Tag: writing

Father’s Day musings

From an early age, I wanted to have children someday. Yet at the same time, I wondered if I could be a good parent. When I was in grad school, I got to know a couple who seemed to be doing an exceptional job at parenting. One day, I asked the mom her secret. She said something like, “I don’t ever pretend to be anything but human.” She was honest with her kids about her ups and downs, her shortcomings.

That may be the best single piece of parenting advice I ever got, and I’ve tried to remember it. A veneer of perfection doesn’t work. Own mistakes. Apologize for them. Learn from them.

Along the way, I’ve developed some additional — correlating — strategies. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert, just someone who has taken an empathetic approach to the responsibilities of parenting.

Near the top of the list is: Affirm your children. There are opportunities to do so in matters big and small.

Don’t talk down to them. Offer honest, age-appropriate answers to their questions.

Spend time with them. This time needs to include reading to them beginning when they are infants.

Always make sure they know you love them.

Try to avoid being arbitrary. Strive for consistency. This isn’t always easy, but keep at it.

Also difficult but important: Teach them to do what’s right, because it’s the right thing to do, not to avoid punishment. Don’t teach just by talking. Be a role model.

Another thing that’s tricky is finding a balance between doing enough and not doing too much for them, being protective but not overly protective. Certainly, if there’s a danger, you step in and take charge. But there are also times when it may be best to give them room to take initiative. They need to feel accomplishment; they can learn from mistakes.

One-hundred-percent success in parenting is not guaranteed. It’s not even possible. When falling short on any of these goals, it’s a good idea to accept being human. Learn and carry on.

As I look back, I see my own failings as the toughest part of raising my children. It’s too easy to recall specific incidences in which I could’ve done a better job. Or maybe I couldn’t have, but I wish I had.

This feeling is easily mitigated, however, by looking — objectively — at the fantastic adults my children are today. And, notably, this includes their being great parents. I’ve said, often and recently, “I must’ve done something right.”

Further, an advantage of now being in the looking-back stage is that selective memory takes over. Memories of unpleasant aspects retreat to the background. Many good times — and overall joy — are what I remember most.

250-word sentence

In the 1980s, I worked in an office with people who value clear communications as much as I do. We were, after all, public relations professionals. We shared with each other examples of communications efforts that sometimes were instructive and at other times made us laugh — or cringe.

One day, for fun, I was inspired to try to create a single sentence of about 250 words that said, “Keep it simple.” I laced it with some shots at bureaucracy. (We worked in a state-run academic medical center.)

My colleagues enjoyed it. The assistant director went a step further. He had one of the secretaries type it up and send it as a memo from him to the personnel office, as human resources offices were called back then.

Here it is:

In preparing interdepartmental and intradepartmental memoranda, requisitions, policy statements and other similar necessary correspondence related to matters such as and including employee principal function evaluative procedures, fiscal responsibility in implementing cost containment procedures, appropriate temporary storage of personal and/or state-owned motorized vehicular transportation, schedules for ingestion of requisite nutritional matter (whether in the institutional refectory or another approved setting) or periodic maintenance of electronic, telemetric and porcelain equipment, such documents shall be kept to overall minimal lengths and shall utilize succinctness and cogency so as to attain optimal effectiveness due to maximum circulation, retention and application, manifest clarity of purpose and minimal exhaustion of institutional, natural and human resources, and it is suggested that all such written conveyances for which these regulations may be applicable conform to guidelines set forth by the executive assistant to the governor’s vice chief of staff’s select committee on the achievement of clarity of program mission at every organizational level, except where exemptions may be deemed necessary and justified because of state, Federal or local regulations, special departmental needs or other exemptions as outlined in the report of the task force on exemptions appointed by and functioning under the direction of the administrative assistant to the adjunct associate state attorney general (version revised January 1978), and in doing so the management will ensure that information flow is facilitated in a manner consistent with the short-, intermediate- and long-term goals and objectives of the organization, although this memorandum and the data cited herein should in no way be interpreted to indicate that these goals and objectives are not being effectively implemented currently, but rather that this will invoke additional means to the end and will further coalesce resources already at our disposal.