On Father’s Day, I remember these parenting teachings from my dad | Canada Voices

My dad passed away in 2019, and for a long time, I struggled with that loss. I’m sure there will always be days when I struggle. I miss him desperately – he was an important part of my life, personally and professionally. After my dad died, I remember thinking that our journey together was over, and I lamented the loss of his teachings. As time has passed, however, I have learned this isn’t the case. He is still present today: I have held on to his teachings – including powerful ones about parenting – and I carry them with me as I raise my own children. Here are a few lessons I learned from my father that I think can help any parent.

Try your best to be present

It’s hard to overstate the importance of simply being there for your kids. When I was growing up, my dad made an effort to spend time with me – even when we weren’t living together. He took me golfing, or we went to the movies, and even though it hurt not having him around all the time, I still cherish every moment we spent together.

There’s a clip from the Real Ones podcast hosted by Jon Bernthal in which the actor Richard Cabral describes meeting his son for the first time and says, “I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I had to be there.” It’s a powerful and wise piece of advice for all parents – to make sure you always show up – but I know it can be hard to follow. As someone who travels most of the year, I’m not often in the same city as my children. But when I am home, I am trying to be more intentional about how I spend my time with them, just like my dad did with me.

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Ask your teens how they’re doing

Being a teenager is hard. In one of my favourite movies from the nineties, Pump Up the Volume, Christian Slater’s character says, “Being a teenager sucks, but that’s the point. Surviving it is the whole point.” Maybe that’s overly dramatic, but there’s some truth to it. A lot of stuff is going on inside a kid’s mind and body during the teen years, and it can be chaotic. Parents can help by making time to check in about how they’re really doing.

One time when I was 19, I put my fist through a pantry door. I had all these balled-up emotions, and they came out like that. My dad took me for a walk around the block, and instead of getting angry with me, he simply asked, “Are you doing okay?” That led to a long chat about what was going on with me, what support he could offer, and how I could better manage my emotions going forward. It helped a lot, getting everything off my chest, and my father taking the time to give me direction when it was needed, and actively listening when I just needed to be heard.

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Practise non-interference

This is a Cree approach to child development, but it has universal application. You could look at it as modelling, and I have tried to practise this with my children like my father did with me.

Once, near the end of my dad’s life, I asked him why he didn’t teach me how to be Cree. He responded by saying, “How am I going to teach you how to be Cree? You are who you are.” He explained that the journey of my life is, in part, one of self-discovery; that I would draw on all my lived experiences to shape my understanding of who I am. He wasn’t going to interfere with that process. Rather, he felt he could best support my journey by modelling what it meant to live a good life and what it meant to be Cree for him, and hoping that would positively influence me.

I try to do the same for my kids – to live in a way that offers direction by example, rather than prescription, and hope that they will see some practices they can adopt on their own journeys. The best thing we can do as parents is model for children what it’s like to live well and trust that they will figure out how to do the same.

Find your thing to do with your kids

Having a routine with your kids – either an activity you do with them consistently or a place you go to regularly – can be grounding and comforting, providing a safe space to truly connect, or to just have fun and make memories. For my dad and me, it was golf. We golfed together probably once a week when I was a kid, and those times are some of my clearest childhood memories: waiting by the window at 6 a.m., watching for him to pull up (we always teed off early); stopping for doughnuts on the way out of town to the Cottonwood Golf Course; the time I hit a hole-in-one (after losing my first ball to the water), jumped into the air, and then ran to hug him. Whenever I pass by where Cottonwood used to be, where the ghost of the course remains, I smile, because that was my spot with my dad.

Lately, I’ve started golfing with my son. I hope we’re creating lasting memories that, years from now, will make him think back on these vital years and smile, just as I do when I think about those times with my father.

David A. Robertson is a two-time Governor-General’s Literary Award winner and has won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg.