Ask HN: How are you a good dad to your kids?
My entire life I believed that my childhood was pretty decent, and fairly privileged even. My parents provided a safe and stable home environment in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, sent me to some decent public schools, took me on nice vacations, and paid for my college in full.<p>After having kids of my own, a flood of disturbing realizations came to me about all the things they <i>didn&#x27;t do</i>. For example, my parents never played with me. Ever. They never asked me about my day, asked what I was interested in, asked for my opinions on things, or tried to get to know me. We never hugged either. They were both completely incapable of comforting me when I was upset, and would get angry at me for expressing my emotions. They didn&#x27;t teach me anything. Nothing. They didn&#x27;t teach me how to cook, how to do laundry, how to manage money, how to fix stuff around the house, or how to manage my time. They gave me zero structure or rules, and simply did not care what I did or how late I stayed up. I was a latchkey kid starting at the age of 9. I spent the majority of my free time playing video games in my parents&#x27; basement.<p>My dad was also a &quot;functioning&quot; alcoholic. He was functioning in the sense that he could hold down a well-paying corporate job, but was otherwise totally checked out. He would get home from work at 6, pour a glass of scotch, plop down in front of the TV, and stay seated there for the rest of the night. Weekends weren&#x27;t that different. Although he was physically present, he may as well have not been in my life at all. My mom wasn&#x27;t much better. Although she didn&#x27;t have a drinking problem, she enabled my dad&#x27;s drinking and was obsessed with her own career, and was basically checked out as a parent as well.<p>It took my until the age of 34 to realize that my upbringing has had a disastrous impact on my mental health. Although from the outside my life looks pretty successful and prosperous, my inner world has been a jumbled mess of anxiety, fear, denial, and avoidance for my entire life. When I learned about the concept of &quot;hypervigilance&quot;, it was like having my core personality trait summed up as a trauma symptom.<p>It&#x27;s been a massive uphill battle for me to learn, essentially from scratch, how to be a good father. My number one goal is be emotionally present for my sons. My oldest isn&#x27;t even two yet, but I try to: comfort him when he&#x27;s upset, give him the vocabulary to express what he&#x27;s feeling, play with him on the floor everyday, teach him the names of things we see on our walks together (birds, plants, trees, etc.), read to him, and give him choices that he can make on his own. As he gets older, I want to help him discover who he is and what he likes, rather than force him to like the things I like. Above all, I want to be present in his life, and for him to truly feel that he&#x27;s loved and supported by me.