I guess they do grow up, don't they.

If you have read much of what we write or if you have watched our Facebook Live sessions, you know that we think parenting is a really hard thing to do. I remember sometime after TJ was born all of a sudden at one point having the weight of the responsibility hit me. Our parenting has eternal consequences. We are responsible for the soul of another human being. That is a tremendous amount of pressure! And now we have three of them.

TJ turned 10 years old recently. With him reaching the teenage years, it has caused me to think a lot about my role in his life and how we teach him to grow to be a man. I don't feel successful as a father in a lot of ways, like I should be spending more one-on-one time with him and really teaching him how to do life the right way. To be honest, Jen teaches him a lot. She's home with him every day and has been for a few years. She takes the time to play sports with him and those types of things. I think it is good that he is learning from her in some ways, but I know there is pressure on me to be influential in certain areas. I also know that she wants to me to "step up" more in meeting this need.

Update Fall 2018: TJ made the Middle School Tennis Team!

TJ played soccer for a few seasons when he was 4-6 I think. Jen and I both hate soccer, and we were so relieved when he decided not to play anymore. But we have always been careful not to pressure him to do too many things he wasn't really interested in. He said he was interested in engineering, or maybe we just assumed that, so he took a bunch of engineering classes. He had not played any more sports until recently. Reilly played basketball in the fall, and TJ started talking about it a little, but 10 years old is a little late by today's standards to start playing a sport.

One day we were at Academy Sports in Gainesville and found a great deal on some basketball shoes his size. He kind of decided then he might give basketball a try. He had never been interested in it at all before. I told him if we bought the shoes that meant he was playing, and he said okay. Fast forward to the "player evaluations" that took place a couple of months ago. He went in and came out after a few minutes and I met him away from other people at which time he said, "Well, I stunk." (Actually, he said, "Well, I sucked" but we don't like that word in our house and so I didn't want to write it.)

It broke my heart, but it was a big deal that he was even trying and I was already so proud. It was way out of his comfort zone. He doesn't like to look silly, and I'm pretty sure he felt silly out there. His team practiced a few times, and he was lost and felt out of place. To be honest he couldn't even really catch a ball, let alone dribble to the basket and shoot a layup. It was so hard for me to watch, and I wanted to go help him, but I had to let him grow on his own in that setting. 

After several practices, they had their first game. He was still lost, but he was getting better little by little. Then it seemed like a switch flipped inside him. All of a sudden, we didn't have to force him to go outside and practice. He wanted to do it on his own, and he did, and it helped that Jen was able to work with him. Since then he has had a few more games, and he, by some miracle, has developed somewhat of a passion for it. 

Most of you know that I love basketball, and Jen loves it too. We both experienced the personal growth and gained so much value from playing the sport all the way through college and then coaching after that. So we would love for all our kids to be passionate about basketball, but we are okay if it's not basketball. We just want them to be passionate about SOMETHING. TJ has always been passionate about reading, and history, and video games. But never in a million years did we think he would develop any kind of desire to be good at, and win in, basketball. That day has come. Even if it is short-lived, we are so proud that he is trying and practicing to be better. He has a long way to go, but in the game tonight he got a couple steals, forced a couple turnovers, got a couple rebounds, dribbled (!), attempted several shots, and got more involved. So I need to spend more time helping him develop and improve.

The other night TJ and Reilly and Jen were playing 21 and I was about to head out to play some hoops myself. TJ was making it very difficult for Reilly to do anything, and at one point I grabbed TJ's arm and yanked him away to let Reilly have a chance to shoot. TJ immediately started crying and ran to his mom and sobbed. We were just messing around, but later I asked him why he was so upset. He explained that his 35-year-old dad grabbed his arm and pulled him away when he was about to get the ball and go make an easy shot when he only had one point and his mom had a lot more. It was partly that he wanted to beat his mom, and it was partly that I treated him like a little kid that made him so upset. I realized at that moment that all of a sudden, he really needs me to respect him in a more "grown-up" way. He needs me to treat him not so much like a little rag doll that I can throw around. He needs to know that I now see him as more than just a little kid. The next night he came inside bawling because he was so close to beating his mom in 21. I explained to him that it would never happen, so to not get so upset about it. :)

At the Christmas program at church, there were some fairly long stretches where most of the kids sat on stage and watched the program play out. TJ was acting like a crazy person. Seriously, I'm not exaggerating to say he looked like a lunatic. He was hitting Reilly in the back of the head. He was seemingly making fun of other kids who were telling him to be quiet. It was insane. It was so unlike him. I was so frustrated and getting so upset that almost wanted to walk on stage and grab him by the arm to drag him off. Really I was torn between doing that or walking out of the sanctuary. I kept my composure. Maybe no one else noticed, but I was boiling. After the program was over, we realized he was acting like an idiot because he was trying to impress a girl he was sitting next to on stage.

So at this point in his life, we have a young man who is experiencing these emotions and feelings and thoughts that I know are really difficult for him to process and understand. I need to be there to put my arm around his shoulder and explain that life is going to be hard to figure out sometimes. He needs to know that girls in school or at church can cause boys to do some pretty stupid things. (I'm pretty sure at the beach one time when I was in middle school I tried to do a backflip in about a foot of water trying to impress some girls. I did about half of a backflip and landed on my head. My neck still hurts. I'm not sure if the girls were impressed.) He also needs to learn that girls don't always have his best interest in mind, whether he is talking to them in person or they go to his school or they are on the screen of his phone or tablet or computer. He needs to learn that from me.

He also needs to learn that women are to be respected, and that starts at home with his mom. I need to model that for him. Sometimes I do a good job, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes in cases that he has a disrespectful tone with her, I don't punish him when I should. He also needs to learn that is good to love your wife, and it's good to hug and kiss her and show affection in the home. I think I do a pretty good job with that one.

At times I tend to be passive in my teaching (Jen is rolling her eyes right now because she thinks I'm too passive with everything). But what I mean is I like to try to model the right behavior in front of the boys instead of teaching it. Someone once said, "More is caught than taught." That has to be true in some cases. Even when I played basketball I led more by example than I did ordering people around. That's not my style. I try to demonstrate that reading my Bible is something that is important to us and that God is to be honored in our household. However, I should probably be more proactive in having devotional time with the boys and more intentional about spending time with them doing specific things. That's an area I need to improve. 

Raising kids is hard. I don't want to be the reason that my boys grow up to be less than the men they should be. It's time to step up to the plate and take ownership of what is mostly my role in the household.