The Road to 40 Day 257/365: Parenting Perspectives

I take pride in living the life of a housedad, but sometimes, I need to learn from other people’s perspectives to get a better grasp of what I’m doing.

I’d like to preface this by saying I haven’t talked to a lot of housedads growing up, and my dad worked on weekdays, so I don’t really have a role model for what a dad should be. I had an idea of what I wanted to be, and I thought I was doing that.

In the morning of this day, the pressure of being late compounded with Vino not really moving as fast as he should. Then he makes this silly mistake of putting his uniform in the laundry basket. With a frustrating tone, I asked him why he would make such a silly mistake.

When we went out, Che asked him to check his bag. After opening all the pockets, he asked where his hat was. I told him it should be there because I put it there yesterday. He said, “okay” and wanted to put his backpack on. I asked if he found it in his bag, and he said yes – which I know is not true becaue if he did, he would not have asked me for it.

I asked to see it, and he scrambled to look for it until he did. I was angry, but I tried not to shout, because that was something Vino asked me not to do before.

I explained to him that lying is bad, and that I’m angry because it’s not something that neither Che or I taught him. We’ve talked about honesty before, and I thought we agreed that it’s going to be what we have with each other.

I apologized for being angry so early in the morning, but it’s more me being sad that I’m not doing a good job than what he’s actually doing. I’ve tied my identity to being a dad that I feel like when he’s doing things that we don’t teach, I’m failing in what I’m supposed to doing. I told him that I don’t work so that I’ll be here when he needs me, but he makes me feel like I’m unnecessary.

We parted on a good note, and he still waved goodbye several times before heading up to the classrooms.

When I got home, Che was working, so I did some household chores first. We got to talk during lunch, where I proceeded to tell her about what happened.

She explained to me that my tone of voice is becoming a traumatic trigger for Vino, and how I explained the situation made it seem like I was gaslighting him.

I didn’t see it in the moment, but looking back, I think she’s right. Of course, Vino would take it as I explained it to him because he doesn’t have a concept of gaslighting that we do now as adults.

Che and I have always talked about how we don’t want to pass our childhood traumas to Vino, and while I may not have a lot (I think), she certainly has her fair share. So when I’m acting like her adults when she was younger, she makes sure to call me out for it.

She called me out on my shouting, which Vino also told me he doesn’t like, so I changed that. However, my emotions manifest differently now, and my fuse has gotten a lot shorter.

It results in a certain condescending tone of voice and heavy-handed handling of things. These are things that I am aware of, but I don’t really know how they come across, especially to them.

Che told me that just the past weekend, Vino, in a fit of disappointment, decided to slam things as he was told to do something, which might be a manifestation of what he sees from me.

Personally, I don’t know if I could change it immediately, because it’s still difficult to control my emotions. I also know that I react rather aggressively when people don’t act according to my expectations, especially in social norms.

The last one, I’m still actively trying to learn. I feel like it’s going to take time, but I do want to work on it as quickly as possible because of how it’s affecting Vino.

I’m glad that Che has built the patience to push through all my defensiveness when she calls me out. I would always take my stand on how I do things, but to be the kind of parents we want to be, her perspective will always be valuable to keep me steering in the right direction.

When Vino got back from school, I did some household chores before proceeding to prepare dinner. I found this recipe online for suyuk, a Korean boiled pork belly dish. It’s still confusing what the difference is between that and bossam, but the video I watched said suyuk, so I’m going with that.

I’ve tried bossam as a side dish in a Korean restaurant before, and it’s ok. It had a clean, pork flavor, but it’s just pork. This one had nice, subtle flavors to it. I think I could boil it a bit longer to make it softer next time I do this.

The salad, I think it’s a matter of flavor adjustment, and maybe more lettuce than onions. I had a big onion and not that big of a lettuce head.
Che surprisingly had a lot of it, but Vino had a bit of a hard time chewing it. I understand it’s not really related to the topic of this blog, but I don’t have a lot of pictures yesterday, and this was certainly a highlight.