On a daily basis, I wonder if I am doing the right thing. Am I trying hard enough? Am I listening intently enough? Am I guiding while correcting when necessary? Am I learning fast enough at this parenting thing that I can stay a few steps ahead of my own children?

It feels like the answer is decidedly no. The 8-ball answer, in this case, sums it up nicely.

My sons are growing and maturing, their personalities are blossoming in ways I didn’t expect, but I get this nagging feeling I’m screwing up, and despite the number of books written on the subject, and my numerous posts on the topic, I still have yet to find plausible answers for the question of how best to parent.

You’d think time would solve some of this, and to lesser extent it has. I know shortcuts and have taken great care to simplify wherever possible. Some might say it would be better if I just stopped thinking so much, and let things be. Yet, I’m cursed with the desire do better and be better for my kids. I want to be available for them, unlike my own father, and not caught up in my own head games about how parenting should be.

But it’s not that simple. Parenting is a strange dance of struggle and elation set on a very speculative stage. Looking around, it seems like most of my peers do a better job with their parental duties. And that sometimes makes me feel on edge.

In fact, I find people who say parenting is easy and fairly stress-free to be duplicitous, or at the very least, unaware of their own ramifications. You see, it’s not just you or your children you’re contending with. You’re also dealing, to some degree with how your children are posed within the space of all these other people, your perceptions of their growth, and as part of humanity at large. In short, you don’t want to fuck them up, and by proxy the rest of the genetic line.

I have moments when things seem calm, too, don’t get me wrong. But there’s something in me now that wasn’t there before. I was adrift, and capricious. This new thing considers outcomes in longer stretches of time. I see the dominoes, the numbers on each piece, and where the mazes leads in the near distance… but without the end. And no amount of cataloguing memories will give me the perspective I need to create the future.
You might as well consult a magic 8-ball on some occasions because the kind of clarity you’re looking for doesn’t come from shaking things unless it’s a plastic ball with multi-sided triangle with pithy phrases definitively blessing or cursing your every move. And even then, the answers are different each time though you ask the same question…

What am I missing?

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