What I Did With My Kids Today: Part 1

I was thinking recently about the reasons I created, and continue to maintain, this site. There are many.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy clothes. I enjoy helping people. The stuff I write about is stuff I think about all the time anyway so it just makes sense to write it all down so other people can benefit from it.

I also like creating. I get such a charge when I think about the fact that I have built a site with hundreds of articles over the past five years or so. It just grows and grows and it’s really cool to take a step back sometimes and admire how big it’s gotten.

One of the biggest reasons I enjoy creating content for this site is knowing that, someday, my children will read it.

I WISH I had a pile of advice from my dad that I could read through whenever I wanted. I have some of his journals, but they are so chaotic and disjointed that they don’t provide much in the way of insight.

So, I’m happy I can provide something useful for my kids.

Even though my own children are one of the target audiences for this site, I hardly ever mention them directly, as you guys have probably already noticed. That’s because I don’t like putting many details about my children on the internet. After all, they are young and they don’t have any say in it, so I never share too much about them.

But I was thinking today that the relative absence of stories about them might be a bit of a disservice to them and to all of you. This is a site partially about fatherhood so sharing stories of my own parenting experiences is relevant. I know I already do that, but it’s almost always through the prism of personal style. That’s exactly what this site is all about, but I thought it would be a good idea to talk more directly about parenting.

Specifically, I want to start chronicling the things I do with my kids. I think it’s a good idea to show what a regular working dad does with his children and why he does them.

Also, I feel like it will hold us all accountable. We get busy with work and other demands on our time that we sometimes float through interactions with our family members. So, let’s all be intentional with those interactions.

Do something for a reason.

Today, I showed my oldest son how to put windshield wiper fluid in our vehicles and check the oil.

We have a 7-year-old truck and a 14-year-old SUV. On both vehicles I showed him how to pop and open the hood, find the dipstick and the wiper fluid cap, etc.

I tried to be intentional with the whole exercise. The reason I wanted to do all that stuff with both vehicles was because I wanted him to realize that the engines looked different (and were arranged differently) and that he would have to take a few minutes to look around before getting started on each task. I didn’t tell him where anything was on the second vehicle; I had him find them himself.

This emphasized that knowledge doesn’t just come automatically. It needs to be built by figuring things out. And that’s ok. It’s ok to pause and think things through before you begin. I told him that grown-ups don’t just naturally know things… we need to figure them out and stumble through them and make mistakes until we get it.

That’s why I always follow around anyone who comes to the house to fix or maintain things like the septic guy or the furnace guy or the exterminator. I chat them up and try to glean as much knowledge from them as I can.

Since our truck is quite a bit taller than our SUV, my son needed to stand on one of the front tires in order to reach the wiper fluid cap. As he was pouring the fluid he spilled a small amount. I told him that’s totally normal and I always do the same thing. Again, intentional. Letting him know that things aren’t perfect and the way he’s doing it right now is exactly the way I do it, too.

He’s not doing it perfectly, but he IS doing it correctly.

It’s important to demystify things for children. It’s empowering for them because they see that they can do a lot of the same stuff grown-ups can.

The world can feel like a complicated place. But a little time spent looking under the hood can remove a lot of that confusion and make us feel a little more confident.

After we finished up, I had him close the hoods on both vehicles. The hood on the truck stays up on its own and only needs a little oomph in order to close and lock properly. The hood on the SUV, on the other hand, comes crashing down like a guillotine blade if you’re not careful. I made sure to warn my son about this so he didn’t get hurt.

I could have just closed it myself and not risked my son hurting his fingers, but I allowed him to do it after I demonstrated that he needed to slide his hands out of the way in order for the hood to slam closed. That little hint of danger made him feel mature and capable.

Again… intentional.

When we came inside, I could tell he was feeling jazzed. Since he enjoyed it, I think that him helping me with simple vehicle-maintenance tasks will be a regular thing.

I enjoyed it immensely as well, as any time spent with my son is a wonderful treasure.

So, let’s all try to keep track of the things we do with our kids and why we do those specific things.

What are we trying to teach them? What are we hoping they remember?

Hopefully this will help us all parent our children more intentionally.