Parenting

Raising children is full of paradox, the central one being that you are obligated to provide them with two things that are often in conflict: unconditional love and discipline. Understanding and managing this conflict is the difficult work of being a parent, but the tension that gives being a family harmony and life. Remember that there are no universal strong solutions. Something that works today likely won't work tomorrow. If you're absolutely lost, going with discipline is the better default.

Some other thoughts, from personal experience and observations as both a child and a parent:

(1) Think long term. Setting rules and boundaries for your kids at age 3 is important not for their toddler years, but for when they are 17. To save them from distress in high school, you need to start working when they are born. If you find yourself thinking "What's the harm in letting him do that?" or "It's just so much easier to let him do that", stop yourself and prevent him from doing whatever "that" is, if only for the practice in handling the conflict that is sure to arise. The details aren't important, your skill in holding fast is, and it takes multiple iterations of real life practice to master. If you haven't started this yet, and your kids are already teens, it sucks to be you, because you task is now very difficult, if not impossible. But you still have to do it, no matter how hard. See # 2.

(2) Nobody cares about your kid but you. Not his teachers, friends, principal, aunts and uncles, even grandparents. When push comes to shove and your kid needs real help and work, all of these people will dump him by the side of the road and speed off without looking back. There is some liberation in accepting this, as it means you can mostly ignore the cheap talk that these people have to offer about your kid. But it does mean you really can't die.

(3) When in doubt, treat parenting like a management job. Pretend you're in the government and your kids are your staff, and you can't fire them, they won't quit, you can't quit and you're stuck together for the next 20 years or so. In that situation, you'd better figure out what makes them tick, what motivates them, what doesn't, and how to get the best out of them.

(4) The last thing your kids need from you is a friend, particularly one who is decades older than them and forced on them by biology. How many stable friendships exist between 15-year-olds and 45-year-olds? None. It's abnormal. Forget about it. They need a teacher, exemplar, disciplinarian, advocate, counsel, therapist, boss, and guardian, at least, before a friend. Guide them towards building lasting friendships of their own with other good, serious people, not you.

(5) A simple goal that works in most cases: You should want your kid to be someone you can rely on for real advice when they are older. Someone you can trust. Someone serious, but gentle and generous. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, about hosting a beer party at your house when they are in high school that helps achieve this goal. Indeed, it is destructive of it.

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