What Is The Greatest Lesson Fatherhood Has Taught You?
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“The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you're unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.” - John Green
Today we’re talking fatherhood and we asked Mark and Eric along with all the papas in our YZM community to share what fatherhood has taught them. Thank you so much to everyone for sharing your answers and please feel free to add yours into the comments below!
WHAT IS THE GREATEST LESSON FATHERHOOD HAS TAUGHT YOU?
- Commitment, confidence, patience, grace and selflessness.
- How exceptionally strong mothers are.
- Your kids learn from your example, not just from your words.
- A whole lot of patience.
- When you think poop, you think dad!
- To provide definitive answers (yes/no).
- The most pure love and joy you will ever know.
- To channel my inner child and carve out time to play!
- Patience and that there is far more to life than your 9-5! No matter how bad your day is, they have no idea and always have a smile waiting for you at home as soon as you walk through the door.
- Being a father has given me so much. It’s the single most fulfilling aspect of my life, watching my children grow, getting lost in an imaginary game with themselves, being brave and going down the big slide at the park, the list is endless but if I had to single out one thing that impacts me the most it would be the healing I receive from their existence. Being a dad is an almost constant state of reflection. I look at my children in the various stages of life they are in and I reflect at where I was and what I was doing at that age and I get to make pivotal adjustments to their experiences that affect their sense of security and development, which in turn has a healing effect on me from the lack of security I experienced in my own childhood. Always striving for my children to have a better childhood than myself gives me daily lessons that reap I the rewards of.
@markwebber
- Excitement comes from the small things, not the big things. Live in the moment.
- Immense patience and how to change a diaper!
- How fleeting time really is.
- To get to know which kind of man I am.
- You can’t even have a poo in peace!
- Patience and understanding. Each child is unique, wonderful, challenging and loved.
- That you can have this living, breathing, growing part of you that exists outside of you.
- That I just need to show up as me, they don’t need the fancy bells and whistles, they just need me and my love.
- I can't get over how differently time tracks now. It's like a 80's Star Trek Space Time Continuum where everything simultaneously feels like yesterday and a 100 years ago. Those of you with kids already know what I'm talking about and I can't imagine it changes in the future so I do what I can to take stock in the smallest of moments. Repeatedly telling myself that this one thing will only exist for a second and if I don't recognize it for its uniqueness it will pass without so much as breath. I guess this is why mothers cry so much at birthdays and graduations, why fathers weep at weddings. That we appreciate what is happening in that moment, but also that we are overcome by all the singular moments that came before it, that somehow escaped us as we got bogged down in the minutiae of it all. We stand there grasping keys in our pockets, clutching purses against our hips, staring through tear-stained eyes at the crashing, sweeping milestones before us, and the perpetual and fleeting magic of life.
@ericcolsen
- Mistakes will happen, as long as my intentions are pure, my child will feel that and be ok.
- To live in the moment.
- Not to sweat the small stuff and to always show up as your best self because there are little eyes and ears looking up to you and emulating your words and actions.
- To never repeat the mistakes made by my father, I still maintain this attitude to this day even with my only grandson.
- Humility. I love “clowning: around with my 3-4 year olds. The girls will paint myself and my son’s nails, we wear it proud!
- That it is love at first sight and it will never stop! And, you are never too old to play Lego!
- Sharing is human nature, even if the food has already been chewed.
- The greatest love I have ever known.