We’ve all heard the expression “actions speak louder than words.” Nowhere does that hold more true than with our children. What parent hasn’t looked on with dismay or embarrassment as their child pulls off a perfect impersonation of them saying something they shouldn’t have or wouldn’t have in present company? Count me in. Been there. More than once. You’d think you’d learn, but ya don’t. But them parroting what you say is really only the surface stuff. Their little brains are wired into learning mode when they are little. They say that most of a child’s personality is formed by age 5 or 6. I think we sometimes fail to appreciate that as adults.

Most of us are diligent about our children’s education. We read to them and teach them their numbers and letters. When they start school we make sure they do their homework and get their reading done, which is great. I applaud that. But the thing is, book learning is more about factual information and logical process and how well they learn, and it will almost certainly influence what they become. But you know what? I’m far more concerned with who my children will become. I would much rather have a kid who is a good person, but average student than one that is a brilliant student but lacking in interpersonal skills. I would much rather my child be a happy short order cook than a miserable physicist. But what determines that?

There is no short answer to that, in my opinion. I think that the first thing you have to do if you haven’t already is to get to know your kids. I mean really know them. If you aren’t meeting them where they are - that is, getting down to where they live - then you don’t really know them. That has been perhaps the hardest lesson for me. I adore my kids and always have but that isn’t enough. It is far too easy to dismiss them with a pat on the head and an “isn’t that cute.” But as cute as they are, they aren’t generally trying to be cute. They are trying to communicate with you. It doesn’t matter if I’ve had a bad day, they are still telling me about their day when I get home. How well I listen is entirely up to me.

I think the best bit of parenting advice I’ve ever gotten was from an elderly lady in some restaurant or another. Unbeknownst to me she had been admiring my little one from the booth behind me for most of the time we were there. When we were done mom went to make a potty run then load up the car while I stayed back to pay. As I walked away from the table that sweet old lady reached out and touched my arm to get my attention. She told me what a cute family we had and I thanked her. Then she told me something I’ll never forget. She said that before her husband died he told her that if he could go back and change one thing in his life it would be to have listened to his children when thay talked to him. Really listened to them. You know, I mentioned in an earlier post how I felt that discovering your regrets at the end of your life when it was too late to change them would be terrible. Well, I think that particular regret would be an especially bitter pill to swallow. I don’t know how many times she’d dispensed that advice and I wonder if others recognized the wisdom in it. I know I did. I only wish I’d gotten it years earlier.

So now I make an effort to really truly communicate with my kids and to truly listen to them when they talk. Not only am I surprised at how much I’ve learned, but I’m shocked at how much they pick up on it. When I’m tired and not really listening to what they are saying they know it and go off to do other things but when I engage and listen they will sit and talk to me for as long as I like most of the time. My favorite invitations in the world are from my kids. My littlest one frequently comes in the living room, gestures toward the toy room and says “Come play with me daddy” (which is way cute, by the way). And I do. We play rockets or pirates or cars or whatever he wants to play. And my middle one asks if she can sit with me and either read, talk or cuddle. And we do. We read or talk about her day and mine or just sit and watch a movie together. And my oldest often calls me up late in the morning and asks if we can have lunch. And we do. We sit and talk about what’s up in her life or about photography or music or boys (ew) or whatever else comes to mind. I think that time is the most rewarding time of my day and I consider it a personal victory that my kids want to spend time with me.

I didn’t always feel that way. I think Rachel got the short end of the stick in a lot of ways. When she was little I was younger and dumber and busier and didn’t yet have that sage advice from a lady in a restaurant. I loved her dearly and showed it in many ways but really listening to her was not among them. I mean, I remember conversations we had when she was little but, in retrospect, I just thought ‘how cute’ while she was being quite earnest. We weren’t really communicating.

And as much as you need to listen to them, you need to be aware they are watching and listening to you. It can be little things or big ones. You just never know what they will pick up. If you leave your stuff laying all over the place they will most certainly start to emulate that behavior. If you use words you’d rather they not (and they don’t have to be the four letter variety) you can bet they will use them too. Usually at church or in a crowded store. If you are nice to someone’s face, but talk about them behind their back, your kids won’t miss that either. They will just think it is normal, acceptable behavior. If you abuse a store’s return policy to ‘rent’ some tool or to return something you broke as defective, you’re teaching them that that is OK too. If you lie to your spouse about where you went or how much you spent, they see that too. And they learn that they should be truthful only when it is convenient. You’ve taught them that honesty is optional. And those are to name but a few. There are good things too that I will get to in a moment, but the bad ones are those I try to be particularly careful of.

