That was the “Impossible Dream” season for the Red Sox. The year before, they had finished last, and no one had expected them to do much better the following season. But against all odds, they stayed in it ‘til the end, then stormed from behind to win the last two games of the season and clinch the American League title. They headed to the World Series for the first time in 21 years.

Carl “Yaz” Yastrzemski was their big star. He led the league in batting average, home runs and RBIs that year, and was named the American League MVP — but their ace starting pitcher, Jim Lonborg, was my hero. His poster was taped to the ceiling above my bed, where I could look at him as I fell asleep and imagine myself in his place on the mound.

In the World Series, the Sox dropped three of the first four games to the St. Louis Cardinals. But just when it looked like it might be over, they came back to win the next two and even the series at three games apiece. It all came down to game seven at Fenway Park — winner take all.

It was a day game, but I went up to my room and shut the door so no one could break my concentration – which was essential if the Sox were going to win. I lay in bed with my little transistor radio pressed against my ear, clutching my Rico Petricelli autographed mitt. I had half a package of M&Ms and a plastic army canteen full of water in case I got hungry or thirsty. I was ready.

My idol Jim Lonborg was going up against the Cardinals’ ace, fireballer Bob Gibson. Lonborg was pitching on just two days’ rest, and Gibson had three, but I wasn’t worried. The Sox were the Impossible Dream team — a team of destiny. There was no way they could lose.

The game started out tense and close. Both teams put up zeros in the first two innings. By then, my M&Ms were eaten, more out of nerves than hunger. In the top of the third, the Cardinals broke through with two runs, and then two more in the fifth. The Sox got one back in the bottom of the fifth, though, and I wasn’t about to give up hope. The game was still within reach.

By the sixth inning, Lonborg was gassed, but they left him in. He hung a slider up in the zone, and Julian Javier hit a three-run homer over the Green Monster. They pulled him after that, but it was too late.

Since that fateful day, I’ve watched my favorite teams lose many times. I’ve also watched the Seahawks win the Superbowl, and I was in Key Arena with my daughter when the Storm won their first WNBA title. Win or lose, I always come back for more.

Some of my friends make fun of spectator sports. I can’t really blame them. Overweight dudes sprawled on sofas, watching pumped-up kids in silly uniforms give each other traumatic brain injuries. It’s pretty pointless. But to me, that’s kind of the point.

The fact that these players train and practice and push themselves to the very limits of what human beings can do, for no practical reason whatsoever, is a strangely beautiful thing. They strive for greatness for its own sake, as only we crazy, unreasonable, irrepressible humans do.

You may have a little person in your home right now who’s feeling lost since their team of destiny stumbled at the finish line. They’ve tossed their J-Rod autograph glove in the closet, and their lucky Big Dumper jersey has finally made its way to the laundry basket. Disappointment hangs in the air like a thick, dark cloud. But a few months from now, when the crocuses are just barely peeking up from the sodden Seattle ground, a bunch of young men will stroll out onto a field in Peoria, Arizona, with crisp new chalk lines and freshly mown grass, and set out in search of greatness one more time.

Spring will always bring spring training — and with it, a new season of hope.

Just wait ’til spring.

Read more from the Dad Next Door:

“Dad Next Door: He Ain’t Heavy”: Coming to understand the true gift of my brother

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My marriage blew apart when my daughters were ten and five. Suddenly, half the days I would ever spend with them were lost forever. That was all I could think about for weeks. It felt like the end of the world.

When the time came to negotiate a parenting plan, I dug my heels in and held out for shared custody – a 50/50 split. It was more than most dads get, and I worked hard to make it happen, but somehow it seemed like a hollow victory. It was like King Solomon’s infamous solution: share the child by slicing it in half. And it never seemed more that way than on our first Christmas after the divorce.

To avoid unnecessary bickering, our schedule was laid out in excruciating detail. In odd-numbered years, I’d have the kids on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, and their mother would have them for the rest of the holidays. On even-numbered years, we’d switch. It sounded pretty straightforward. It wasn’t.

