I would give myself a grade of B- with respect to my parenting efforts and results. My work is not done, but I am getting close to being effectively done on a day-to-day basis; maybe five more years until it becomes essentially official.
I never really planned to be a parent. There certainly was a general presumption and expectation for my generation, and really every generation that proceeded me, that you get married and have kids. I spent a decade having fun before any of this happened. I am glad I did, but I think that was a reflection of my true nature which is born out of selfishness. My parents talked about being grandparents on occasion but they never really put any pressure on my brother or me. I had some friends whose parents obsessed about being grandparents. And maybe that pressure happens to girls more than boys? I was not against being a parent, but it was not something that I gave much thought to or had some compelling desire for. For me, being a parent just happened. There was essentially no planning. Somewhere between believing it was what I was supposed to do and our inherent ‘horny-ness’ resulted in having three kids.
This was 2007 at our place in Maine. In hindsight, this was a good time for me but I appreciate it more now than I did at the time.
My kids are fundamentally good people. That is the primary reason why my self-grade is as high as it is; more due to their abilities and less about my contributions. At the core of being a parent, you fear your children’s ability to successfully navigate the world. That certainly is the case for me. Woven into that concern is a selfish desire to cut the financial cord and not having to dwell on this fundamental concern on a daily basis. I will have been effectively a ‘full-time’ parent for about 30 years. That is a long time for what is a pretty intense responsibility. And I recognize that it is not unique to me. Also it is very apparent that you never stop being a parent. Even as they become adults, you are still ‘on the job’. However, the frequency of that work goes down, hopefully. I suspect that when issues do arise, the severity will be higher. This is a reflection of one of my key takeaways of parenting. When they are young, challenges are high frequency and lower severity. When they get older, it flips to low frequency, but when problems do arise the severity is higher. There is also the reality that when your kids are older, ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’. The opposite of the old adage, but in this respect, the ‘hurt’ manifests itself as an ever present worry.
When I look at pictures of my kids when they were young, I think they are so cute, wonderful and I long for those days. I think it would be magical to spend five minutes with the younger version of each child. To be able to observe and interact with that version of them now would be very meaningful. My ability to appreciate that version of them would be very different now verse when I was in those moments. Not to mention just giving them a giant hug and squeeze would be amazing. And yet, during that time, I must confess I was not the most attentive and involved parent. This is really the essence of my greatest regret as a parent. I would like to think that I share this with many other parents. Unlike me, my wife really stepped up and was the ever-present parent. That condition has not changed much. My preference was to mostly focus on work or other activities that allowed for time by myself. This is the core of my many shortcomings as a parent. As I reflect on that, I realize that this was the time to shape my children into being the people that they could and would become. I would assign most of the blame for any shortcomings my kids have now to either my interest in doing other things or lack of tenacity and endurance to persist in engendering good habits and characteristics.
This is a picture of Ben and Sara kayaking at a ‘resort’ just north of San Diego. My wife had gotten a recommendation from a friend that it was a great place to go for the weekend. She really wanted to take the kids there. She wanted us all to go but I said I needed to work and so she went with them by herself. That was a mistake. I should have gone. These situations came up throughout their youth and continue even today. I don’t always make the right decision.
Another primary regret is my memory of the details of their youth fading with every day. I think this manifests itself in two ways; I forget some of the very real struggles we had with each child, and more upsetting, I forgot some of the really good memories when they were in this very special period of their lives. They are refreshed when I see pictures. We did a pretty good job of taking pictures, particularly when they were younger; those efforts were less frequent as they got older. When I scroll through these old pictures, I have a pang in my heart that I did not provide them what they really deserved.
My wife is a good Mom and really goes out of her way to do things for her children. She was very generous with her time for them. This was good because it is not my first inclination. I have heard it said that we find characteristics in a mate that we are deficient in and while this was sheer luck for me, it was true with respect to being a good parent.; maybe it is intuitive that we recognize these capabilities in finding a mate? She is 100% Italian and the stereotypes of Italians and how they parent has a lot of merit. She goes to great lengths to do things for them. Many of which I would not have done myself from a style perspective.
