“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
James Baldwin
If fatherhood has taught me anything, it’s that my children watch me like scientists observing a mildly disappointing specimen.
They don’t learn from the things I tell them.
They learn from the things I accidentally do.
Like the time my younger son sighed—my exact sigh. Not a kid version. Not an approximation. It was my forty-something “I just stepped in something wet and I don’t know what it is” exhale, performed with unsettling accuracy.
And I had that flash of recognition:
Oh. That’s me.
That’s what I sound like.
In the wild.
It’s like living with two teenage impressionists who specialize exclusively in my flaws. They imitate my tone when I’m frustrated, my impatience when I’m late, even the way I mutter “good grief” when the dishwasher beeps like it’s trying to warn me of incoming artillery.
I used to think parenting was mostly teaching. Turns out it’s mostly modeling—whether I mean to model anything or not.
Which is humbling, because I want to raise kind, curious, decent humans. But that means I have to be kind, curious, and decent… even when I’m tired, or annoyed, or someone has weaponized yogurt in the living room again.
The wild thing is:
They absorb everything.
They pick up my habits the way a couch picks up glitter—quietly, aggressively, and forever.
They see me lose my patience.
They see me apologize.
They see me try again, because adulthood, as far as I can tell, is mostly apologizing and trying again.
I’m not aiming to raise perfect kids. I’m aiming to raise kids who know what to do when life gets weird, or messy, or doesn’t go according to plan.
So I try to let them see the whole arc:
The frustration.
The regrouping.
The grace I’m learning to give myself at an embarrassingly late age.
They won’t remember everything I say.
But they’ll remember how I treated them.
How I treated their mom.
How I handled the thousand tiny inconveniences that make up an ordinary Tuesday.
And sometimes—late at night—I think about that.
Not with panic, but with a kind of wonder.
Because somehow, in the quiet, everyday moments, I’m showing them what being a man looks like.
Not a flawless one.
Just one who keeps showing up, keeps trying, keeps learning.
And maybe that’s the whole deal.
Not getting it right.
Just trying again in front of the people who are learning how to try by watching me.
Some days I get it right.
Some days I don’t.
But they’re watching either way.
So I keep showing up.