First of all, there was the problem of presents. Or, more specifically, paying for them. Having refinanced our home to make the money issues work, I was strapped with a huge mortgage and only half as much income to cover it. Cash was tight. Really tight.

I pored over my kids’ Christmas lists trying to figure out what I could afford. Eventually, I came up with a plan. Every night, after the kids went to sleep, I got on the computer. I spent hours scouring eBay for items in good condition that might pass for new. If the price was still in my range, I made a low-ball bid. Then I prayed.

Somehow, I managed to make it work. By Christmas Eve, there was a pile of presents under the tree. The girls put out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa, and went to bed early so Christmas would hurry up and arrive. It almost felt like normal.

The next morning, they rushed downstairs and found two bulging stockings, a fully lit tree, and Christmas music on the stereo. Santa had left a thank-you note by a plate of crumbs and a half-empty glass. We opened our presents one at a time, from youngest to oldest, just like we always had, trying to ignore that there was one less person taking turns.

The morning flew by, and I had to rush to get them out of their PJ’s and into the car by noon. When I dropped them off at their mom’s, they thanked me profusely for their presents – a little too much so, I thought, for kids who were supposed to be lost in excitement on Christmas Day.

I managed to hold it together as I drove back home. But when I walked in the door, with Dean Martin singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” to our empty house, I lost it. I sat down on a pile of empty boxes and sobbed.

A few days later, my daughter was overheard comparing Christmas loot with her best friend.

“It’s more than I usually get,” she said. “I think my parents felt guilty about the divorce.”

She was partly right, I guess. There may have been some guilt involved. But for me, it was mostly wishful thinking. It was that awful moment, right after you break something you really love, when you grab the pieces and try to fit them back together. Deep down, you know it won’t work, but you have to try.

Right now, some of you are going through the first holidays since your own private Katrina came roaring through. I want you to know something: it gets better. When the floodwaters pull back, the river finds a new course, and life begins again – much quicker than you imagined. That searing pain you feel when your kids are away from you will fade, because it comes from the same bond that holds you together in the end. It’s like that old song says: “Love heals the wound it makes.”

Meanwhile, it’s okay if this time of year brings both grief and joy. In a way, that’s why we celebrate. It’s the reason so many cultures mark this point in our yearly loop around the sun. A babe in a manger, a lamp in a temple – these are stories not just of hope, but of hope rising up from despair.

This is the season of the darkest night of the year. It’s the night when the light begins to return.

This post was origionally published in 2010. 

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Although studies on birth order and personality have yielded mixed results, I’m convinced that the timing of my arrival had a lot to do with who I turned out to be. The age difference between us gave Todd a clear head start at almost everything — but not enough to completely count me out. It was the perfect incubator for my competitive overdrive.

My mom once said that I was like Avis Car Rental: number two, and always trying harder. I brought that attitude to everything we did: basketball, card games, tennis, academics. The actual arena didn’t matter. My only concern was proving I could keep up with Todd.

Over time, I did more than keep up. Sometimes I passed him, which I never let him forget. I was so obnoxious, in fact, that by the time he was a senior in high school, he promised on a regular basis that his last act before leaving for college would be to beat me to a pulp. I wasn’t worried, though. I knew I could outrun him.

When Todd did go off to college, I can’t say that I missed him. After sharing a room for the first fifteen years of my life, I was thrilled to have my own space. During high school, we had moved down to the basement apartment that we’d previously rented out, so now I had a bachelor pad all to myself.

Back in those days, stereo systems were too bulky and too expensive to fit in most dorm rooms, so my brother left his entire record collection behind. And although I’d heard most of it before, now I could play whatever I liked, whenever I wanted. It was a revelation. In those stacks and stacks of LPs, there were archaeological layers of Todd’s evolving musical taste. The earliest strata, Beatles and saccharine 60’s pop, quickly gave way to more sophisticated sounds. There were singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. There was a strong vein of R&B, with Aretha, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Earth, Wind and Fire. There were pioneer indie artists like Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, Al Jarreau and Gil Scott-Heron. And then there was jazz — Keith Jarrett, Sarah Vaughn, Ella, Billie, Coltrane and Miles.