My generation of parents have been often accused of ‘helicoptering’ or ‘bull-dozing’ on behalf of our kids. I certainly saw some of this amongst or friends and neighbors. And we certainly were not immune to these tendencies. I was definitely a lot more independent as a child and more adventurous. There were times where my children would be playing out front with neighborhood kids and while I wasn’t always out there to supervise, I definitely felt as though I should. Our street was a little dangerous with respect to vehicle traffic, but not terrible. My wife and I did not see this condition the same way.
In my mind, our primary directive as parents is to create children that are independent and able to successfully navigate the world. This includes them leaving the nest. My wife would be with her children forever. My sink or swim approach drew ire with both my wife, and particularly with my mother-in-law. We would battle on how best to help them. Essentially it was the providing villagers fish verse teaching them how to fish. I would like to believe that this dueling approach resulted in a pretty good end result; essentially good cop, bad cop. I wonder also how much of this condition was specific to our own upbringing and how much of it is just typical for most parents and their children.
I believe Alfredo was seven in this picture. We were at our summer home in Maine on our honeymoon and this really marks the beginning of Alfredo’s new parental reality of a split parenting experience.
Alfredo is our oldest. He is my stepson. However, since I was a big contributor to his parent’s divorce, I feel a lot of responsibility with respect to his well-being. To the best of my ability, I have tried to treat him as if he was my child. I think I have been fairly successful in this effort. He is a good kid and is smart and capable. The split of his parents did have an effect on him. I debate with myself how profound the impact was thinking in one moment it was not significant and then believing there are some real scars. When he was young and would get dropped off at our house for the week after spending the weekend with his father, there would be some hostility for nearly a day until he would calm down. This was a pretty consistent phenomenon. In 2001, we moved from the Bay Area to southern California. Alfredo stayed in the Bay Area with his father. This was essentially his entire middle and high school experience. We would fly him down for the weekend, holidays and would send him to summer camp along with summer vacations. We would see him a lot, but this too had some impact on him.
This was a picture when Alfredo was visiting. Sara and Ben really enjoyed their time with him when he was visiting. And so did Alfredo for the most part. That being said, I think there was some struggle for him goin back and forth.
He did manage to graduate high school but was not a good student. There was not a real focus on the importance of school with his father and step-mother; although he does have a half-sister that is quite the student. When high school was winding down, we pushed him to think about going into the military. He was going to be a sailor in the Navy for a moment but that didn’t come to fruition. He gets quite exercised when he cannot control his environment or doesn’t have clarity about the future. This doomed the Navy option. He made a half-hearted effort at community college but this was mostly a time of play. After about two years of this, he decided to move down to southern California with us. Shortly after arriving, he got a job at a Verizon store and did very well selling cell phones. Within short order, he was running the store. It was a real success. But after about a year, things began to take a turn for the worse. He got hooked on opiates which resulted in us kicking him out of the house and ultimately getting arrested for selling opiates. This began a year-plus journey getting clean. If there was a silver lining, he took getting back on track seriously and was able to get back to ‘normal’ in a meaningful way. Through a court program, he cleared his record and has been clean and successful for a few years. He is very capable and has lots of abilities but has yet to figure out how he will channel those capabilities. This is certainly a source of worry as a parent but we are optimistic.
Sara was a very cute baby. This was in our first home in South San Francisco. I miss this version of Sara. As time goes on, I have a harder and harder time really remembering these versions of my kids.
Sara is my firstborn. She arrived early in our marriage which was fine since we had an ‘instant’ family with Alfredo. Mandy was over the moon that she had a daughter. She was a pretty easy baby and this persisted through most of her childhood. Sara would grow to be both independent and stubborn. On the whole, I think these are pretty good characteristics. We used to take her everywhere with us particularly when she was young. Many of these outings were me trying to hold onto my single lifestyle with my many friends in San Francisco.
When we moved to Southern California, Sara cruised through elementary and middle school. She was a good student and active in many different things like soccer, brownies and had a large group of friends.
