During my past four years of my rookie season of child-raising,<\/strong> I have frequently reminded myself, \u201cThey said this was going to happen.\u201d Or, \u201cSomeone told me about this exact thing\/feeling\/challenge.\u201d Because I had interviewed 40 dads over a period of about two years, I had so many bits of their wisdom and their stories rattling around in my head. And it turns out they were right about many, many things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Since those interviews are now public as of the launch of my book So Far, So Good: 40 Dads Talk About Becoming Parents and How They Figured It Out<\/em><\/strong><\/a>,<\/span>\u00a0I thought I\u2019d share a handful of my favorites:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 1. <\/strong>The clich\u00e9s are true.<\/strong><\/p>\n In every interview I conducted, I asked the same 20 questions, including this one: \u201cWhat\u2019s something nobody told you about parenting that you think is worth sharing?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s what my friend Ed said, verbatim, in his response:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s less that nobody told me and more that I didn\u2019t believe all the clich\u00e9s. It\u2019s just endless clich\u00e9s, it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, they grow up so fast,\u2019 and this and that, and \u2018You\u2019re wearing your heart on the outside of your body now,\u2019 and all this kind of stuff. All the stuff that you hear people who generally I don\u2019t have anything in common with would say. It\u2019s all true, they do grow up unbelievably fast. I yanked out my daughter\u2019s second tooth that she\u2019s lost last night, and I was like, \u2018How is this possible that she\u2019s this old?\u2019 The whole thing about how fast it all goes. I think the thing that is unexpected to me is, it sounds crazy, I\u2019m going to start crying about it, but how important they are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 2. <\/b>Everybody else is winging it too.<\/b><\/p>\n Mark, who is a dad to a son and daughter now in their mid-20s, said this:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think you will never feel adequate, so you might as well just relax. You will never feel like you are the perfect parent and you got this shit down. So you might as well just enjoy it. And when the mistakes happen, or the sleep doesn\u2019t happen and stuff like that, just understand, there\u2019s no book, there\u2019s no video, there\u2019s no doctor who\u2019s going to tell you anything that helps. I think especially for people who are driven and have had a modicum of success to whatever, or maintain a lifestyle where everything is somewhat provided for, to realize that you\u2019re just winging it every day, so know that and not beat yourself up for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 3. <\/b>You never get it all figured out.<\/b><\/p>\n My friend Pitt is a dad of three kids, and he had this great perspective on the ongoing challenges of helping a little human figure out their way in the world:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOnce you become a parent, you realize that you are just at the beginning. Almost always. You\u2019re never in the middle. You\u2019re just at the beginning of figuring stuff out, no matter what it is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The first few years of being a parent you want to cross the goal line, you want to pass the checkpoint, whatever it is. You realize that there are no real goal lines. There is no checkpoint. Keep moving forever. That\u2019s what you\u2019ve got to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n (This reminds me of this quote in Oliver Burkeman\u2019s book Meditations For Mortals<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, in which he quotes a friend of podcaster Sam Harris, who asked him, \u201cWere you really expecting to have no more problems at some point in your life?\u201d)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 4. <\/b>No matter how much money you make now, you can\u2019t get time back.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n This came up many times in many interviews, so much so that I only included a couple instances of it in the final book, one from my friend Kurt:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe one thing I\u2019d change? I\u2019d be home more. You cannot get time back. No matter how rich you are, you can\u2019t go back. I\u2019d be home more. Even though I was a lot at the time, it still was not enough.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And my friend Drew, who has two daughters, and said:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou can always go make more money, but time is that thing that disappears really fast on you. You can find work. You can make money anywhere. It\u2019s about finding a good balance where you can devote to the kids and give them that dad time, rough house with them, go for a walk.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n (Obviously this is different for everyone and if you\u2019re working two jobs just to pay rent, you aren\u2019t in a position to be able to choose one over the other. But over the past four years I have found this sentiment guiding lots of my decisions, probably to the detriment of my \u201ccareer\u201d + income, but hopefully for the good of my relationship with my kid.)<\/p>\n 5. <\/b>Almost everyone struggles with patience.<\/b><\/p>\n One of the 20 questions I asked every dad was \u201cWhat is something you\u2019re not great at, and you\u2019ve had to work really hard to improve, or learn to be ok with?