I don’t know how I would have found any of that on my own, but there it was just waiting for me: an eclectic, curated, comprehensive musical education at my fingertips. I wouldn’t start making music of my own until years later, but when I did, I had an incredible foundation to build on. I owe so much of my creative expression, not to mention a huge community of dear musical friends, to my brother. He never did give me the beating he promised, but instead left me one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever received.

As adults, Todd and I ended up on separate coasts, and though our boyhood competition quickly faded, we never became close. He was always a bit of a loner, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that we discovered he’d been struggling with symptoms that turned out to be Lewy body dementia. We rallied around him, and brought him out to Denver in the middle of the pandemic, where he could be closer to one of my other brothers. At first, he made a remarkable recovery, but over time his disease took its inevitable toll. A few months ago he died.

Last week, our family gathered together to remember him. We stood in a circle on a beach, sharing stories and memories, then scattered his ashes in the waves. It was then I realized that, even though we were never close, his impact on my life had been as profound as that of anyone I’ve ever known.

We’re quick to acknowledge the effects of parents on children, but I think we underestimate the role siblings play. That gradual accumulation of shared experiences — the countless family dinners, pointless squabbles, hand-me-down clothing, and stupid TV shows — build up into a particular kind of intimacy that can’t be duplicated any other way.

There’s a faded photo in Todd’s baby book, from before my parents got too distracted and exhausted to bother taking pictures of their kids. In it, I’m two weeks old, and Todd is holding me in his arms and looking at my face. Little did he know how many ways I would make him regret that I’d ever been born. Little did I know how many ways he’d make me the person I am today.

Read more Dad Next Door

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I don’t remember all the details, and there may have been extenuating circumstances. But I do remember that the story got some national exposure because it struck a nerve. Many people, myself included, wondered how we got to a place where children are being told they have a right to something just because they want it.

Over my 30+ years as a parent, I’ve noticed a clear shift toward protective parenting. That includes physical protection, which is generally a good thing, unless taken too far. But mainly, I’m referring to emotional protection. Somehow, it’s become part of a parent’s job to protect our children not only from emotional trauma, but from any kind of emotional distress. We try to shield our kids from even the mildest disappointment or failure, and start pointing fingers when that isn’t possible.

I’m guessing this is part of the natural pendulum swing that parenting styles go through. Our own parents probably weren’t the most emotionally supportive or clued-in, and that caused many of us plenty of pain. But when we react to that pain by trying to shield our kids from every setback, we do them a disservice.

Kids learn to overcome failure by failing. I think that’s why the Arkansas story irked me – I consider sports one of the last remaining settings for exposing our kids to constructive failure. In sports, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. You have to assess your skills honestly, then you have to figure out ways to get better. If we rig the game, those lessons are lost, and it becomes another exercise in empty affirmation.

As parents, we play a critical role in helping our kids fail well. We can put them in situations where some degree of failure is probable, but where improvement and eventual success are well within their reach. We can help them process and manage their emotions when failure does come. And finally, we can help them find ways to improve, and acquire the skills and strategies to do so.

This last part is tricky. When I coached Little League, I saw a lot of well-meaning parents give their kids feedback in incredibly unhelpful ways. Even now, when I’m working as a leadership development consultant or as an executive coach, I meet many people in positions of power who have no idea how to give skillful feedback. Here are a few tips:

Pick the right time and place. That’s not in the dugout after they strike out or as you drive home from a piano recital that went off the rails. In a day or two, find a time and place that feels calm and private.

Check your ego at the door. We all do it: We live through our kids’ accomplishments and bask a little in their success. I wouldn’t begrudge any parent a little of that. But when they fail, don’t take it personally. The goal trophies and blue ribbons for your wall are for them to grow. Failure is a part of that process. 

Start by asking your kid what their experience was. How are they feeling? What do they think they did well? Did they give their best effort? What do they wish they’d done differently? Start where they are to get somewhere useful.

Help them adopt a growth mindset. Mistakes or failures aren’t who we are, they’re something we all do. The point is to get better through focus, practice and determination. Success and failure, in the short term, are not under our control. Work and improvement are. 