In high school, she got off to a great start both academically and made the cheerleading team as a freshman. She was a flyer and really one of the best in the group. She had done a lot of cheerleading competitions and performed really well. I was very impressed. Some time as a Junior things began to take a turn. The group of girls and mothers that were a part of cheerleading was a fairly intense group. Some of the girls started to turn on one of Sara’s friends in some cruel ways. Sara to her credit stuck with her friend. This was certainly a moment of integrity for her. Unfortunately, it resulted in her becoming a bit of an outcast among the cheerleaders. Further one of her best friends in elementary and middle school had joined the cheerleading as a junior. This one-time friend turned on Sara in some very unfortunate ways.
Sara during this time got her first boyfriend, Dakota. This situation was also a contributor to her alienation with some of her old friends in cheer. For some odd reason, some of their mothers had opinions about this as well. Dakota was a pretty good kid all things considered. I will confess that having a daughter with a boyfriend is a situation I really don’t care for; my guess is this is shared with many fathers. And while my boys really have not had any girlfriends, I definitely see this differently based purely on the sex of my children, right or wrong. Dakota came from a broken family and was essentially raised by a single mother. He was definitely searching for his identity. He was also religious which as a father of a daughter, I would like to think had some upside, despite my own perspective on religion. Ultimately they broke up sometime in her senior year. There was some drama around this but it ended up all working out.
The result was Sara really wanted to leave it all behind. She also made a pretty compelling case that she was not getting the academic support she needed which of course carried weight with me. We ended up enrolling her in a private and one-on-one school for the remainder of her high school experience. This worked out pretty well, although a little part of me wonders if toughing it out would have been the better choice. This culminated in a graduation ceremony where Sara was recognized on a number of occasions for being a standout student and a member of the community. My ultimate assessment was this experience really was turning lemons into lemonade.
Sara went through the college admission experience and ultimately was accepted into a handful of colleges. She ended up picking the University of Arizona. We were all very excited and proud of this accomplishment. I did struggle with the price tag but rationalized that it was going to be worth it. We dropped her off and got her all set up in her dorm room. She was in a room of four girls. They were pretty nice but my wife struggled with this and did not paint the most positive perspective on that particular arrangement. Her skepticism was an issue for a few weeks prior to her arrival and continued to be confirmed during her first semester. Nonetheless, Sara made friends in the dorm and was on her way. Things seemed pretty good the first semester. There were many late-night Uber trips that we saw because we were paying for them. I just saw this as her taking advantage of the social component of college. She came home for Christmas and had failed a couple of classes. Essentially ‘dog at my homework’ situations. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall but she went back for the next semester and I had hoped she would figure out the academics. She didn’t and was academically unable to return after her freshman year.
As I look back on this effort, I don’t regret trying. Despite listening to some pretty smart people make some compelling arguments against college, it is my reference point and all things being equal, I would prefer my kids to have a college education than not. For Sara, academics was always a bit of an uphill battle. She is a doer at heart. Her success for the last year and half in high school at Halstrom Academy led me to believe she could be successful in school. College requires focus and balance between academics and social fun. Sara was unable to do what was needed on either fronts.
She got a job at our local Nothing Bunt Cakes. She quickly worked her way to being the manager which I thought was quite the accomplishment. She was there for a while and was quite successful. That being said I would push her to think about the next thing. Ultimately she is reactive and not proactive in her life. After a couple of years she began to get a bit restless in the position exacerbated by an owner who was a little crazy. She ended up getting fired but the separation was mutual.
She got a job at our local Mercedes dealership making cold calls. This is okay for now but I believe she has a lot more to give and accomplish. I am waiting for her to see this in herself and really start her life. Sound familiar?
Early on in our life in Southern California, my parents and brother came out to visit for the holidays. We went to Big Bear and took the kids tubing in the snow. Ben was pretty young. He liked it but he was always a pretty cautious kid. This has persisted through his life.
Ben arrived not long after Sara. He was a pretty big baby. My wife had a pretty uneventful pregnancy and popped him out pretty quickly despite his size. I always would joke with her that she was just starting to hit her rhythm birthing kids. That being said, we both knew this would be our last and we probably were now in over our heads with three kids.
