Another good tip I received was to get them something new for the plane. When I had to fly with my son I got him a new game for his switch and waited to give it to him until after we boarded the plane. That way there was something fresh and new to keep his attention.

Welcome to my world. My son has been like this since he was old enough to crawl and figured out he could bypass the cabinet locks by yanking really hard on them. So we had to buy magnetic child locks for everything. I tried a U type lock between cabinet doors once and he figured out he could unscrew the damn knob. Fast forward to today where I have RFID locks on the cabinets in my office, and the only fobs for them are in my desk which has a biometric lock on it.

As others mentioned pen testing is huge. My son found a way to connect his Chromebook at school to every printer and started printing things all over campus. The IT department still hasn’t figured out how he was able to do it.

It certainly has kept me on my toes. It’s like a game of cat and mouse now. He breaks in, I improve the security and on and on. I’ve honestly thought about getting certified in alarm installation and starting a business with him.

Fun times!

I did the opposite. I’d hold my son over my head and lower him down so his belly would hit the top of my head. It cracked him up every time. I called it baby hat. Sadly he is now taller than me. And I’m 6’1" 😭

One of the biggest ones I’ve corrected is taking an active role in their education. My parents would get so mad at me when I got bad grades. I’d constantly get grounded and told you can do better, or literally slapped up the side of the head. But my parents never asked me if I had homework or tests coming up.

If I asked for help with my homework my dad would talk down to me and be like, why don’t you get this. It took me running away from home at 15 to finally get sent to a doctor and low and behold get diagnosed with ADHD.

My wife had a similar, but thankfully a less physical situation. Her mom would ground her if she got a bad grade. But she got straight A’s outside of math, so it obviously wasn’t for lack of trying. But no offers to help or asking what was wrong just you got a bad grade your grounded until your next report card.

Anyways, all of that is to say, I stay involved with my kids school work. Not to a helicopter parent level, but I check with them daily if they have homework, and make sure they know they can come to me if they need help. I remember the first time my daughter failed a test, I didn’t yell and she didn’t get in trouble. We sat down at the table and reviewed it, and made sure she understood it by the end of the night.

Both of my kids get wonderful grades and I reinforce to them that their hard work is what got them those grades, and reward them for it. Not punishment for bad grades.

I’m sorry you had to go through that so young. I was in my thirties and hadn’t seen my dad in decades when he died and it still affected me. I couldn’t imagine going through it at that age.

I’m not so sure on some that. There is a reason Gen x was also called the latchkey generation. We pretty much had no parental support. Either because both parents worked or were single parent households.

Prior to the 70s, dual income families or single parents were the exception, not the norm. As this changed rapidly through the 70s and 80s, child care and support systems did not evolve to keep pace. As these have become the norm, society as a whole has had a chance to catch up, which could be why you see more dads stepping up. Or most likely a combination of this and what you said.

At least in my case, I am aware of how absent my father was and how it affected me, and I chose to not be that way with my kids. I’d like to think others feel the same way.