Use the magic words. Frame your feedback not as criticism but as your faith in them: “I’m saying this because I know you have high expectations, and I know you can reach them.”

These are just suggestions—you’ll find your own way. But get started. Children are not hothouse orchids. We don’t want their thriving to depend on a pristine, climate-controlled environment. We want them to be dandelions: tough, resilient, and ready to grow like crazy, even after lawn-mowing days.

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This situation is much more common than you’d think. So many people look back on their average childhoods, where they were cared for and protected and given everything they needed, and still feel that they weren’t well-loved. Meanwhile, parents everywhere find that no matter how hard they try and how many sacrifices they make, they still can’t shake the feeling that they’re coming up short.

There’s an old saying about social animals in general and primates in particular: “A lone monkey is a dead monkey.” Our superpower as a species — the one that allowed us to conquer the planet without sharp claws, venomous fangs, or fast legs — was our ability to think, communicate, and cooperate as a group. The survival of any individual depended on its inclusion in that group, where the sharing of resources, protection, and information made us far more formidable than such a slow, weak, hairless animal had any right to be.

But of course, this superpower came at a cost. We need a prolonged childhood for our brains and our complex social skills to develop. In those early years, we are especially vulnerable, not only because we lack the ability to defend and care for ourselves, but because we have nothing to contribute to the well-being of the group. From the perspective of species survival, children are just dead weight — except they’re also the future, and for that reason, they’re everything.

Nature solves this problem by giving adults parental instincts. Our small, weak, profoundly helpless children trigger our deepest impulse to nourish and protect them. At the same time, our children are engineered to magnify those impulses by focusing relentlessly on gaining our attention and our love. The system works, more or less, in that most children survive to adulthood without being abandoned by the side of the road. That’s a win, right? Along the way, though, we acquire a few scars.

The thing about a child’s desire for attention and love is that it’s almost limitless. The more resources and protection they receive, the more likely they are to survive to adulthood and pass on their genes to the next generation. As far as their instincts are concerned, more is always better, and those instincts evolved back when the stakes were survival itself. This leaves kids with the constant fear that they’ll never get what they need, and parents with the gnawing feeling that they can never give enough. Essentially, nature has designed human children with an unfillable hole.

I don’t think we can ever make that hole go away. What we can do is recognize it for what it is, and be intentional about how we try to fill it. So often, we attempt to plug it with something that doesn’t fit there. We move obstacles out of their way, rather than letting them learn to do that for themselves. We try relentlessly to optimize their potential, focusing only on who they could (or “should”) be, rather than who they are. We buy them phones and video games hoping to distract them from what’s missing, but actually reinforcing it with every click. And all the while, the hole gets deeper.

We have to remember that the hole in our children, and in all of us, is the fear of being the lone monkey, and that the only thing that fills it is membership in the tribe. Most primates spend hours everyday picking ticks and lice off of each other, not just for the between-meal snack (Mmmm, extra protein!), but because it reinforces the social bonds that we are all programmed to crave. Since our mutual grooming opportunities are pretty limited, other than eating the Cheerios we find stuck to our babies’ clothes, we have to do the modern equivalent. We need to reinforce tribal membership with our words and actions.

“You are one of us.”
“We love and accept you exactly as you are.”
“We will never vote you off the island, or leave you by the side of the road.”

A lone monkey is a dead monkey. But a monkey who knows they belong has a lot fewer ticks, and won’t need psychotherapy for nearly as long.

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I suppose if you’re Irish, you can sit around telling beguiling stories in lyrical accents, passing them down from one generation to the next. I’m Chinese — we didn’t do that. My brothers and I dove for the food as soon as my parents shoved it in front of us, and we didn’t come up for air until the last scraps were devoured. Conversation wasn’t a prominent feature of our dinner table.

I’m guessing that many of us had parents like mine, who weren’t really interested in what we were doing unless it was something we weren’t supposed to do. That’s why we’re so determined to act differently with our own kids. We want to be the involved, engaged, enmeshed (oops, strike that) parents that we never had. So naturally, when we sit down to dinner, we ask them questions.