Ben was a good-natured, curious, but a bit shy as a young child. He was adored by his grandmother who watched him when he was young in her home in Daly City. We could not have asked for a better arrangement. She watched all three kids for a considerable length of time which was great both from a child-rearing perspective and financially. Ben was definitely special to her. For those first two years, he was treated like a king. I realized after a while that he really needed to go to pre-school, if for no other reason to have toy ripped out of his hands by some other kid to let him know that life was going to be different than his great treatment with Mamma. So off to RW Drake in South City he went to join his sister.
This was Ben’s first day at RW Drake. He was joinging his big sister who definitely would take care of him; this persists even today. This is one of my favorite pictures.
He was pretty young when we moved to Orange County and effectively only knows Southern California as his home. A situation I still sometimes have a hard time wrapping my head around. Initially he spent time at a daycare with his sister in Irvine called Stepping Stones. That was a good experience. When it came time for kindergarten, his birthday was very close to the cutoff and we decided to hold him back. His sister was definitely ready but he was a little young. We sent him to a private kindergarten before going to kindergarten at Foothill Ranch Elementary. He would always ask if we held him back and for a long time we would tell him that we didn’t. I am not sure if we have ever really disclosed what happened. I think it was a good decision. If for no other reason to feel good about the decision, he ended up with a pretty good group of friends from his K through 12 experience.
His elementary school experience was pretty good. He did have a buddy named Cole who he was (and is) very close to through the majority of his elementary school experience. Cole during these times was fairly mischievous and this meant a number of teacher and principal meetings for Ben, and of course, his parents. They generally consisted of the need to focus on schoolwork and to stop being disruptive to the other students in his class. The two of them together were definitely rambunctious but I feel Ben was the side-kick in most of these activities. Academically he was a little above average but typically tested very well on the state exams. My conclusion of this circumstance is that he didn’t try hard enough. This would a theme between him and me that has persisted throughout his life so far. I expect it will probably continue for the foreseeable future.
Ben moved on to RSM Middle School which was a bit of the same as his elementary school experience. He became very friendly with the Assistant Principal Mr. Bajork only because Ben would do something that required a meeting. The infractions were never of a serious nature but required some form of discipline.
It was in this period that he began to venture out with his group of buddies to get into mischief around our community. He was never the instigator; which I have mixed emotions about. There were a few late-night pickups when he was allegedly sleeping over someone’s house and they snuck out to do something stupid and got picked up, twice by law enforcement. One of these incidents happened when we were ‘hosting’ the sleepover. And one of these occurrences required a parent meeting at one of his friend’s houses. It was a bit of a flashback for me as I had a similar situation at roughly the same age. All the parents gathered at this one house with the boys present; as I recall it was about five or six of them. The results was effectively ‘to do better’ and I wonder ultimately what the effect was, but it had to be done out of principle.
Ben had a reasonable sports career. He really likes sports and is pretty big and strong but was never going to do anything beyond high school. As a young kid, it was essentially baseball and soccer. He was above average at both. His soccer career concluded when he was about 12 and he had an epic last game where they were losing and he asked to go in goal. He was able to shut down the other teams scoring and the game was tied up. It came down to penalty kicks and he stopped a couple as I recall and their team prevailed. In some ways, this may have been his peak moment in sports. Baseball fizzled out for two reasons. His last team in the ‘majors’ of little league was on a team where the coach’s son was on the team who was good but his father thought he was the best. His father let the son get away with murder particularly around practice; mostly not attending. He would then play his kid all the time particularly as pitcher. The kid had a number of meltdowns when things weren’t going his way. It was deflating for everyone, especially Ben. He also began being afraid of being hit by a pitch and so his batting got pretty bad which did not endear him to the coach. He really wanted to quit on this team but after a number of heated arguments, he begrudgingly stuck it out for the remainder of the season. However, that was end of the baseball career.
This was one of Ben’s travel teams.
By chance one of his good friends started playing lacrosse and asked Ben if he wanted to as well. Ben said yes. This was the beginning of a pretty long journey in the sport culminating in playing varsity in his junior year. He was pretty good. When he was young he was very defensively minded despite being placed on attack most often. As he got further and further into the sport, he would either play attack or midi. He really didn’t have the speed or endurance for midi and would push for attack. His high school teams had some pretty prolific scorers of which he was not one. He would get scoring opportunities but would often defer to some of the other players. He did score on occasion and always had pretty reasonable shots on goal. I went to pretty much every one of his games. In high school, I missed one game (I can’t remember why) and Ben ended up scoring three goals. Go figure!
