Conscious Fatherhood - The Middle Way Is The Way

Okay. Hi, everybody. Yet another week has gone by, and this is week. Well, it's week three, but technically it's week two, because I missed last week because we did a Mother's Day celebration, and it was in Pasadena. We went to this house, and they were not at all interested in my live stream or accommodating my live stream in any way, shape, or form. So they basically, we went and saw this house, and I was just gonna leave the house and go into, like, a private area so I didn't disturb people. They said, you can't leave because you can't come back.

And I said, even to do that? And they said, nope. And I said, okay. So there you go. So that was that. So this is week two, even though it's week three, and that means that we're talking more about conscious fatherhood. And the title for today. We're in the car, right? We're in the car on our way to volleyball. Volleyball tournament. So some ways it's appropriate, and we. The title of today's talk or conversation or whatever is the Middle Way is the way. The Middle Way is the way. Right. So what does that mean exactly?

Well, it means that just like in the classic tale of Goldilocks, you can have too little. It can be too. Too cold, it can be too hot, it can be too small, it can be too big. But there's this middle way. And what does that mean when it comes to being a parent or being a father? I mean, you know, the truth is that there's no. There's no guidebook, right? We're not given a guidebook. The best guidebook that we're given is our own parents and who knows how good of a guidebook that was, right? So we do the best we can.

And in our culture today, it's kind of like there is not necessarily always discussion of a middle way. And so for me personally, it's always like trying to find. All right, when is it too much discipline? When is it not enough discipline? When is it not too much love? I don't think you can have too much love, but you can love differently. And you can love in a way that's smothering, and you can love in a way that doesn't help them learn responsibility. You can love. You think it's love, but really it's more about you than it's about them.

So that's, you know, not probably the way to do it. Then there's avoiding confrontation with your kids, especially when they're older, because you don't Want them to not like you. And there's all that kinds of stuff we do, doing stuff for them they can do for themselves. And sometimes it's loving and being of service and just wanting to be special. And sometimes, you know, it's not really thinking of them and what's in their best interest, but your need to be needed. So, you know, and then there's the people that even, even to this day, even though it was more old school, children are meant to be seen and not heard.

And you know, it's like, you do what I say you're gonna do and I don't really care what you think. And then there's the other direction where it's like, is it possible for kids to have too much of a voice? I don't think so, actually. I don't think so. But it's more, how do you help them have a voice while at the same time make healthy decisions or have boundaries around the decisions they can make? So I think the bottom line is that, you know, and I'd love for my daughter to, to weigh in on this, but she's not interested.

And guess what? She gets to have that, right. That's her, that's. That's her, her ability, that's her freedom. And that's the, that's part of it, right, is it's like we want to support our kids in being autonomous human beings, preparing them for adulthood, preparing them for not being in our lives. So if we need to be needed, that's going to be a problem. And if we're afraid of intimacy or afraid of being connected with our kids or letting them have their own voice in opposition or indifference to ours, then that could be a problem as well.

So again, it's that middle way that I strive for personally, often miss, but certainly do the best. And when we miss, we clean it up. And that's something my parents generation, I don't think really ever thought was something that you would do with kids. You don't apologize to kids. But I think my generation and younger, it's pretty much understood that, yeah, if you make a mistake, you own it. It's not do as I say, not as I do. It's do as I do because I want to model who I want you to be and I want you to see that.

So as imperfect as it is, you can have open conversations and you can create a space for your kids to have a V. What works for them, what doesn't work for them, even if you make the ultimate decision. And I could give tons of examples as I have over the last year of times where my daughter has exercised her voice and her right and then sometimes we've gone along with it and then sometimes we haven't. So that's for me, what we mean by the middle way is the way the middle way, it's that constant striving for balance, knowing that we may never find it but, you know, staying away from the extremes.

And the biggest challenge for us as parents is that most of us, a lot of us, we tend to live in our own extremes because of how we were raised and because of our gender conditioning. And we have to be mindful of that and not put that on our kids because as we like to say all the time, we repeat what we don't repair. So there you go. Happy Saturday, everybody. Wishing you a wonderful weekend in Cadre Land and take care of and yeah, enjoy your weekend.