DeChaune M.

Lesson Learned

I never really wanted to be a dad. I was born an only child with a father, but he was absent most of it. I blamed him for the way I was and looked for father figures in other men that I thought had it better figured out. I latched onto my grandfather as he took me fishing all the time, he showed me the little things like how to stand up and pee in the restroom. I had my mother too, and she honestly did the best she could as a single mother raising a hard-headed kid mostly by herself, but I'd come to realize that she, like me, wasn't ready to be a parent either. She'd had abusive relationships, and a lot of it I was a witness.

You'd think with the things I saw that I would have said, "At the very least, I don't want to be them!" and you'd be right. I did say those things, and I wasn't harsh to the women I was with, but it did seep into other areas of my life.

I was selfish in a lot of ways and not very outgoing, I spent most of my time alone doing my own thing, and occasionally I would go to one of my few friends houses over the summer break. We would play video games, go to football games, chase the girls, watch cartoons and be kids.

The day that I knew that I was going to be a dad was a shock for me. I knew that my life would shift, but I didn't know how much it would be changed with this new level of responsibility. Being that I didn't have a role model to show me how to do these things, I was thrown in the deep end, and I didn't know what kind of father I wanted to be. I didn't even know what kind of person I wanted to be.

The thing about life is that even when you don't think things are going to work out, it somehow always does.

Early on, I was an angry parent. I would spend most of my time sleeping while my oldest son watched SpongeBob. Some part of me rejected it all the time to his detriment. He was and is a happy kid. Very different, clearly theatrical, and just super smart. He was everything I think I was as a kid, and a part of me couldn't accept that my life is now about someone else. It went on like this for years, and then I had a little girl. Extremely beautiful since the first day she came into the world and so energetic, she would tire out the most accomplished athletes, which I wasn't.

With her things started to improve with my son a bit, she taught me patience and to be understanding. Those things were absent in my relationship with my oldest, and I was harsh towards him, but I never enjoyed it. Still though for all progress I'd made, I wasn't ready to be a father.

It wasn't until life shoved me into a hard place that all but forced me to look in the mirror, that I started to do the work to mold the person I saw into the person I wanted to be. My kids loved me, but I couldn't understand why, because I felt like I was a horrible dad. I felt like I was neglectful and overly hard for the simplest things. I felt like once I'd messed up, then there isn't any hope for me to be a better dad, and I'd be trash forever.

Life isn't like that; we make mistakes; we fall and fail over and over again. If we choose to let those things define us, then we decide to be a failure, but if we accept that we failed but choose to succeed, then we will achieve more than we ever thought of ourselves.

It wasn't until I had my third child, my youngest son that I began to see these lessons with clarity. This kid is nothing but joy; he laughs like crazy, smiles all day long, and wants to stay up all night talking about whatever babies do.

Third times the charm right? Now I know what you're thinking.

You could say that I shouldn't have had kids at all and you'd be right and also be wrong, you see I'm 100% responsible for my actions. I was careless and unprepared, and it did affect my family and my kids, and maybe I would have learned these lessons eventually without having brought so many into this world. Then again, who's to say? There is nothing anyone can do about what happened before because that time has passed. The time we have right now is all that will ever truly exist.

My actions all those years ago eventually caught up to me, I saw who I was in my children's eyes, and I chose to change it because I didn't like what I saw. I wanted them to have better memories with their father, to be the role model I didn't have. To show them what I learned about myself, things like compassion, cooperation, and confidence.

I wasn't trying to come up with the 3 "C's" it just turned out that way.

I wanted to instill in them values that will carry them throughout life with positivity and sincerity.

Somewhere along this journey, the kids taught me to own my mistakes with every fall, while trying to learn to walk.

With every letdown, learn how to pick me up again.

To not be so bullheaded to think that I can't learn something from kids or anyone else for that matter.

They taught me that it's not about one individual; it's a collective. They got me out of my head and into my life. They are my future, and to not give the next generation everything we have is to shoot ourselves in the foot.

I love my kids because they love themselves first and pour that love back into the world every day. We all could learn something about them if we sit and listen to them with an open ear and an open heart.

— DeChaune M.

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