes you responsible for another human being.
Being a parent is what you repeatedly choose to do with that responsibility.
To me, parenthood has very little to do with you.
Once you become a parent, your life changes.
Your decisions are not only yours anymore.
The way you speak matters.
The people you allow around your children matter.
The things you tolerate matter.
The promises you make matter.
The way you handle pain matters.
The way you love matters.
Because to a child, you are one of their first sources of information about almost everything.
Love.
Trust.
Safety.
Honesty.
Relationships.
The world.
And eventually, themselves.
That is why I think parenthood is not a title.
It is a pattern.
Love is a pattern
I do not think children learn that you love them because you tell them once.
They learn it because they experience it over and over.
Love becomes a pattern.
It is showing up when things are good.
Showing up when things are difficult.
Showing up when they disappoint you.
Showing up when you are tired.
Showing up when they are struggling.
Showing up when their choices are not the choices you would have made.
Unconditional love means they do not have to perform correctly to earn your love.
It does not mean there are no rules.
It does not mean there are no consequences.
It means the relationship itself is not constantly being held hostage.
The child does not have to wonder:
Do you still love me?
Are you still here?
Can I still trust you?
I want my kids to know the answer before they ever have to ask.
Yes.
Always.
Trust is a pattern too
Trust is not built because you announce that you are trustworthy.
It is built because your child keeps finding you where you said you would be.
You keep your word.
You tell them the truth.
You listen.
You have their back.
You do not make them responsible for adult problems.
You do not turn them into pieces in somebody else’s game.
You let them be children.
And if you mess up, you own it.
That matters to me.
Words can become hollow very quickly.
People can say, “I love you.”
They can say, “I’m sorry.”
They can say, “I promise.”
But children notice when later never comes.
They notice when the Lego set stays untouched after hearing “we’ll do it later” ten times.
They notice when a promise means something.
They notice when it does not.
That is why I believe actions matter so much more than titles.
Do not tell me you are sorry.
Show me.
Do not tell me it was a mistake.
Show me.
Do not tell me you care.
Show me.
Effort is proof.
Listening matters more than people realize
One of the most important things I try to do with my kids is listen.
Really listen.
There is a difference between hearing your child and listening to them.
You can hear every word and still miss the person.
Listening means trying to understand what they are actually saying.
Trying to understand what they want.
What they are afraid of.
What interests them.
What they are becoming.
I think parents can sometimes fall into the trap of believing age automatically means wisdom in every direction.
Yes, we know more about some things.
We have lived longer.
We have made mistakes our kids have not had time to make yet.
But our children are not copies of us.
They are not supposed to be.
You cannot hold them against some old standard and expect them to become exactly what existed before them.
You can put a child in a box before they even realize there are walls around them.
I would rather guide.
Show them roads.
Explain the options.
Give them information.
And then, when it is appropriate, step back.
If my son becomes interested in the military, I can show him the paths.
I can explain what different choices might mean.
That does not mean I decide his life for him.
I want to teach my kids how to choose.
Not choose everything for them.
Children are watching more than we think
Kids are sponges.
Every parent knows that phrase.
But I think we sometimes forget what it really means.
They are not only absorbing what you deliberately teach them.
They are absorbing you.
How you respond when you are angry.
How you speak when you think they are not listening.
How you treat people.
How you treat yourself.
Who you keep around.
What you accept.
What you laugh at.
What you fear.
What you repeatedly do.
That is why protecting children is such a difficult balance.
You cannot shelter them from reality forever.
But you also do not have to hand them every ugly part of adulthood before they are ready to understand it.
I think there is a difference between sheltered and shielded.
You want them to experience life.
You want them to grow.
You want them to make mistakes.
But you also have a responsibility to protect their innocence where you can.
And that means understanding that who you allow around them can matter almost as much as who you are around them.
I had a lot of patterns I wanted to stop
When I think about my own childhood, there are not many patterns I intentionally wanted to repeat.
There are pieces of it I miss.
The imagination.
The sense of wonder.
The feeling that almost anything was possible.
The innocence of believing that evil would always look obvious.
When you are a kid, the villain wears the costume.
Everybody knows who the bad guy is.
Then you get older.