Sometimes they’re open-ended, as in: “How was school today?” (Popular answers: “Okay.” “Same as always.” “It’s Saturday.”) Other times, they’re meant to guide and motivate: “Did you do your homework yet?” (“Yup.” “It’s not due.” “It’s summer.”)  And sometimes, we try to spark meaningful discussion: “What do they teach you in that sex ed class, anyway?” (“Nothing.” “What do you think?” “Eeeuuuwww!”)

The problem is that we tend to ask questions that interest us. What we should be doing is figuring out what questions interest them.

There’s a family I know who have done exactly that. And rather than the parents always interrogating the kids, they share the asking and the answering equally. Whenever they sit down to dinner, the first three questions are always the same, and everyone takes them on. Gradually, those questions have affected not only their dinner conversations, but the way they look at their lives. Let’s consider them one at a time:

“When were you brave today?” Like David Copperfield, each of us wonders whether or not we will turn out to be the hero of our own story, and every day we write that story anew. By retelling these small moments of persistence in the face of uncertainty and fear, we reinforce our own grit. That gives us the confidence to do it again. Courage is a muscle: it gets stronger if you use it every day.

“When were you kind today?” Too often, we treat kindness as a personality trait. We say that one person is kind, and another is not, as if each received a finite ration of kindness at birth. But the truth is, every one of us has the capacity for both kindness and cruelty, and ultimately both are measured in acts, not temperament. If we want a kinder world, then we should shine a light on each other’s acts of kindness whenever we can.

“When did you make a mistake?” We love our kids’ success. Sometimes we crave it like a drug — as if it could heal the wounds of our own failures. It can’t. And the more we focus on success, the more we send the message that that is what we value in our kids, and in ourselves. If you really want to succeed, you have to overcome the fear of failure, and the only way to do that is to fail: early, often, and sometimes spectacularly. If you learn to get up afterward and dust yourself off, and use your failure as the launching pad for your next attempt, you’ll go much further than if you hide your mistakes in shame.

 Notice that all of these questions work just as well for adults as for kids. Children pay more attention to what we do than what we say. If we can model courage, kindness and resilience for them, they’ll learn more from us than if we just encourage these traits. And often, it will be their stories that end up inspiring and teaching us.

In the end, the spirit in which we ask these questions is more important than the questions themselves. People thrive in the light of curiosity, like plants beneath the sun, and the leaves that get that light are the ones that grow. We can shine it wherever we want. “What filled you with wonder today?” “What surprised you?” “When were you happy, or angry, or sad?”

If nothing else, it forces us to decide what’s important — important enough to examine closely and carefully. Important enough to share.

Jeff Lee makes his daughters say “Eeeuuuwww!” on a regular basis in Seattle

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There was a youth soccer game in progress on the field in the middle of the track and a couple of little boys were tussling on the sidelines. At first, I thought they were fighting, but as I got closer it became clear that what I had mistaken for cries of distress were actually squeals of delight. They couldn’t have been much older than three, yet apparently they had just invented the funnest game in the history of funness. It went something like this:

Step 1: Grab your friend in a tight bear hug.
Step 2: Wiggle around in a random and increasingly violent fashion, while maintaining your embrace and screaming at the top of your lungs.
Step 3: Lose your balance and tumble to the ground, laughing hysterically.
Step 4: Take the minimum amount of time necessary to catch your breath, then spring back to your feet.
Step 5: Repeat.

I had to stop my run just to watch them. Seldom have I seen such exuberant, inextinguishable glee emanating from another human being — much less two. I can’t recall any personal experience, at least not with my fading middle-aged memory, that has even come close. And when I look at my life right now, it feels like a Soviet-era documentary compared to the bliss-riot that was unfolding on that field right before my eyes.

It led me to one undeniable conclusion: grown-ups are bad at play.

What passes for play in adults is kind of sad. Not that there’s anything wrong with book groups, or dinner parties, or fantasy football leagues. They all have their place. It’s just that real play — the kind two little boys make up while they’re not watching their older brothers play soccer, is so much more impressive.