\u201d And so many dads mentioned patience, including Kris, who at the time had a 6-month-old at home:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSomething that\u2019s really become apparent is how selective I can be with my patience and how this guy I\u2019m super patient with. All these quick exits out of the house in the morning don\u2019t happen anymore, but it\u2019s OK. Good to hang out with this kiddo. I don\u2019t extend that same patience to other people who are important to me, even [Kris\u2019s partner] Yiling. I can be short with her. I can see this version of myself that it\u2019s so willing to go with the flow versus the hyped-up, amped-up version that I can be sometimes with Yiling. That\u2019s something that I need to bring to my other relationships around.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I drew this illustration shortly after my interview with Kris, and now that I look at it, my personal graph would be much, much taller to reflect the hundredfold increase in my patience over the past four years:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 6. <\/b>People say it\u2019s hard, but more than that, it\u2019s relentless.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n When I interviewed my friend Rob, who has had more than a few challenging moments in human-powered adventures all over the world, he said this: \u201cHumans have been parents for millions of years, so it\u2019s just not really that hard. It\u2019s relentless, but it\u2019s not that hard. Not that complicated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n (I misremembered this quote for the first few years of our son\u2019s life, telling myself, \u201cYes it\u2019s hard, but more than that, it\u2019s relentless.\u201d And then when I was copy-editing the interviews for the book, I realized that Rob had said it was NOT hard. Which Rob and I are going to have to agree to disagree on.)<\/span><\/p>\n 7. <\/b>As a parent, you are never really out of the woods.<\/b><\/p>\n When I wrote these interview questions, I was pretty focused on the early years of being a parent, because that\u2019s what I was worried about. But I interviewed dads who were at different parts of the journey, including some who had raised kids who were now adults. My friend Pedro said this:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about parenting is it\u2019s a 24-hour day for the rest of your life thing. My daughter is almost 21 and she asked me for advice last night. I realized like, \u2018Oof.\u2019 I\u2019m not always wise, so you gotta be comfortable with failure because whatever it\u2019s going to be, 70 years of parenting, I\u2019m going to fail so many times and I\u2019m not going to be the dad that I want to be so many times.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And my friend Kris, who\u2019s a father and a grandfather:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBeing a parent has taught me that I\u2019m not my dad. When my daughter had a tough situation and I responded by not being happy about her decision and letting her know that, was the first time that I had thought, \u2018Uh-oh, maybe I am. Maybe I\u2019m going to be that person after all.\u2019 I had thought I was out of the woods. It was the biggest challenge of my parenting. She was young 20s and I wasn\u2019t out of the woods.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the illustration I made for Kris\u2019s chapter of the book:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 8. <\/b>The days are slow, but the years go fast.<\/b><\/p>\n So many dads I interviewed said some version of this, and it goes back to the \u201call the clich\u00e9s are true\u201d thing. Now that I have a four-year-old, I am realizing that yes, all parents say the same things (or lots of the same things), because I am saying the same things they said. I, too, have had that nagging feeling that I could be \u201cgetting something done\u201d instead of sitting with a sleeping baby on my lap or doing tummy time or watching my kid play with LEGO blocks because he asked me to play with him but he really doesn\u2019t want me to actually play with him (he just wants me to be next to him while he plays). And my phone seems to remind me weekly with a photo from a year ago, or two years ago, that oh yeah, we\u2019re done with that phase now, and it\u2019s bittersweet that he doesn\u2019t have that mop of hair anymore, or he won\u2019t wear those overalls, or he\u2019s not as interested in jumping in puddles. And I better get used to that bittersweet feeling of his little life going by and my life going by because that\u2019s how it works.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 9. Childbirth is almost never like it is in movies.<\/b><\/p>\n Of course plenty of births have happened the way we\u2019ve all seen it in a movie, but there are a million different ways childbirth can go, and from my research, most of them don\u2019t involve a frantic rush to the hospital because a baby has totally out of nowhere decided that it is coming RIGHT NOW, and then is born in the back of a taxi.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 10. <\/b>Almost everybody is aware that as a parent, they are a work in progress.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Maybe this is just the dads I interviewed, but I hope not. Because over and over, the guys I talked to realized that a) they weren\u2019t perfect and b) they could always improve on who they were yesterday. Which involves apologizing, repairing, and moving on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to buy the book for yourself or someone who might appreciate it, here\u2019s where you can find it in paperback and ebook editions.<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n![\"chart](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/semi-rad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Kurtis_Wikel-scaled.jpg?resize=1500%2C947&ssl=1)
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