Quote of the day - Parenting
I’ve been reading the writer John Scalzi’s blog off and on for a while now. And I finally added it to my RSS feeds recently. He posts every day, but he doesn’t always write every day. He has this cool feature, called The Big Idea, where he lets other writers pimp their new novels in his blog. They write a short blog post about the big idea behind their story. It’s completely fascinating getting a peek into where other writers find their inspiration for novels.
While talking about his novel, Bob Proehl talks about his relationship with his step-son.
The stories I chose to tell him, and how I told them, would shape how he saw me, and inform how he saw himself. I could pick a list of my greatest hits, make myself out to be the conquering hero, or the cool step-dad. I could select moments where I struggled, so that when he struggled he’d know I’d been there too, and that it would pass. Ultimately, this is the meta-story we’re telling our kids when we talk about ourselves: this will pass. In telling him who I was and who I’d been, I’d be telling him something about who he was, and who he could be. This is where sharing difficult stories becomes important, if not imperative. Stories are armor, and armor has to be made of stern stuff.
I kinda wish the Internet had been around when I was a kid. Not for myself, but for my parents. My dad reads widely, and I think that it might have been helpful for him to read about other dads struggling with how to be a good father.
Basically, I really wish that my dad had told me that he struggled at Exeter and almost flunked out when I was going through the exact same thing at Exeter instead of waiting until thirty years after I’d graduated to share that struggle with me at his reunion in 2014. *sighs* But I suppose it was more important for him to tell stories that made him seem powerful than it was to be vulnerable and human to his kids. I think my childhood might have been easier if my parents had been a bit more human and a bit less grown-up all the time.
While talking about his novel, Bob Proehl talks about his relationship with his step-son.
The stories I chose to tell him, and how I told them, would shape how he saw me, and inform how he saw himself. I could pick a list of my greatest hits, make myself out to be the conquering hero, or the cool step-dad. I could select moments where I struggled, so that when he struggled he’d know I’d been there too, and that it would pass. Ultimately, this is the meta-story we’re telling our kids when we talk about ourselves: this will pass. In telling him who I was and who I’d been, I’d be telling him something about who he was, and who he could be. This is where sharing difficult stories becomes important, if not imperative. Stories are armor, and armor has to be made of stern stuff.
I kinda wish the Internet had been around when I was a kid. Not for myself, but for my parents. My dad reads widely, and I think that it might have been helpful for him to read about other dads struggling with how to be a good father.
Basically, I really wish that my dad had told me that he struggled at Exeter and almost flunked out when I was going through the exact same thing at Exeter instead of waiting until thirty years after I’d graduated to share that struggle with me at his reunion in 2014. *sighs* But I suppose it was more important for him to tell stories that made him seem powerful than it was to be vulnerable and human to his kids. I think my childhood might have been easier if my parents had been a bit more human and a bit less grown-up all the time.