Life is not nearly that simple.
Most of the patterns from my childhood and teenage years are things I have worked hard not to carry forward.
My childhood often felt like a war zone.
Questions could feel pointed.
Statements could feel sharp.
You never completely knew what would set something off.
I escaped into video games.
Movies.
The internet.
Those places gave me somewhere else to exist for a while.
Somewhere I was not simply the poor kid whose family already had a reputation.
Somewhere I could imagine something different.
I was taught a lot about anger.
I was not taught much about peace.
And it took me longer than I wish it had to understand how much of that I was carrying.
Sometimes it takes something enormous to wake you up
I wish I could say I understood everything early.
I did not.
It took trouble.
It took consequences.
It took becoming a father.
It took realizing that there was a possibility I could miss my child’s life because of the decisions I was making.
That changes the way you look at yourself.
I wish it had happened sooner.
But better late than never.
I have not been perfect since.
Not even close.
But there is something powerful about realizing you are not required to remain who you were.
Your past can explain you without owning you.
And once you understand that, the responsibility becomes yours.
You can keep repeating the pattern.
Or you can start building another one.
Showing up means more than occupying a seat
I care deeply about showing up.
If my child has a game, I want to watch the game.
I am not there just to socialize.
I want to see how they played.
I want to know what happened.
I want to be able to talk to them about it afterward.
If there is an awards ceremony, I want to be there.
A recital.
A school event.
Whatever it is.
I have gone to those things for my children and my stepson.
There were times I was the only person sitting there for them.
That was never about competing with anybody else.
It was not about saying, “Look who showed up.”
It was about my child looking out and seeing:
He’s here.
That matters to me more than I know how to explain.
Because when I was young, I think one of the things I wanted most was simply for somebody to be there.
And I know that people in my life may have believed they were there for me.
Maybe they were, according to what they understood.
I cannot blame everyone forever for only knowing what they knew.
But I can learn from how it felt.
I want there to be no question in my children’s minds that I showed up.
That I cared.
That I loved them.
You can be there without being present
I have also learned something uncomfortable.
You can physically be there and still not really be present.
I have done that.
There were times I let pain, emotions, or things happening outside my home cloud the beauty sitting right in front of me.
I could spend so much energy trying to protect the peace inside the house that I did not notice I was sometimes carrying the outside world through the door myself.
That is hard to admit.
But being a parent requires honesty with yourself.
And if there is one thing I have always been capable of, sometimes probably too capable of, it is finding every way I could have done something better.
You do not have to tell me every place I went wrong.
I have probably already replayed it a thousand times and made myself sound worse than you ever could.
But that honesty can also become useful.
Because once you see a pattern, you can change it.
Being present means more than being in the room.
It means looking into their eyes.
Listening.
Understanding.
Being emotionally available.
Not allowing your pain to constantly become theirs.
I have not always done that perfectly.
But I am working on it.
And I am never going to stop.
My kids taught me patience
I did not grow up learning patience.
People were not particularly patient with me.
And I was not particularly patient either.
My children taught me something different.
I think part of it comes from love.
It has always been easier for me to love them than to love myself.
Easier to forgive them than forgive myself.
Easier to be patient with them than patient with myself.
There is something about loving another person more than you think about yourself that changes you.
And children return that love in such a pure way.
Your babies love you.
They just do.
Before they understand your history.
Before they understand reputation.
Before they understand mistakes.
They know you.
And they love you.
There is something deeply healing about that.
Maybe patience began for me when I finally understood what unconditional love felt like going both directions.
The small things become roots
I think routines matter more than people realize.
Bedtime stories.
Prayers.
Little traditions.
Saying goodnight to the moon and stars.
We slowed down on that one for a while when the little ones entered their “outside is scary at night” phase.
We will get back to it.
We have made up songs.
Little dances.
For a long time, we had a whole routine around turning on all the lights in the house when it started getting dark.
From the outside, those things look tiny.
Maybe silly.
But I think those tiny rituals give children roots.
They create stability.
They give them familiar things in a world that is constantly changing.
They create memories.
They give a child the feeling that there are things they can count on.
Sometimes we are so focused on providing the big things that we forget children often build their sense of home from the smallest ones.
