When I found out I was going to be a dad, I noticed I started worrying all the time. And there wasn’t even anything to worry about yet!
Now, I’m more than a year in, and worry is still there. But that isn’t the dominant negative feeling anymore.
Taking the crown these days is guilt.
When I’m coming home from work and I’m excited to see Jack and play with his little dinosaur toys, but then that wears off after five minutes and now I’m tired …
Guilt.
When I’m slogging through the afternoon and evening just waiting for 7:30 to roll around so I can shut off my mind for a couple hours …
Guilt.
I don’t want to get rid of that feeling completely. Much like worry, I think there’s an optimal dose we can use to make ourselves better parents.
But guilt comes from a part of my brain that I don’t have much control over. It’s like a small leak that never escalates to an emergency.
My plan is to override guilt (or at least some of it) with affection.
I am so embarrassingly bad at affection, especially with words. I’ll just say I have a hard time processing earnest feelings and then expressing them.
So I’m giving it a shot with my son.
My thinking is that he’s 14 months old right now. So I need to get good at this before he’s a little smarter and mistakenly thinks I’m only practicing love.
Tyler Fenwick is the dad of a toddler who demands his parents read him approximately 300 books per day. You can reach Tyler at tyler.fenwick@mirrorindy.org.
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