Ask HN: How are you a good dad to your kids?

I don't want to give advice, just my personal theory: I try and let my son see me doing stuff as much as possible, like cooking or working with tools, or even coding, so that he can see how people work at stuff, and get an appreciation that those things, including stuff like cooking or home repairs are approachable. I always watched my parents working and I think I'm better off for it.

My toddler is 18 months right now and he never stops long enough for me to get a whole phrase out. How have you taught him "emotional regulation"?

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.

After having kids of my own, a flood of disturbing realizations came to me about all the things they didn't do. 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't teach me anything. Nothing. They didn'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' basement.

My dad was also a "functioning" 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't that different. Although he was physically present, he may as well have not been in my life at all. My mom wasn't much better. Although she didn't have a drinking problem, she enabled my dad's drinking and was obsessed with her own career, and was basically checked out as a parent as well.

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 "hypervigilance", it was like having my core personality trait summed up as a trauma symptom.

It'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't even two yet, but I try to: comfort him when he's upset, give him the vocabulary to express what he'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's loved and supported by me.

Let the kids choose but help them understand the the consequences of their choices.

My daughters are 2 and a half and 10 months. The most important part of being a father right now is making sure my wife doesn't ever feel like a single parent. Because of our work schedules, she used to take them both to daycare in the morning and pick them up. Now that I start work later, we had a discussion and agreed I should take them. On days I work from home, if I'm able, I take a break from their dinner time until bed time to spend time and help around the house. On weekends and evenings, I make sure that my wife has time to be her own person and do her own things.

I know this isn't as fun as teaching your kid how to ride a bike, but in the early years, it's very important to show up and do the work and not just be another person in your child's life who will transform into a father when bedtimes are later and communication is improved. It's also important to our marriage. She's not the mom, and I'm not the worker. We're the parents, and we're both involved in our children's lives.

One semi-related point of pride: We are English-speakers in a non-English-speaking country. I realized that there's no cultural reason my kids should call me "dad," "father," "daddy," "pops," or the like. No matter what they call me, it'll be weird to the native speakers of the local language. My wife and I decided the kids could call me "opossum" (pronounced "possum"). The oldest one has many stuffed opossum toys, and she likes to watch videos about opossums. She outgrew her baby blanket, but she was attached to it and didn't want to give it up. Since our daughter loves dogs, my wife bought one with dogs on it. That lasted 2 or 3 nights before she was back to the baby blanket. I ordered her a larger blanket with opossums and flowers on it, and she now proudly uses that one. Even though she doesn't understand the connection between me and the animal, she knows there is one, she's happy about it, and that is so fulfilling to me as her opossum.