Let’s consider the true genius of the “Hug-Wiggle-Plop” game. First of all, it’s entirely original. There’s nothing like novelty to amp up the dopamine hit in any activity. Also, it’s accessible to everyone. You don’t have to buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. You don’t have to pay a registration fee. You don’t need private lessons, or a new set of expensive gear that you’re going to outgrow in three months. All you need is a willing co-wiggler and a landing surface a little softer than concrete.

Another advantage is that it doesn’t have to be entered into your calendar with precisely predetermined start and end times. You just do it when you feel like it, and you stop when you run out of wiggle.

So let’s review: it’s cheap, it’s inclusive, it’s social, it’s creative, and it’s spontaneous. And, oh yeah — it’s really, really, really fun!

I’ve heard so many parents complain that kids don’t seem to just play anymore. Well, who’s bleeping fault do you think that is? Who’s signing them up for day camps and summer classes and after-school programs? Who’s planning out their play dates, and scheduling their activities down to the nearest quarter of an hour? Who’s making kids’ lives look more and more like grown-ups’ lives, and kid activities look more and more like grown-up pastimes? Somehow, I don’t think it’s the kids.

Maybe it’s time we put play back into the hands of the real experts. As a matter of fact, maybe we should consider hiring them as consultants. For your next corporate retreat, why not bring in the groundbreaking design team behind “Hug-Wiggle-Plop?” Can’t you just imagine them working with Harold in sales, or Janice in accounting?

“Okay, can you explain the wiggle part again?”
“You just wiggle — like this.”
“Like this?”
“Yeah. But don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“That face.”
“This is the only face I know how to make.”
“Okay. Then just wiggle more.”

I predict Q3 earnings would skyrocket.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to adulterate kids’ play with, you know, adults. Maybe the best thing would be to just leave them alone. Put them out in the sunshine, on a grassy field, and make believe you aren’t watching them. But pay attention. They know things we forgot a long time ago, and if we give them the time and the freedom to do what they do best, they’ll show us the way.

More Dad Next Door columns can be found here. 

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I remember sleep training my 6-month-old daughter. I lay in bed clenching my teeth, feeling like her screams had gone on forever. Surely this was causing permanent brain damage — if not to her, then to me and her mother. Then I checked the clock. She’d been crying for twelve minutes.

That was the first of many times that I’ve found myself in a P.T.D.F. — “Parental Temporal Distortion Field.” For a while, I was convinced that I’d be changing her diapers forever. Then came the phase when I knew she’d never sleep in her own bed again. And, of course, there were those two weeks when she was doing that nervous blinking thing, which in my mind was the start of her lifelong struggle with Tourette Syndrome. These were all just warm-ups for her years as a snarky teenager, when it was clear that she’d never let me appear in public with her again.

I thought the good stuff would last forever, too. I was convinced that she’d always want me to chase her around the room pretending to be a monster. For the rest of our lives, I expected to be hoisting her up on my shoulders and making her laugh by talking like Donald Duck. Of course, I’d always be able to play catch with her, or get her to go feed the ducks with me. And most of all, she’d always be my little girl, with no interest in sex, drugs, or expensive hair products. Right? I mean, how could that ever change?

I think the P.T.D.F. exists because we and our kids really do exist on different timelines. By the time we start a family, the pace of change has slowed in our lives. From one year to the next, our evolution is incremental — thirty-something me wasn’t all that different from forty-something me. But over that same decade, my kids transformed from adorable little preschoolers to hormone-crazed adolescents with learner’s permits.

It’s difficult to maintain a close, intimate relationship with a creature that’s evolving like a shape-shifter in a science fiction movie. Your role in their life keeps changing. In the beginning, you’re their protector and provider. Then you’re their guide and mentor. For a while, you may be their oppressor and tormentor. Then, suddenly, you’re just a distant voice in their head as they venture out to make their way in the world.

Eventually, though, their timeline bends back toward ours, and things settle down. We and they develop a new kind of relationship, between two adults, and we get to shed the skins of those other roles and become something new to them. But just when we get used to this new equilibrium, it evaporates too. One day, you look in the mirror and you realize that you’re the one who’s changing. Now it’s your child’s turn to discover that nothing stays the same — not even you.