But I think that beyond what school teaches them, beyond what they learn from listening to you and beyond what they learn from watching you lie the most important lessons of all. I’m talking about the things that will likely influence how happy they are for the rest of their lives and, as such I think require special attention. A while back I stopped and thought about all the unhappy people I’ve come in contact with over the years and I tried to figure out what the common denominators were in them. Though the list is hardly a big surprise, these are the three biggest things I came up with:

Money. How to make money is a whole other post and something your children will ultimately decide. How to handle what money they do have, on the other hand, is something that woefully few young adults have a handle on. That applies to a lot of older ones to, unfortunately. If you doubt the impact of poor money management on someone’s life consider this: the number one factor leading to divorce is money problems according to several prominent studies. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to equip your children with the skills needed to manage their money. The flip side of that, and I think the bigger challenge, is teaching them to manage their wants. No amount of money will be enough if they spend it frivolously. They need to learn to manage want. If you cater to their every wish you aren’t doing them any favors. Wanting things is a part of life. How we cope with not getting those things is a learned skill.

Relationships. As young children, group dynamics tend to have a life of their own and the kids themselves don’t really have the capacity to understand them, much less change them. As they start getting older, though, you can certainly prepare them to control their own environment more.You can teach them conflict resolution skills that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. And I don’t mean your typical ‘stand up to the bully and he will back down.’ That has gotten more kids behinds kicked than I can count. The hows and whys of conflict resolution is beyond the scope of this post, but there are tons of resources out there.

As they get old enough to start thinking of boys and girls as different (but in a good way) they need well established boundaries and a good understanding of what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. And you need to give them reasons, not just prohibitions. When it comes to prohibitions vs hormones I know where I am putting my money. Give them good reasons and you might get through.

By the time they are allowed to date you need to make sure your kids are prepared in other ways as well. Girls need to know what to look for in a boy. Teach her that if he doesn’t treat her like a princess now she should seriously consider her choices. Ditto for respecting her boundaries. It only goes downhill from here. And you fathers need to instill that in your boys as well. Boys aren’t born knowing how to be a gentleman, they need to be taught. Along with that, you need to teach your boys what to look for in a girl. They need to understand that girls wearing too much makeup and too little clothing probably aren’t their best choices for a fulfilling relationship no matter how tempting they may be.

Boys and girls alike need to understand that popularity and looks are nice, but the are nowhere near as important as the ‘other stuff’. Like most young men I chased after the girls I thought were ‘hot’ but, after catching a few, I came to realize that they often had the personalities of a can of tuna fish and weren’t especially fun to hang around. They need to understand that dating the cheerleader or quarterback can be a real status symbol, but that isn’t why we should choose someone to date. And if they do date them they should expect the same courtesy and respect from them as from anyone else.

At the same time, they need to learn what their roles will be in adult relationships. This is another area where they learn more by observation than by what you tell them. How parents relate has more to do with how a child will act in their subsequent relationships than any other single factor. I see so many parents hide their relationship from their kids and I think that is tragic. I never leave or arrive home without kissing my wife and I don’t let the kids get between us, literally or figuratively. The same goes for those times we snuggle up on the sofa. They are always welcome to join us but have long since learned that trying to pull us apart is useless. They’ve seen us dance and play and be playfully affectionate and I think that is as it should be. And my son is at that age where he shows bouts of physical aggression. The very few times he has tried it with mom I’ve stepped in and explained to him that she is my wife and he will have to deal with me if he does. He has learned the pecking order in the house. That helps now, but more importantly, I hope it will set a model for him as an adult.

I am the head of my household, but I don’t mean that in the way it is typically used. I think too many men latch on to that portion of scripture that has the wife submitting to the husband without reading the bits laying much larger responsibility on their shoulders. You are told that you should love your wife as Christ loved the church; that is, sacrificially. I go off on that tangent to say this: Though the kids know that I have the ultimate say in what goes on in our home, they rarely witness it. For that matter, very few times has it come to that. I don’t make decrees from on high. My wife and I work as a team and the kids know it. They know that what one says goes for both. If we disagree about how something should be handled we generally don’t do it in front of the kids.

Of course, the flip side of that is that they also learn from the times you do have cross words in front of them or the times where we do disagree about how something should be handled. And I’m not sure why, but they seem to pick up the bad much more readily than the good. Human nature I guess. Joe McNally, a famous photographer, has a saying that applies to many areas of life, this one included: “It only takes one ‘oh crap’ to wipe out three attaboys.” Because of that I try to take special care to avoid those moments.

