3 Things I’m Learning as a Parent Today to Help Tomorrow.

I have a toddler.

It wasn’t that long ago my wife was busy growing a human inside of her… Yea that’s weird to think about.

Then that little human popped out and was basically useless. But I loved her anyway! Smelly gross bodily functions and all.

Before I realized it, an entire year had passed. That’s 12 months. Or 52 weeks. Or 365 days. Or 8,760 hours. Or 525,600 minutes. Or 31,556,952 seconds.

I’ll never get a single one of those seconds back.

As Parent Cue says, “You have approximately 936 weeks from the day a child is born until he or she graduates from high school… when you see how much time you have left, you tend to do more with the time you have now.”

With that in mind, I’m trying to maximize the time I have with Luna and the relationship we’ll build together by learning things now that will help me parent her well tomorrow.

What she loves today, she’ll hate tomorrow.

Let’s be honest, Luna loves her Cozy Coupe. It’s her favorite thing.

On Christmas morning, she hopped in and refused to get out. She literally opened her other presents inside of the coupe.

When I opened the coupe door to get her out she, with all the sassiness she could muster, slammed the door closed.

Despite how much she loved it on day one, some of the shine has already begun to wear off. She still likes to ride in it, but she doesn’t fight too often when I get her out.

Loving the new thing and being over it by tomorrow won’t just be true for my toddler, it will also be true for my elementary student and my teenager. (Unless I find a way to keep her small FOREVER!!!)

As Barney Stinson once said, “New is always better.” In our American consumer culture, this will always be the general consensus.

I certainly have this mentality quite often.

So here are the two parenting tips I am learning from this:

1. Don’t miss this phase. She’ll never be the person she is today again.

2. Don’t spend a lot of money if it’s not necessary, she’ll likely get over quickly.

I’m developing habits now for the future.

Virginia and I kicked off the New Year by deciding to set a theme for the year. Within both of our goals were some specific habits we wanted to develop.

Habits take time to form. According to Healthline, it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic.

254 days. That’s a long time, but also it’s really not.

In the grand scheme of things, it only takes 1 day for one of my bad habits to leave a permanent mark on my daughter’s life.

I’m not really talking about anything dramatic when I think about a bad habit.

I just mean simple things like putting down my phone when I get home and not picking it up till she goes to bed.

Simple bad habits like prioritizing my desire to focus on some task instead of taking time to put stickers on a sheet of paper or pretend to drink tea from a tiny cup.

Or simple bad habits like not speaking truth drenched in grace when she needs to hear it. Even if she doesn’t want to hear it.

I know I’ll never be the perfect dad. As much as I want to be grace and truth, compassion and conviction, there will be days where I lean too far one way or the other.

All I can do in those moments is apologize for not doing a better job as a dad, promise to do better in the future, actually strive to do better, and point her toward God.

Because the most important thing I can do when my bad habits get in the way of our relationship is show her how God is a much better dad who never fails her.

So here are the two parenting tips I am learning from this:

1. I can develop healthy habits that help me maximize my time with my daughter

2. I can put practices in place to keep my bad habits from causing me to fail her too often.

No matter how many times she disobeys, I’ll still love her.

My toddler doesn’t always do what I tell her to do. Even though she totally understands what I said.

Often, it is super cute. Sometimes it is not.

Frankly, I’m having to work hard not to laugh when she does things like try to subtly move her hand towards the thing I just told her not to touch.

Sometimes, I manage to keep a straight face. Often I don’t.

Despite my lack of a poker face, there is a reason I want to show that doing wrong isn’t a funny game.

Parenting is ultimately all about teaching your child who God the Father is, why Jesus died for them, and that the Holy Spirit is present with all followers of Jesus to guide them and give them connection to God.

Parents are meant to be the clearest representation of Jesus to their child out of everyone in that child’s life.

As I parent I TRY to keep that in mind… But I often don’t.

So here are the three parenting tips I am learning from this:

1. Choosing to model love is always the right call.

2. Choosing to speak in truth is right and should be spoken with grace.

3. Choosing to forgive myself as God has forgiven me is necessary to model God’s love and forgiveness to my daughter.

Those are the 3 things I’m learning as a parent today that will help me tomorrow.

(Originally posted on January 16, 2021)