Silent But Detrimental
I love my sons so much I don’t know what to do. Consider this a stretch bizarre analogy, but it’s like when I farted silently in my cubicle at a summer internship in 2002. The gas was unfit for human consumption, almost supernatural in its abhorrence. I had my peripheral vision dialed up to max, and of course the first one to notice was a husky, blusterous 6-foot-something aspiring cop with a shaved head.
Some might have unfairly judged him to be a redneck, and it is quite easy for me to picture him at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Except his best pal at the office was a diminutive Black guy named Ci-Ci or something like that, so that was a little off brand.
The cop, absolutely bewildered by the smell, looked around wildly not knowing what to do. He was beside himself huffing and puffing, not the best technique to deal with the problem at hand. Ultimately he picked up the phone and called Ci-Ci’s extension a few cubicles up and said in a low, calm voice: “Somebody farted.”
I’ll always remember him thrashing around, swiveling desperately to lock eyes with someone to acknowledge the reality. His big bald head was about to explode. That’s how I feel sometimes when my 2-year-old gives me an unprompted kiss on the lips and announces “I so happy Daddy” or his brother flexes his Mandarin immersion education and picks me up when I stumble over a word.
The flip side of the visceral joy is probably the worst item on a long list of things that suck about parenting — anxiety about messing up innocent creatures for life. If you look at adults and their traits, behaviors, inclinations that aren’t so great, many of them can be traced directly to their parents’ nature or nurture, or at least in a long winding line.
Take for example something I thought was innocuous and shrugged off at first when my wife brought it up. I’m a hype guy. I pump people up. I am a solid invite for bachelor parties, weddings, birthdays, sporting events. You and I against the world, baby.
This to me seems like a quality, or at least an asset. People more often than not like me, know when I’m in a room, remember me.
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
– Maya Angelou
I celebrate hard when my kids meet their or my goal, and the standard is low. If they finish their plate or the same tired dinosaur puzzle, catch a beach ball or share a toy, they’ve come to expect the “Braveheart” Ah-moo chant punctuated by banging my forearms together overhead like battle axes.
Getting fired up for nothing seems like a fine way to go about life. Take pleasure in the mundane and build growth mindset and motivation. But what we want is intrinsic motivation, not seeking validation from others. My wife and I realize we’re both people pleasers to our detriment, and we can conjecture why based on formative childhood experiences.
She also rightly pointed out the pitfall of creating feelings of entitlement. I actually witnessed this in an inadvertent social experiment the other day at a 7-year-old’s basketball game. Seven washed-up adult males including me stuffed into the bleachers to cheer on my buddy’s son.
We were respectful but loud and conspicuous. When our little guy made a basket, I jumped up on the sideline with the Tiger uppercut and one-hand roof raise, which we had decided earlier would be the theme of 40th-birthday binge drinking later that day. (I bring that up to allay any concerns about why grown men would attend a children’s basketball game when not related to any of them.)
The peculiar thing was the kids started looking toward our section expecting a big reaction every time they scored. One of us joked they were practically doing the Gladiator-are-you-not-entertained gesture. It’s possible we shifted some joy from love of the game and playing with friends to ego and sounds of approval.
Before becoming a parent, I ridiculed the idea everybody should get a trophy and envisioned raising mentally strong offspring who embraced the process as much as the reward. Little did I know four years in I would be undermining them with cheap dopamine bursts that potentially can tie their self-esteem to praise. And maybe inflate their expectations of what they will get and deserve in the real world, where no one cares if they finished their broccoli.
My wife had another valid point about an applause gallery for meals. That’s probably not the best way to set up healthy eating habits. I struggle with a stormy, obsessive-compulsive relationship with food. I don’t remember how it was presented to me as a child, but if you’re Asian you can guess. Even if you’re not, I think you can empathize with every parent’s deep satisfaction when seeing their child eat.
It all comes from a good place, and therein is the suckiest part about the suckiest part of parenting. My wife, who perhaps should have written this post, likens the deflating quandary to the NBC tearjerker show “This Is Us.” Everything Jake and Mandy Moore do is well-intentioned, yet they still f up all three kids.
No one in their right mind will do anything but what’s best for their children. But in pursuit of that, there are all these silent cascading implications enough to make your head explode.