28 Apr

When a lesson backfires, dads do this!

Sometimes the lesson we want to teach our kids backfires.

That’s part of life, especially fatherhood.

When you care like we dope dads do, sometimes we put more emphasis on teaching than figuring out what went wrong.

That happens to me often especially now as my oldest gets into reselling and investments. I talked about how my son settled for clothing that wasn’t his size on episode 73 of the podcast.

All the lessons we learned together during the early stages of reselling, he seemed to forget as soon as the pressure was on. Instead of helping him solve the issue, I berated him. That wasn’t the way to get my point across, I could have done better.

Motivation backfires as well

We all want to be there for our kids. We want to build them to be 10X better than us. That’s the motivation and that motivation sometimes blinds us!

Is it a bad thing to be focused? Of course not but even when you’re super focused you have to give yourself some room to mess up or simply reevaluate your approach.

Easier said than done, especially when you’re in the thick of it with life and making sure your kids are good. However; we all know that when it comes to lessons if there’s something we have to teach, all else takes a backseat.

At times our motivation to make sure they are good, backfires and we can get better at accepting that.

Lessons to the moon?

Unless you have been living under a rock, the new wave or talk of the town is cryptocurrency.

My oldest is learning about investing and loves this asset class. It’s new, exciting and the returns have been crazy but I know better.

I wanted to use the surge in cryptocurrency to teach my son a lesson on chasing the herd and man did it backfire. I intended to have him buy a few coins, nothing crazy, I was willing to lose a few dollars in order to educate him.

But what happened next, threw me for a loop. Instead of the coins losing value, they shot right up. My son’s little investment turned into a really good investment.

Even though dad has been investing longer, little man flipped the script on me. Honestly, when I saw his investments go up, I was excited for him but I was also upset that my lesson just backfired on me.

What to do when your lesson backfires

So what’s a man to do when his lesson backfires?

Do we just quit and let them have it? Or do we find a way to still educate even though your lessons backfires?

You know how we roll! When things don’t go our way we adapt!

First of all, remember, we can’t know it all. We are full of lessons and experiences but that doesn’t mean they always fit. No matter how much we think we know, there’s always something new to learn and that’s a lesson itself.

But that doesn’t mean our life experiences are a total wash. In my case my son was right but I could still use what I learned throughout life to maximize what he was doing. I was able to slide in a few lessons without him thinking I was trying to downplay his win.

I was cool with him winning this time over my lessons. Why? Real simple, it’s actually dope when its your kids are doing the teaching. All we ever want is for them to be better than us and when they are, you better soak it all in! It feels good knowing YOU put them in a position to be better than you, don’t get upset about it, embrace it.

This week for the #FatherhoodIsLit podcast we covered all of that as my oldest saw his coins go to the moon and then fall back down to earth. He wasn’t bragging about the downside which means dad could come through and educate him a bit. Yeah, my son is just like your kids, when he wins we all know all about it. When he loses, well that’s a different topic 😂

Remember sometimes your lessons will backfire on you and that’s perfectly fine. We are raising kids that are better than us so it’s expected. Instead of downplaying it, soak it all up and add value where you can.

That’s that real child support and it never backfires when it comes from the HEART!

Hear more on Episode 81 below or on all major platforms like APPLE, SPOTIFY, and STITCHER.