With respect to college, Ben was determined to go. I think a lot of his motivation was mostly because his two other siblings failed in their efforts. It was an area where he knew he could decisively beat them in something. He was not a great student prior to college. He is smart but his work ethic is only average; does enough to get by. He was accepted into a number of schools but narrowed it down between the University of Arizona and Oregon University. We visited both schools even though he had been to U of A a number of times with his sister. I liked Oregon quite a bit and thought he might pull the trigger with respect to the Ducks as their Business School was good and their football and basketball teams were very good. I believed that the capability of the institution’s sports teams would play a big part in the overall decision. In the end, he opted to go to Tucson mostly because I think it was something he was more comfortable with; he had been there a number of times and it more closely resembled home. He is doing well there and I have every expectation he will graduate from the Eller School of Business … on time!
I would consider my track record with respect to college and my kids to be sub-par. My family had a good college track record prior to my kids. My grandfather and father both went to Harvard and were both accomplished students. My brother went to a better college than I did, but neither of us lived up to the high bar created by the previous two generations. There was a great deal of importance put on college in my family. As we were getting close to certainly Sara and Ben getting ready for the process, I listened to a number of very smart people make some pretty compelling arguments as to why college was not the Return on Investment (ROI) it once had been, and for some kids clearly a bad option. That being said, it was what I had done and was most comfortable with so I believe all things being equal, it is better to have that piece of paper than not. My failure really started with not being persistent and determined to engender good study habits. And once that condition is allowed, probably somewhere around second to fourth grade, it is hard to put the horse back into the barn. And this was largely a parenting failure. My brother has two girls and I think he is doing a better job in this respect. While it is early, I suspect both my nieces will end up going and completing school. So should that be the outcome, my two kids who don’t have a diploma is largely on me.
This was taken at Sherry’s wedding; Mandy’s cousin. Besides being a good picutre, I think this was a point in my kids life were things started for the first time to get serious with respect to what they might do with their lives. It was a time of endless possibilities and potential.
I believe the summary of my kid’s childhood years is a good upbringing with lots of benefits and privilege; less so for Alfredo as he spent essentially third grade through high school with his dad. This type of upbringing I think tends to make kids a little lazy and a general lack of the hunger and desire that would be helpful, arguably necessary throughout their lives.
Today I find that I want to have experiences with my kids, but getting them to come along is getting harder and harder. It is ironic, or maybe even tragic, that when they wanted me in their lives, I was distracted by my own interests and now that I want to be in their lives in a more meaningful way, they are distracted by starting their lives. I would like to think that I am not alone in this situation but nonetheless that does not diminish the guilt and tragedy of this situation.
Not-so-long-ago I was told by a wise friend of mine that his father told him that the most important thing he could do to be a good parent was to be interested and active in what your kids like and want to do, irrespective of what you might think of that activity in the moment. In retrospect, that advice was spot on. In the moment, I tried to shoe-horn in things I wanted them to do. My wife was a lot better at this than I; a recurring theme. Another ‘if I could go back’ item I would certainly would take advantage of.
Part of my interest in engaging them with experiences is I wish they were more adventurous. I would like to see them go off somewhere new and either start a life adventure or maybe even a new chapter in their lives. My wife on the other hand is very close to each of them and would be happy to have them all around her for the foreseeable future. This will most definitely be an area of tension as the cord is cut and they begin their lives.
In summary, the overarching feeling I have as a parent is worry and concern that they will not be able to successfully navigate the world. This, of course, is what I suspect all parents spend their time thinking about. I find that this manifests itself in my becoming the grouchy old man yelling, expressing concern that they will not measure up and generally need to ‘step up their game’ to have a chance at success. I try not to make our now limited time together just me telling them what they are doing wrong; this is a work in progress. That being said, they all have the capacity to be good and successful adults despite shortcomings of their upbringing. And I am hopefull they will. I guess this is the essence of being a parent?