And last, but nowhere near least, teach them the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. I think most of us have seen marriages fail because they didn’t know what to do once that newness wore off; once they lost that in love feeling. That’s not to say that you can’t be in love. Nearly 20 years later I am in love with my wife, but things are good right now. It’s easy to be in love in good times. It is when times aren’t so good that your kids need to be prepared for. I’ve oft heard it said that marriage is a 50-50 proposition; each of you carries half the load, as it were. Not so. If you are looking for 50-50 you are in trouble. Sure, there are 50-50 moments in any marriage, but the scale is usually skewed one way or the other, even if only slightly. My point is this: If your spouse is only contributing 25% you need to pick up the other 75. Waiting at the halfway mark can be a long and lonely wait. Sometimes it is 100-0. Hopefully not often, but it will happen. Either way, it requires work on your part. Loving someone is a conscious effort that sometimes requires a lot of you. Do your kids a favor and make sure they know that going in. Learning it “on the job” doesn’t always happen and is generally a painful experience if you do.

Self assurance. All of the above is good and necessary, but doesn’t do much good if your kids don’t grow up with the confidence to trust and stand behind their choices. Almost universally if you look at the leaders of any group their most prominent attribute is self assurance.

Let them be themselves and make sure they know how wonderful they are. I tell Courtney every night how beautiful she is without fail. It is part of my mental checklist at bedtime, not that I generally need to remind myself. And, though I no longer tuck Rachel in at night I tell her the same frequently. And I tell Justin what a handsome little man he is. And they know I’m not just saying it. I go out of my way to compliment them each on their achievements and to tell them how proud I am of them, and I am. And I tell them I love them perhaps too much, but I promise they’ll never have any doubt. To this day my mom thinks I am Ansel Adams reincarnate to hear her talk about my photography. While I know it isn’t true I know she thinks it is. I am an OK photographer but to hear her tell it the world is missing out by me not taking more pictures. And that validation to this day still means the world to me and instills confidence

Teach them to learn from their mistakes. If you hide your failures from your kids you are depriving them of a learning opportunity. There is no imperative for kids to think their parents are infallible. If they think you are they feel they have to be, and they’ll never measure up in their own eyes.

But most of all, let them be their own person. Let them wear that horrid outfit they picked out. Let them try that spectacularly bad idea as long as it won’t cause them bodily harm. Let them do what they want on the things that don’t matter. Help them on that project, but only as much as you have to. Let them complete it and they will own the sense of accomplishment. Let them fail and be there to catch them. All of those things build character and make them more comfortable with who they are. No one is more vulnerable than someone looking for outside validation. Kids who need that external approval are open to peer pressure in the worst way. Let them be comfortable enough in their own skin to say no.

Much of this is difficult to do because the framework for how we treat our kids is usually a direct result of how our parents treated us. For me that just drives home how important it is that we as parents get it right. Our shortcomings can cheat not just our kids but theirs as well. We have to buck that trend and learn from our parents mistakes. And our kids will hopefully do the same.

Oh, and all this is for naught if you don’t limit how much you let the television teach them. ‘nuf said.

So as I look back over this long post I realize it comes off a bit preachy. I’ll try to go back and clean it up a bit later, but for now let me say this. The things I’ve listed here are obviously just my opinion and I’ve been known to be wrong, sometimes even twice in one day. And, even assuming I am 100% correct, no one needs to read and re-read this more than I. Living to the ideals I know I should is not easy and I struggle with it each and every day.

I heard a great quote a while ago: “Any man can be a daddy but it takes a real man to be a father.” So every day I attempt to man up and be a father. As often as not I fail, sometimes miserably but it isn’t for lack of trying. In spite of my failures, I think I have three pretty great kids. And that is what keeps me going in the end. I’m thankful that kids are so resilient and I’m just happy when I recognize my mistakes at all. They are just opportunities for improvement.

So, I’ll let them blow bubbles in their milk and I’ll teach them how to make rude noises with their hand in their armpit. They are gonna learn it, may as well be from me. I’ll teach them to tie their shoes and zip zippers. I’ll teach them to whistle and how to fix stuff. I’ll teach them to catch and throw. I’ll teach them to mow grass and how to drive a go-cart. I’ll teach them to swim and to ride a bike and ultimately how to drive. I’ll help them find the words to ask that special someone to the dance. And I’ll be there if they say no. They weren’t good enough for you anyhow. And I’ll be there to help with their homework until they surpass my expertise. That’s all the easy stuff. What I hope I teach them is how to be a good person. How to be a stand-up guy or girl. How to be a true friend to their friends and a good partner to their spouse. I hope to teach them more good than bad through word and deed. I hope they grow up to be better than me, as should  every parent. Wish me luck.

/g