I do not need my kids to think I was perfect
When my children are grown, I hope they are honest about me.
I do not need them to say I was perfect.
I was not.
I would be completely okay with them saying:
My dad was flawed.
Because I am.
I have come a long way, but I am still a person.
What I hope they say after that matters much more.
I hope they say I cared.
I hope they say I loved people.
I hope they say I loved them more than I ever knew how to love myself.
I hope they say I tried.
That is really it.
I want to give them good memories.
I want to give them a good chance at life.
I do not want to control their future opinion of me.
I want to live in a way where they can form that opinion honestly.
And if what they remember is:
He was not perfect, but he loved us and he tried like hell.
I can live with that.
The thing that scares me most
The thing that scares me most about being a parent is knowing there will be a day when I am not here.
One day I will not be able to guide them.
I will not be able to answer the phone.
I will not be able to protect them.
I will not be sitting at the awards ceremony.
Or the game.
Or wherever life takes them next.
That is one reason the pattern matters so much to me.
Because someday the pattern is what remains.
I want them to have heard “I love you” enough times that they still hear it when I am gone.
I want them to remember that I showed up enough times that they never have to wonder whether I wanted to.
I want them to have enough memories of me listening that when they are older, they know their thoughts mattered.
I cannot control how long I am here.
But I can control what I repeatedly give them while I am.
Being present means listening
If there is one thing I wish more parents understood, it is that being there is not enough.
Money is not enough.
Words are not enough.
Simply occupying the same room is not enough.
Being present means looking into your child’s eyes and listening.
Not just being able to repeat what they said.
Trying to understand it.
People have sometimes been surprised by how well I understand my younger kids when they are speaking in what sounds like complete gibberish to everyone else.
I do not think there is anything special about me there.
I listen.
I pay attention.
I learn what their sounds mean.
If you were learning another language, you would do the same thing.
They point.
You connect the word.
You recognize the pattern.
You learn.
That is parenting to me.
Pay attention.
Guide.
Then give them room to become themselves.
If you have messed up, keep going
There may be a parent reading this who thinks they have already messed up too much.
Maybe you yelled too much.
Maybe you were absent.
Maybe you broke promises.
Maybe you let your own pain spill into their lives.
Maybe you look backward and think:
I fucked this up.
Okay.
What are you going to do now?
You can let that realization push you further downhill.
Or you can start climbing.
Mistakes have exactly as much power over your future as you continue giving them.
You cannot undo yesterday.
But you can change the pattern your child experiences tomorrow.
Keep going.
Own what you did.
Apologize when you need to.
Show them the apology was real.
Be there.
Listen.
Try again.
It is not over.
And your kids still need you.
You are worth the effort too.
Providing and parenting are not the same thing
You can provide for a child without really parenting them.
You can pay bills.
Buy clothes.
Put food on the table.
And all of those things matter.
But there is more.
Parenthood is repeatedly putting your children before the petty adult things that can consume us.
It is refusing to make them responsible for conflicts they did not create.
It is trying to improve their life instead of using them to improve your position.
It is remembering that they are not possessions.
They are people.
They will have their own thoughts.
Their own beliefs.
Their own lives.
Their own mistakes.
Our job is not to manufacture smaller versions of ourselves.
Our job is to love them, protect them, teach them, guide them, and eventually trust them enough to walk their own road.
The patterns I hope they remember
When my children are grown, there are two patterns I hope they remember most.
The first is love.
I hope they remember that my love was not conditional.
That they did not have to jump through hoops for it.
That they did not have to believe exactly what I believed.
That they did not have to become exactly what I imagined.
That no matter what happened, I loved them.
The second is that I kept going.
I hope they remember watching me get knocked down and get back up.
Maybe stumble.
Maybe fall.
Maybe need a minute.
But keep moving.
I hope they learn that from me.
Not that you never struggle.
Not that you never fail.
Not that people will always understand you.
Just that you keep going.
Keep loving.
Keep trying.
Keep learning.
Keep showing up.
Because at the end of the day, being a parent is not something you prove by saying:
“I am their mother.”
“I am their father.”
You prove it in the thousands of moments that come after those words.
Parenthood is not a title.
It is a pattern.