So, You’ve Become a Better Person and Thanked Your Spouse. What about your Kids?

WOP XII assignment 2: A piece of Advice. Special thanks to Sarita, Harrison Moore and Sriram

Have you had any friends that, after becoming parents, feel compelled to tell you how great it is to be a mom or dad?  If a friend tells you this before you have become a parent, this can be a challenging test of friendship.  You must respond diplomatically and suppress an uncontrolled laugh-attack as you reflect on your friend’s new disheveled state and the chaos of their living room.

But now that I’m a dad, I understand that transformational feeling.  

But there is still one big problem with the message:  parents are blasting this heart-felt declaration to everyone except the ONE audience that needs to hear it the most: their own kids.

I believe that powerful feelings of responsibility, trust and love are unleashed if once in a while you can  earnestly tell your child:  “I really want to thank you, because you make me a better person.” 

The few times I’ve said this to my kids they’ve been surprised.  So I’ve then explained how their observational insights often amaze me, and how much I treasure these moments of reflection.

I think we parents have an obligation to close the gaps that sometimes develop between us and our children.  And this message of acknowledgement should be an important message to preface conversations about ourselves and our family.   There is only one culture that I think truly matters, and that is the culture of my nuclear family. It requires constant nurturing.  It’s alive and influenced by each of my family members. Right now, my wife and I have the most influence in our family culture, but this naturally should become more balanced over time, if we want to keep it real.

Oh, I think there is one other prerequisite to everything I’ve said here.  You have to have a relationship of deep respect with your spouse.  If you don’t have that, your children are likely to be unsettled by your conflicts and you’ve probably weaponized them in your years of competition to have them be more emotionally attached to you than your spouse, which has also made you emotionally manipulative… but I digress…

I have to caveat all of these ideas with humility - my children aren’t even teenagers yet. How will I reflect on this essay in a few years as my family navigates the stormy seas of adolescence?

In spite of much talk about empowerment, kids really don’t have much power, and they know it. They have no voting rights, they're not allowed into many places, they are patronized in conversation on a daily basis, they’re told that they are cute or darling even when they hate being either, and generally have almost no control of how their time is spent.  They didn’t choose their parents, their country or their religion.  They are told to listen to teachers and relatives, but these people often make no sense. Of all the people in the world that most pre-teen kids, or at least my pre-teen kids, would most like to have a conversation with and just do stuff with, it is their parents.

I try to remind my children to speak up when they see lousy behavior from me or my wife. Truth is, they see lousy behavior more often than I’d like to admit.  But if we don't ask our kids to critically reflect on our mediocre moments and call it out, they may actually think those lousy behaviors are OK.

I believe that thanking your children provides a profound acknowledgement that they can understand.  It has the potential to empower your children to become confident and responsible of how they have an impact on your growth. 

My kids are small, but I know they feel big when I tell them with full honesty, "I love you and thank you for making me a better person."