Things My Daughter Has Taught Me

A field report from the messy, beautiful chaos of fatherhood.

A long time ago, the thought of having a child seemed laughable to me. I never thought I would be capable of taking care of another human being, because I scarcely felt capable of taking care of myself. Fast forward a decade and I am writing this as a human version of the Tasmanian Devil runs through the house with something clutched in her hand. Wait…. are those scissors? Jesus Fucking Christ give me a minute…..

Anyway, as I prepared for fatherhood, I went down a rabbit-hole of books, blogs and videos which I thought would teach me everything about being a perfect dad. Of course this was a fool’s errand and I should know by now that the most profound lessons are learned by doing. And in the chaos of the past two years, I have learned more than any book could ever teach me. Here are some of those lessons.

Love is a verb

While this phrase always resonated in an intellectual sense, and I tried to embody in all my relationships, I had never felt this shift as viscerally as when I first laid my eyes on my child. It doesn’t matter how tired I am or what I have been through in the day, I will always have time to change my daughter’s diaper, play chase with her, pick up her plate off the floor after she has thrown it during a tantrum and clean up after her. She won’t ever understand the weight of these actions until much later in life and I don’t mind if she doesn’t, because this love is as unrequited as it gets. I don’t need anything in return and I will do all the painful things a million times over because this is the most important thing I will ever do.

I will never get to do everything I want and that’s okay

There are things that once felt really crucial to my identity but they were never really that important at all. That TV show that everyone is talking about isn’t going anywhere (and will most likely have a shitty ending or get canceled). I can watch the highlights of most football matches, instead of making my entire weekend revolve around the game. As I crossed 35, I have pretty much stopped drinking so bars don’t really appeal to me. Every plan we make revolves around our daughter’s sleep schedule. While this means we can’t be as impromptu as we once were, I am okay with it because I want to prioritize my child’s health and well being. This is the one non-negotiable in my life. Ruthless prioritization is the name of the game and I have never been better at it than now.

Our parents were doing their best

With all the power of the internet and now AI in the palm of my hand, I still feel like I am winging it at parenting most of the time. My dad and I have had children at roughly the same ages. My mom was certainly younger than my wife when she had me. My wife’s parents were in their 20s when they had her and both of us turned out relatively fine. There is a tendency among us millennials to delve into therapy speak and frame every issue we face as some kind of trauma, which ultimately originates with our parents. While I don’t deny that parents can knowingly or unknowingly cause issues in their kids, I want to acknowledge that the only parenting advice their generation had to rely on was the wisdom of the village. And the village is sometimes filled with weirdos with unscientific advice. The fact that I turned out as well adjusted as I did, is mainly down to their sacrifices. And all I can hope is for my daughter to have more opportunities and a better life than I did. It’s what any parent could hope for.

Good enough is nothing to be ashamed of

Social media is filled with videos and images of immaculate houses and well dressed parents and kids. The word that first comes to mind when you see this kind of content is “perfection”. However, in our quest for perfection, we are too dismissive of “good enough” and often let it be the enemy of perfect. As long as my family is healthy, and we have enough food to eat and a cozy bed to sleep in, we are better off than most of humanity and certainly most of our ancestors. We are our ancestors wildest dreams and it’s important to keep this in perspective when we are losing our minds over mismatched socks or a hurriedly tied pigtail.

I have learned a new language

It’s not verbal and it’s got nothing to do with my Misogi. I can intimately understand my daughter’s emotions and can distinguish a petulant cry that comes from not getting her wa,y from the cry she lets out when she has fallen on her face (which happens a lot with toddlers). I am also better attuned to my wife’s general mood and can communicate with her with the oldest language of them all, facial expressions. We have to do this because my daughter is extremely perceptive and it took her 2 minutes to understand that “Fuck” was a word her parents did not want her to use and kept saying it non-stop when I made the mistake of telling her to stop saying that.

Showing up is the only thing that matters

I’ve half-assed a lot of important things in life, but parenting is something I don’t want to take a laissez-faire approach to. It has involved a lot of unlearning, especially when it comes to Indian patriarchal attitudes of what being a father entails. But the good thing about life is you don’t have to follow the societal rules you don’t agree with. It doesn’t matter what you earn, or what materialistic comforts you can provide. Your child can and will do without them, as long as you always show up for them as your authentic self. And that is the greatest gift my daughter has given me.