Last month, I went to visit my 98-year-old mom at the nursing facility where she’s winding down her long, full life. Every time I see her, she lets go of a few more memories and a few more pieces of our shared past – a few more layers of skin.

The day I arrived, she was alert, and she knew I was her son — though she wasn’t certain which one. The next morning, though, that awareness slipped away. She studied my face, trying to figure out if she knew me. When I told her who I was she nodded politely, as if I had said I was a new nurse’s aid, or the UPS guy.

Still, we spent a lovely morning sitting in a little garden under an orange tree. I would write something on a whiteboard, since she’d lost her hearing aids again, and she’d nod and smile, and say something completely unrelated. It reminded me of time spent with an infant — completely in the moment, with no goal or agenda other than to be in each other’s company.

After I wheeled her back to her room, I knelt down and kissed her on the cheek. Suddenly she looked into my eyes and smiled, then put her hand on my face. We stayed like that for a long time. In her eyes, I saw a look of recognition — not recognition of a son who had known her his entire life, but simply of another human being with whom she shared some sudden, miraculous, inexplicable bond of love. I’m guessing that’s how she looked at me the day I was born. I suspect that’s how I’ll look at my daughters when my own arc is nearly at its end.

More Dad Next Door columns

The monster in the basement 

Artificial unintelligence 

The importance of being earnest

The post Dad Next Door: The time warp of parenthood appeared first on Seattle's Child.

I know they meant well. They wanted me to master my emotions, just as they had. And I did — kind of. I was still quick to flood with emotion, but I learned to squelch the tears. As an adult, I didn’t cry again until my mid forties, when my marriage fell apart, and then I couldn’t stop for weeks. Since then, I cry a little occasionally, but it’s not easy. It’s a skill I unlearned really well.

The poet and essayist Ross Gay has written several books about finding and capturing joy and delight in our everyday lives. But long before he was a sensitive, thoughtful writer, he was a competitive athlete. He grew up playing football and basketball all through school, and went on to play in college. Recently, I heard him talk about something that happened to him in high school.

He recounted being on the receiving end of a football coach’s angry tirade. Unsurprisingly, it was laced with insults that questioned his masculinity, meant to shame and humiliate him. They did the job — those words etched themselves into his memory.

Years later, he told this story to his wife, and reflected that the worst part about it was that he couldn’t get any support, because he couldn’t tell anyone what happened. 

Why not, she asked. Because if he had, he would have cried. And what would have happened if he had cried? Then he would have had to kill everything and everyone around him who had witnessed it. 

I believe him — not that he would have done it, but that he would have felt as if he had to. I believe him because everyday there are boys and men who feel that same rage and shame, and then do the unspeakable. Just pick up the newspaper — it’s plastered all over the front page.  

Margaret Atwood once wrote that, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”  What we often forget is that the two fears are connected. By indoctrinating boys into a version of masculinity that defines vulnerability as weakness, we do them a double disservice. First we force them into a state of wounded shame. Then we leave them no outlet for that shame other than dominance and aggression.

There’s only one way out of this mess. We have to redefine masculinity in a way that includes, and even celebrates, vulnerability. By vulnerability, I mean the courage to admit and accept our flaws, and to ask for help. We have to teach our boys that this is not weakness — it’s strength.

There’s plenty of data to back that up. People who are willing and able to show vulnerability are much more likely to make intimate connections. They make better, more respected leaders. They report higher levels of happiness, health, and financial success. If you want to see your kids have fulfilling lives, one of the biggest gifts you can give them is a comfort with vulnerability.

Of course, all of this is much easier said than done. Right now, we are seeing a convulsive backlash against the redefinition of gender roles, and it’s playing out publicly on a national scale. All around us, men in prominent positions are proffering a version of manhood based on unchecked dominance and aggression. 

Right after the election, the white supremacist Nick Fuentes gleefully tweeted the message: “Your body. My choice. Forever.”  In the following days, it was reposted 35,000 times, and viewed by more than 90 million people. Since then, there have been reports of boys chanting the slogan at girls in the halls of their schools.

