Happy Father’s Day (early)

I stumbled across something I wrote 9 years ago on Father’s Day when my son was 7-years old. Father’s Day apparently fell on today’s date that year.

To be honest, I don’t remember writing it.

Maybe I was meant to find it again though because I happened across it at the exact moment I thought about writing a Father’s Day entry this weekend.

Rather than write a new one, I think I’ll let, uh, me, speak for me; and since it’s a piece about what we do between the posts, I think it’s fitting to share it today.

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This post is merely by me but not about me per se - so much so that the picture above isn't even mine. It was posted by a friend who I've always known was a good father (but only today learned also knew his way around a jump rope).

I was drawn to it, in part, because the kids in my son’s school had done a similar sort of thing. Their answers were all over the place and predictably funny and sweet and adorable. No two kids' were the same but the subtext always was:

They loved their dads for loving them.

Regardless of how they showed it; what form it took; or what it looked like.

They loved their dads for truly loving them.

If there's one thing I've learned these past few years, it is that kids are the most powerful meter ever invented when it comes to gauging their parents’ love and interest and affection.

Kids don’t hear “I love you.” They feel it. They pick it up from all the ways it radiates. They sense it in countless small moments between when you last said those three words and when you say them next.

Just saying the words has no power of persuasion. It merely affirms something they already feel the truth of way down in their bellies or it doesn’t.

When you tell your child how much you love them, if you mean it, they know; and if you don't, there is nothing you can do to fool them.

How they know shows up in the answers to little assignments like the one in the picture above.

If you ever get a chance to read the whole class’ responses, the thing you quickly realize is that the specific activities they list don't really matter; they are just some of the ‘how’s’ - how their parent shows their interest… how they shine the light of their love through their time… and interest… and engagement.

The questions focus on activities - things done for and done together - and that can make it seem like love is measured in volume as if doing more is loving more and doing less is not loving enough.

That isn’t really how it works.

How much and how often are what kids notice and we often do too about other parents but that alone isn’t a measure of much weight.

I get an undue number of compliments on Facebook about my fathering so to speak; but to be honest, a lot of it is just driven by how often my son and I seem to be off doing things together.

We do a lot together. While that’s great, honestly, once you're a decent amount above "don't really do anything together,” how much you do and how often doesn't matter all that much. Not in terms of how well you show your kids that you love them and how well they know that, at least.

It isn’t scalar. Five times more time together doesn’t map to a kid feeling five times more loved. Instead, the thing that matters is the "why?" part. Why are they there? Why are they making that time?

What matters is how the parent feels.

Having a parent who misses them from across the country is better than having one who is disinterested from across the room.

Spending an hour with a parent who engages because they want to does far more than spending an entire weekend with one who doesn't.

‘Why’ matters more than ‘how’, ‘how much’ and ‘how often’ combined.

At the end of the day, if one of the constants in your kids' lives is that they go to bed each night and wake up each morning knowing how much you love them, you're doing something right. Whether you're with them 24/7 or every other weekend; whether you show them by doing things like leaving notes on the refrigerator… or by teaching them to jump rope… or through just the way you look at them and listen to them… if you love them and your kids know just that one thing, you're doing something right.

There is no one way to be a good father. There isn’t a specific amount of time that’s right or required or enough. There is only how you feel and all the ways it shows up in how you act.

When your kids’ are asked “How does your father show you that he loves you?” you may not know the answer is “…by teaching me to jump rope.”

But sometimes it is.

And sometimes they take that answer to school and write it down.

Happy Father's Day to every father out there giving their kids answers.