Practice
Welcome back!
Congrats on making your way to the final lesson of this guide.
Today, we're tackling one last common and subtle topic most of us Dads will miss.
Here are 3 things for you to take away from the last lesson:
- How to test what you've learned in real life
- A strategy to practice
- Put everything together
You don't need to do it alone
Knowledge is power. But knowledge without action is like a car with the fuel. After learning all these lessons in your own life as a Dad, what matters is how you are putting the pieces together in your life.
And it's common to think that you have to do it alone.
What you might have missed is the most important element of your journey as a Dad: your wife, your partner.
When you frame your parenting journey as a solo trip, you are not going to make it in the long run.
For all the knowledge you have in your mind, run it through your partner. Focus on getting the idea across to the person who might likely think way more about the kids than you.
The goal here is not to convince and debate. The goal is to connect and understand. Before putting any parenting philosophy and strategy into action, talk about them, and listen. This helps you reflect and gain clarity on what you are thinking about alone.
Pick a tiny part of it
Once you get the buy-in from your significant other, it's time to get to work.
Just pick the easiest thing for you and start there.
Let's take ignoring your kids as an example, it's a rather difficult topic in itself. Assuming you agree that ignoring your kids is the direction you want to go, pick the one thing, just one thing, that you want to try with your kids for one day.
Be it scheduling an afternoon with your friends who have kids and leaving them alone while they play, or letting them play in the park without guidance. Or try to break it into smaller, manageable chunks of time, say 15 minutes of unstructured time in a relatively safe environment, if you are not used to letting your children wander off too far.
No matter which strategy you want to use, take it a step at a time.
The cycle
I would like to end this guide with the concept of the experiential learning cycle, proposed by David Kolb.
Here's a quick run of the cycle:
- Concrete Experience:
This stage involves experiencing a new situation or interpreting a past experience in a new way.
- Reflective Observation:
Learners reflect on their experience, paying attention to inconsistencies between their understanding and the experience.
- Abstract Conceptualization:
Reflection leads to the formation of new ideas or modifications of existing abstract concepts, indicating that learning has occurred.
- Active Experimentation:
Learners apply their new ideas to the world around them, testing and refining their understanding.
Think of a memorable moment with your kid when you both experienced something for the first time together. For me, that could be as simple as the first time letting go of my hands and having my daughter climb up a ladder in the park.
I learned to let things go, even if I worried she would fall. I knew I was paying close attention to her.
This reflection gave me the confidence to let her go on a bit further and higher the next time. I knew she could do it.
We went to a bigger park with more challenging climbs. We tested to see how she went with it.
Think about this cycle, no matter what you want to practice doing with your kid(s) as a Dad. Nothing is too easy as a parent, and nothing is too hard either.
As Derek Sivers put it: “If more information were the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs.”
Practice, reflect, and experiment are the best way for us to become the type of Dad we want to be.
You don't need more knowledge. Everything you need is already inside of you. It's time for you to stop looking at the screen and turn your attention to the people you love the most.
See you out there.
Franco