It’s easy to dismiss them as stupid kids who don’t know any better. Oh well, boys will be boys. But sometimes, with the right mix of goading, shame, and tacit approval, boys become the Hitler Youth, or the Khmer Rouge. 

It’s horrifying, but we can’t afford for it to be debilitating. If anything, we need to stiffen our spines and redouble our efforts. We need to create as many spaces as possible where our boys feel safe to be flawed, uncertain, emotional human beings. We need to look out for our own casual, inadvertent messages about masculine strength and weakness. We need to be better.

Sometimes resistance looks like people marching in the streets. But this time, it also looks like a boy being gently comforted when he’s crying, hurt, or afraid. 

Let’s do this. Let the resistance begin. 

Read more:

Dad Next Door archives

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Dad Next Door: Artificial Unintelligence

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The post Dad Next Door: The boys aren’t alright appeared first on Seattle's Child.

Looking back, it’s obvious that none of this was intentional. Neither of us had any interest in irritating or hurting the other—in fact, we were actively trying to avoid it. But this only made our exquisitely accurate button-pushing that much more confusing. One day, after we’d spent an interminable car ride poking at each other’s sore spots, I blurted out that I didn’t want us to do this to each other anymore.  She looked at me with genuine surprise, and for a moment I thought I’d broken through.  Then she shrugged and said: “You’re my father—this is how it’s supposed to be.”

I used to think that my mother and my teenage daughter had little in common. Eventually, though, I decided I was annoyed at both of them for the exact same reason. It was that way they had of stating a dubious and  unsupported opinion with utter confidence, then defending it with complete certainty. But it took me years to realize the reason I found that behavior so irritating in them is that I found it even more irritating in myself. I had deluded myself into thinking I was the apple who had rolled  away from the tree—but there I was, sitting right in its shadow.

If your kid (or for that matter your parent) is really getting under your skin, here’s a thought experiment for you. Think of some tendency or  part of your personality that you’re not proud of. Maybe it’s some flaw that’s  been a part of you for a long, long time. Perhaps you were criticized for it when you were a kid. Or maybe it’s a defense mechanism that comes out reflexively, whenever you’re feeling scared or insecure. In any case, you know it’s not the best version of you, and you’ve wished more than once that it wasn’t there. As a matter of fact, most of the time you pretend that it isn’t there. You convince yourself that you’ve overcome it, or that it’s not so bad, or that you’ve managed to keep it under wraps. Then, in a moment of stress or anxiety, it suddenly grabs your emotional steering wheel and swerves you into a ditch, and you’re left feeling embarrassed and ashamed. 

Now, think of times when you’ve seen that same trait or behavior in someone else. How did you react? How did it feel to confront the thing you like the least about yourself in someone else? The odds are pretty good that your emotional gatekeeper quickly rerouted your shame and self-contempt onto that other person. Did you react more strongly than you should have? Did you end up red in the face or hot under the collar? Did it expose  a big fat button that was  just waiting to be pushed?

This could happen with anyone. It could be a store clerk or someone at the DMV. But with our families—the people who share our genes, our history and our daily lives—the chances that we’ll also share some unflattering traits is much greater. The stakes are higher, too. It doesn’t take much for the hidden shame we feel about ourselves to transform into a hidden shame that we feel about our kids. If they sense that shame, and they almost always will, they’ll internalize it. Then they’ll pass it on to your grandchildren. It’s the unwanted gift that keeps on giving. 

Shame is a monster that we keep in the basement. We try to forget it, but it lurks in the shadows, licking its wounds and skulking around at the bottom of the stairs. It feeds on darkness, and grows stronger the more we pretend that it isn’t there. Even as we deny its existence, we live in fear of what it might do. Until we acknowledge it and force it out into the sunlight, we’ll keep seeing its image in the people we love, and keep coming after them with pitchforks and knives.

Jeff Lee annoys his daughter a little less every year, in Seattle WA

Read more from the Dad Next Door:

Dad Next Door Archives

Artificial Unintelligence

Dad Next Door: What ever happened to summer?

Dad Next Door: Leader of the pack

The devil wears tiny high heels

The post Dad Next Door: The Monster in the Basement appeared first on Seattle's Child.