I think back to when I was a kid...

My parents divorced when I was 6. Didn't really have a Dad to speak of until my Mum remarried when I was 14. That's a huge span of time for a kid to go through with one parent struggling to make ends meet. She worked hard and I'm sure she was stressed struggling to support 2 boys of 6 and 3.

Work for her finished 3 hours after we finished school and there often wasn't an after school program to cover us so we would go to her office and help with photocopying and filing. I never recall feeling like she wasn't there. Even when she didn't have time to pay us attention, she was there. It never occurred to me as a kid that she didn't pay me attention. I was too busy paying attention to my own interests. She was home for dinner every night. She was the worst cook in the world back then, I laugh about it now, but you know what? She tried, fuck she tried. We turned out okay. She didn't poison us and now she's an amazing cook. I'd eat her home cooked meals over a restaurant meal any day of the week. She introduced me to reading at a young age. I'd read for hours, days and weeks with our only interaction being to call out spellings of words from my bedroom to the living room to ask what the word was, I have no idea what she was doing, only that she responded to my query.

I'm thankful we had a small school and aside from a few troubled kids, most of us could say we were at least friendly if not friends. I could name every kid in that school and I knew all of their parents. We all knew at least half a dozen other parents we could go to if we needed something and long before school was out, most of us had adopted some other kids parents as our own and we floated between each others houses as if they were our own too.

Did I spend a lot of my childhood longing for what I didn't have? A relationship with my father like "normal" kids. Sure I did. I still do as an adult. But it is what it is. I make damn sure that my kids never have to wonder if I care, or wonder where my priority is. I frequently work 12-15 hours a day, including weekends. But be sure, if my kids tell me they need me somewhere for something, I drop everything and I'm there. School events, plays, recitals, karate presentations, dinner and reading to them for half an hour at bedtime.

It's important that kids have space to grow on their own. They need that. They may think they want you in their space all the time, but that breeds dependence on your approval and input into their thought processes. If you want to raise independent adults that have confidence in their own decision making skills, you need to get out of the way and give them room to make shit decisions and pick up the pieces while it's not going to kill them. Wisdom comes from experience, experience comes from making bad decisions and picking yourself up and trying again. If you bubble wrap them and protect them from every trauma you're scared of, they will never learn for themselves.

I think if I analyze my childhood, my Mum probably spent only a fraction with us boys that would be seen as acceptable today, certainly much less than I give my kids, but in my eyes she did it right. She gave us the room to become strong independent men, able to stand alone and take on the world. She gave us just enough pride to make us feel like we'd earned it, but not enough to let it go to our heads. Able to make decisions for ourselves and deal with the consequences of those decisions and clean up our own messes. If I could rewind to my childhood and ask her to do anything differently, I wouldn't ask her to change a thing. She did good.

The greatest thing I learned from her was that you don't need to panic about raising your kids. All you need to do is observe and listen. Your kids will tell you what they need. Give just enough, just enough to make them earn it. This way when they become adults, they will know how to make it on their own.